Canon XC10 4K camcorder

[BenEricson]

3 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

Whatever you are doing in post looks incredible ! Really filmic...Im wondering if we own the same camera ?

I read that C-LOG is optimized for 8 bit. That plus your footage has me convinced I should shoot solely in Canon Log

Here is a link to the LUT I am using. You can download the whole pack if you want as well. 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ljz17ji7k0q4kvm/AABZGeJdt2xz2Q94rQMvuhd4a?dl=0

I attached a few images that show what the LUT is doing. It's working similarly to those film looks you use. It compresses the highlights and will really create nice roll off for blown out footage. This is actually black magic pocket footage, but it's the only thing I have on this laptop to work with.

The LUT isn't too aggressive, it may work with wide dr footage as well. Make sure you sharpen 10-15 in premiere as well.

3 hours ago, mercer said:

I don't think it looks thin at all. It definitely has a filmic feel to it. I hate  brittle video, and I haven't seen it from the XC10 at all, even the 1080p. 

I appreciate that. Honestly, I think I haven't come to terms with the fact that a camera that is so easy to use and compact can actually produce high quality footage.

[mercer]

6 hours ago, BenEricson said:

Here is a link to the LUT I am using. You can download the whole pack if you want as well. 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ljz17ji7k0q4kvm/AABZGeJdt2xz2Q94rQMvuhd4a?dl=0

I attached a few images that show what the LUT is doing. It's working similarly to those film looks you use. It compresses the highlights and will really create nice roll off for blown out footage. This is actually black magic pocket footage, but it's the only thing I have on this laptop to work with.

The LUT isn't too aggressive, it may work with wide dr footage as well. Make sure you sharpen 10-15 in premiere as well.

I appreciate that. Honestly, I think I haven't come to terms with the fact that a camera that is so easy to use and compact can actually produce high quality footage.

Have you been using it in manual or the semi-auto Reid recommended?

Are you familiar with the movie It Follows? If not, it's a slow burn, horror film that was at Sundance a couple years ago. Anyway, I watched it around Halloween and thought... man what was that shot on... it almost looked like film. When I googled it, one of the first pages talked about how much it looked like film. They used an Alexa for most of it and a Red for some of it. 

I think your last few videos remind me a little of the look from that movie. It has this late 70s/early 80s film vibe.

[hyalinejim]

On 13/11/2016 at 4:02 PM, kidzrevil said:

Last but not least I am seeing that the in camera sharpening is vital because C-LOG can turn your footage into mush even though it has fantastic DR.

 

On 13/11/2016 at 9:11 PM, hyalinejim said:

 

I am seeing this as well with C-Log... must do some comparison with other styles with sharpening whacked up.

OK, so today I wanted to set up a test where I shoot each picture style in turn with its default settings in mixed lighting in order to figure out how each of them differs in terms of

• Dynamic range and highlight rolloff
• Colour rendition
• Detail due to sharpening
• Likelihood of falling apart in a grade

So I whitebalanced the scene (a mix of daylight, tungsten and fluorescent) and set middle grey to read in the middle of the exposure meter:

My plan was to then go back and maybe tweak sharpening of some of the profiles to play with how much detail could be preserved before edge artifacting sets in, and I was witness to this holy shit show:

 

But Canon, I don't have a pebble dash wall in my living room! More info here:

 

[hijodeibn]

This is becoming an horror movie, every week a new issue arise, I hope this only impact the XC10 and is already corrected in the XC15 like the ghosting.

[mercer]

I think the XC10 is a C-Log camera, with the occasional WideDR if you are in an insane time crunch... not that C-Log is all that difficult, or slow to correct/grade in post.

It's also a camera that should mostly be used at its base 500 ISO. When lit properly, you can get away with a little more, but when lit properly, you shouldn't need to. 

[hyalinejim]

OK, here's some happier news. I had noticed previously that when shooting outdoors in C-Log or WideDR I got the nicest colour when using the cloudy WB preset rather than daylight, shade or a custom balance. Today, I made a test indoors in mixed tungsten and daylight. First, I generated a custom white balance with a Lastolite thingy:

Then, for the hell of it, I switched over to cloudy and got this:

Obviously too warm, right? So I thought it would be interesting to see if I could push it in post to roughly match the custom WB. I did and got this:

Here's an A/B, custom on left, fixed cloudy on right:

I know it's subtle in the middle of a forum page but when I on/off these fullscreen the colours in the one on the right are much nicer for me. Look at the way the warmth of the tungsten blends into the coolness of daylight. In the custom white balanced version (left) that transition seems to go from greenish warmth to purplish daylight. But in the cloudy white balance which was brought back into the roughly-correct-range-but-not-exactly-the-same-just-what-looks-best (right), the skintones come out a lot better in mixed light. And I couldn't get the one on the left to match the one on the right just through white balance alone. So there's something going on with the cloudy preset that I find quite special.

FWIW, this is C-Log. I'm using GingerHDR's white balance tool, which I think is no longer available. Then adjust levels. Then my lovely curve.

 

[hijodeibn]

It is a lot better, you can clearly notice it from your samples. Did you use davinci?

[hyalinejim]

No, After Effects. It only works well in C-Log though. The more contrasty profiles can't handle having their colours pushed. C-Log would be the absolute king for me, if it wasn't for stuff like this:

No movement - everything's great!

Slight movement - that detail is beginning to turn to mush:

Moderate movement - colours are still nice but what planet are we on?

