Canon EOS-1D C / 4k Video

[John Koerner]

I briefly tested it when it was $15,000 and passed, mainly because of 8 bits and lower bps, the cost and the ability to function as a real motion camera.

The 1dc is a 422 8 bit camera, the sony a7s 8 bit 420.   Both do high iso well (though the higher you go the softer the file), but grading an 8 bit file usually requires to shoot with decent lighting and/or supplemental lighting and can band.

Al of this is very subject, style, anticipation dependent.  Best is to rent from Borrowlens and work in your style, just like stills.

Or . . .

Maybe you don't want other opinions, but . . .

Actually for $11,000 a C300 though 2k is a better motion camera and will be a lot cheaper in the long run than any dslr as you'll need a cage, some type of xlr inputs, or sound recorder, usually a secondary monitor or monitor recorder.

(The C100's and c300's actually shoot 4k but down sample rather than line skip so moire and alaising aren't usually a big problem).

An A7s to get to 4k goes to up to $6,500 real quick with a 4k recorder, sound accessories and it will also be an 8 bit camera.

Really the best deal is a gh4, some fast voight manual focus lenses, a 4k recorder for 10 bit files though you'll still get up there in price.

If you serious about motion capture there is an endless cost upgrade.  

Also if you manually focus still servo lenses are not easy to use, mechanical lenses are much more precise and 6k or 2k get the same look if your not in focus.

This setup is a $3,000 lens, a $3,500 viewfinder to get to a smallish form factor.



Honestly there is no all in one small 4k that shoots a robust file, except the sony fs7 and even then it doesn't yet shoot pro res and needs conversion for fast editing.

Then again, I'm probably not the best to give advice, because I lug 25 to 35 lb red ones around because I love the look of the file and feel it's worth it, though after a hard week of production I look very hard at a Canon c300 or c500 due to the small and lightweight form factor.



Also keep in mind the 1dc is going to keep going down in price as Canon has to respond to the Sony fs7.  I wouldn't be surprised to see a 4k c300 type camera soon, but that's just a guess as Canon seems to be very slow in their upgrades.

For quick shooting the very best deal I've found is a Canon 70d.  It shoots a rather dslr looking 8 bit file but autofocuses like crazy and is easy and fast all for a $800 to $900 camera.

Also  remember that the h264 codec was meant for video streaming, not actual video capture and some people have issues with all flavors of avchd (though the latest versions are better).

The most interesting camera is the Samsung NX1.    I don't think it's a true cinema camera, but the price is hard to deny and though it shoots h265 and right now is fairly slow to convert to a useable codec h265 allows for better detail at lower bit rates.

With motion capture there is two ways to go.  You can dip your toe in the water or dive off a cliff, but anything in between will show.

To really get pro with a dslr you can quickly get to something like this.



IMO

BC

Thank you very much for the time and thought put into this response.

Honestly, much of your good advice is quite a bit beyond my modest aspirations, but fascinating and educational nonetheless.

From what I understand Sony came out with 4K and something like 90% of 4K cinema is shot on their 4K sensors.

Still, I think Canon was the first to bring it to DSLR with the 1D-C ... but now many are bringing it to the table.

I am quite sure "everybody's" next iteration high MPX cameras are all going to be 4K.
Canon is heavily-vested in video technology also, and pioneered the DSLR/HDVideo ideas.
4K Blu-Ray players are due out by the year's end.

I suspect that everything "right now" is going to fall short, while the next generations are all going to offer better specs (12-16 bit / better file storage) at better prices.

This is a pretty fascinating, multi-depth topic really. The subject of TIME TRANSCODING was not even something I thought about, but now that it's been mentioned this will be a huge reality to bear in mind.

From your post, I am going to really have to consider some kind of auxiliary sound sources for best effect, and implementing that in some kind of way to carry with me. I am not a pro, but I would like the sound quality to at least be justified with the video quality.

I think renting is a great idea actually, thanks.

Jack

[John Koerner]

In looking at the reviews on the NX1, seems everybody likes it ... but half the reviewers grudgingly returned it because the 4K video is more form than substance.

One said it blew away both his Canon 70D and 5D Mk II in still image sharpness.

[eronald]

The NX1 may become a real player ... on paper it already looks very good. My hope is that it may push Pana into improving the GH4 incrementally with firmware.

Edmund.

[Manoli]

The software side really is like going down a rabbit hole.

[/apologies to the OP, somewhat off topic]

Edmund,

You're way ahead of me, I'm just playing !

This motion 'thing' started all because of that nasty 'red' button on my RX100. Couldn't keep my inquisitive finger off it. But , except for the software side, I'm beginning to enjoy it.  Strictly limited to friendly off-the-cuff clips, discreet, usually camera phobic subjects and settings, no sound other than built in mic ( 'cos I overlay music and only occasionally fade-in some sound). So for the time being strictly a solo venture, but it's already risked being escalated into a team affair on a few occasions.

Thanks for the link to your GH4 page ( I didn't know you had one ), and particularly the FCPX tutorial – sorely needed. I've downloaded a trial copy but never gathered the courage to install it after following the comments in the motion forum and unimpressive experiences with iMovie. Consensus seems to be FCP7 with a million and one negatives on FCPX from the pro crowd. It's only plus from what I can see is price.

My gut feeling is that if this is the reaction so far, then Apple will have an impossible task to establish FCPX as a defacto standard. So it'll be limited to those pros who actually need it and cost conscious novices/amateurs. And anyway it's still 300x more expensive than Resolve Lite. Not exactly a blueprint for success.