[kidzrevil]

2 hours ago, mercer said:

I think the XC10 is a C-Log camera, with the occasional WideDR if you are in an insane time crunch... not that C-Log is all that difficult, or slow to correct/grade in post.

It's also a camera that should mostly be used at its base 500 ISO. When lit properly, you can get away with a little more, but when lit properly, you shouldn't need to. 

Wide DR is insanely noisy. I rather use C-LOG. 

@hyalinejim honestly I think Canon will hold off on updating this camera. Our best bet is to learn to work around the cameras flaws

[hyalinejim]

@mercer You're right. The best way to use this camera at the moment is at base ISO and in good light. And C-Log would totally give the most wonderful image and I would never look twice at any of the others but for the fact that it's far and away the worst for ghosting. WideDR is next best for retaining tonality, but it is much noiser for sure as kidzrevil says - that really jumped out at me today in my 5 profile comparison.. and the ghosting is moderately bad. The other profiles are cleaner in terms of noise and ghosting, but obviously you're not gonna get a nice highlight roll off there by any means.

37 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

@hyalinejimOur best bet is to learn to work around the cameras flaws

It seems there are a lot of flaws to work around. I've used the camera on 3 jobs so far, as a B-cam, and it's been fine because I've been aware of its limitations. And it's an amazing street camera. I love holding it and wandering around it with - just wish the image would give some love back when something moves at ISO500+.

Maybe I'm naive, but I think that if Canon can fix the ghosting with a firmware update, then they will do it. In the same way that they added 4k RS reduction and "better" noise performace in HD. Although, now that you mention it... if they were looking at noise performance why didn't they spot the ghosting? Maybe they were testing it on static scenes, shooting charts and the like. It's a great camera for shooting charts with, just don't move anything!

EDIT: Fuck that, this just in from Canon

Quote

Thank you for your email. Today I have received an update from our product specialists regarding the ghosting artefacts and can confirm that this is caused by noise cancellation. Your camera is working normally and is within specification.

 

[hijodeibn]

29 minutes ago, hyalinejim said:

@mercer You're right. The best way to use this camera at the moment is at base ISO and in good light. And C-Log would totally give the most wonderful image and I would never look twice at any of the others but for the fact that it's far and away the worst for ghosting. WideDR is next best for retaining tonality, but it is much noiser for sure as kidzrevil says - that really jumped out at me today in my 5 profile comparison.. and the ghosting is moderately bad. The other profiles are cleaner in terms of noise and ghosting, but obviously you're not gonna get a nice highlight roll off there by any means.

It seems there are a lot of flaws to work around. I've used the camera on 3 jobs so far, as a B-cam, and it's been fine because I've been aware of its limitations. And it's an amazing street camera. I love holding it and wandering around it with - just wish the image would give some love back when something moves at ISO500+.

Maybe I'm naive, but I think that if Canon can fix the ghosting with a firmware update, then they will do it. In the same way that they added 4k RS reduction and "better" noise performace in HD. Although, now that you mention it... if they were looking at noise performance why didn't they spot the ghosting? Maybe they were testing it on static scenes, shooting charts and the like. It's a great camera for shooting charts with, just don't move anything!

Looks like the XC15 is the way to go for now, but XC10 is becoming very cheap, so tempting.

[kidzrevil]

@hyalinejim im sure they are aware of the ghosting it looks to me like NR. My guess is it would be bad for marketing if this camera was reviewed as being noisy and low resolution. The jacked up in camera sharpeness to increase apparent resolution and the black speckle issue to me are the end results of trying to doctor the image as much as possible in camera. Hopefully they'll address it in firmware updates.

One theory I had about the camera is the details in the scene + the in camera NR + motion = is the recipe for the ghosting. The more optical resolution diffusion I've thrown at the camera the better the compression even in 1080p

I treat this camera as a lo-fi, run & gun camera with amazing DR & Good ISO up to 1000 and I've seen an improvement in the quality of my work

[Vesku]

Is it true that this Canon XC10 video camera is not showing exposure values and iso when shooting using other than full manual exposure?

Panasonic cameras wont show exposure values with auto exposure modes. I think that Canon DSRLs shows always what iso, aperture and shutter speed it is using.

Exposure info should be ALWAYS visible.

[hyalinejim]

Yes, that's true. You can only see aperture in AV mode, and shutter speed in TV mode. In P and Auto modes there is no info.

[Vesku]

Is this a common standard that exposure values are not visible in video cameras?

If the photo camera would not show exposure values it would be a clear fault. 

[hyalinejim]

I just checked and it's exactly the same on my 5D3. Aperture in Av, shutter in Tv and nothing in P or A.

[mercer]

8 hours ago, hyalinejim said:

No, After Effects. It only works well in C-Log though. The more contrasty profiles can't handle having their colours pushed. C-Log would be the absolute king for me, if it wasn't for stuff like this:

No movement - everything's great!

Slight movement - that detail is beginning to turn to mush:

Moderate movement - colours are still nice but what planet are we on?

What ISO is this?

And was this shot with the camera moving or her moving? 

And finally, what focal length and how close were you to her?

[hyalinejim]

It was really high ISO maybe 6400. Camera was static, she was moving. Lens towards the tele end, subject distance around 3m.

[Vesku]

Is it true that people dont want to know what exposure values and iso the camera uses in automatic modes?

When I am taking photos I am interested what shutter speeds the camera chooses in A-mode or what is the current auto iso value. Why the camera is not telling those things in video mode??

[raf702]

How does the xc10/xc15 image compare to the c100II? This could be an alternate cam from getting a C100mkii