I agree with you that  Resolve looks like the way forward for anything remotely serious. You've got a free entry into a great piece of software with a 2-step upward path to the full editing suite. After that you're into the pro production suites.  FYI, perhaps you might want to consider adding this link to Sam Morgan Moore's DaVinci Resolve for Newbs and Photoshop-ers to your GH4 page.

The hardware side looks to me almost a bottomless pit. So I'm trying to limit myself to the RX100 and Filmic Pro on an iPhone. 2k it is. Have to admit though that all the 4K output I've seen is impressive, but we're already at 6K and 16stops DR on the RED, by the time you read this it'll probably be 8K – it's money-to-burn unless one's got a specific requirement.

I'm down in Athens at the moment and this city is crawling with press and journalists (from over 86 countries apparently).  They're are the to-be-expected film crews and associated rigs, plus Canon DSLR's for the PJs  (though I suspect that those are the ones limited to covering the Press centre)  but out on the street, I'm amazed at how many are carrying GH4's .

Truth is today that the camera has become little more than an accessory, both in stills and motion. So my philosophy is to buy the best you can in lenses, and let the camera manufacturers take us where they will. Glass lasts, cameras less so.

Nice still, by the way – very organic .
I'm now off to embrace Karl Marx and my soon-to-be comrades ..

All best,
Manoli


*
A whole post, and I almost forgot to mention Photoshop as another solution. It's a serious alternative , for me - familiar environment, editing tools and no learning curve plus it's easy to adjust sound levels, fade-in /out etc etc – it's worth giving it a look. I think it also works on CS6 .  Combined with FilmConvert its a powerful combo for simple projects.

Also, just saw Gone Girl (good movie) which apparently is the first Hollywood feature to be cut entirely in PremierePro.  Adobe must be doing something right.

[dwswager]

May I ask a general question to all posters here doing or wanting to do 4K video?  What is the output medium/audience you are targeting?  I'm thinking large commercial displays?  I had a friend from graduate school who wrote code for Silicon Graphics to synchronize multiple displays to show one large video.

I'm trying to relate to my own experience.  I have 3 1080p HDTVs in my home 2 LCD and 1 Plasma.  The 70" one in my living room has a viewing distance of approximately 13 feet from front of screen to my eyeballs.  While I can see the difference between SD and HD easily, even running the SD through some sharpening and color/tone routines, seeing the difference between 720p and 1080p source material depends on the image material and the quality of the 2 encodings.  I just can't seem to get worked up over 2160p as a home use medium like I did HDTV.  Guess if I had a 110" projector theater or some other medium that would show a difference in quality.

[John Koerner]

May I ask a general question to all posters here doing or wanting to do 4K video?  What is the output medium/audience you are targeting?  I'm thinking large commercial displays?  I had a friend from graduate school who wrote code for Silicon Graphics to synchronize multiple displays to show one large video.

I'm trying to relate to my own experience.  I have 3 1080p HDTVs in my home 2 LCD and 1 Plasma.  The 70" one in my living room has a viewing distance of approximately 13 feet from front of screen to my eyeballs.  While I can see the difference between SD and HD easily, even running the SD through some sharpening and color/tone routines, seeing the difference between 720p and 1080p source material depends on the image material and the quality of the 2 encodings.  I just can't seem to get worked up over 2160p as a home use medium like I did HDTV.  Guess if I had a 110" projector theater or some other medium that would show a difference in quality.

I would recommend going to a large retail store and observing 4K footage on a 4K TV, next to traditional footage through an HD TV.

You won't want the traditional HDTV, once you see them side-by-side.

Admittedly, with more and more 4K TVs coming out, it means the prices for large standard HD TVs are going down, but with 4K Blue Ray players coming out soon, I for one didn't want to purchase the HD TV. I still use the other 2 HD TVs in my home, but not in my living room, and not for watching streaming 4K programs.

It's kinda funny how we're both arguing different sides of the fence now: you demand squeezing the last bit of resolution out of your camera, which is why you want the D810, but you won't do it for your TV ... while I see the other values in cameras without the max resolution of the D810, but yet I go for the 4K UHD TV

Actually, one of the impediments to me clicking the buy button for the D810 is the fact it's not 4K in its video. I have a feeling the next iteration of both Canon and Nikon will (besides the pricey 1D-C), and I am going to  wait and see who offers what next. Just can't get excited about the NX1 or GH4 as something to "drop anchor" with and invest heavily in. But I could for a 5D Mk IV with 4K, or a D900 with 4K ...

Jack

[eronald]

Manoli,

I've put up your link - thx.


My impression is that FCPX has nice idiot defaults and will automagically suggest and do a lot of stuff like stabilising video and syncing audio, which as beginners we'd find hard to even attempt with "real" software. It's also really fast on the Mac, as an earlier poster indicated, running both video cards in parallel when you have them. I've heard it said that FCPX has a lot of the good stuff now, but tucked away, and that real work can be done with it.

I think FCPX should be viewed as "iMovie Pro". I view it as a tool to learn the basic vocabulary of cine editing - as photographers we can then use something else for "grading". I wanted to start out with iMovie, and someone told me to go straight for FCPX. Resolve just now got the edit tools, I expect they won't yet be quite perfect. BTW there's also free Motion ...

There's a tool you might like, which is iMovie on the iPad. It is free if you have the iPad Air, for all I know one might evolve a "shoot in the street and edit in the bus" style - I think the concept goes well with the RX100


Edmund

[/apologies to the OP, somewhat off topic]

Edmund,

You're way ahead of me, I'm just playing !

This motion 'thing' started all because of that nasty 'red' button on my RX100. Couldn't keep my inquisitive finger off it. But , except for the software side, I'm beginning to enjoy it.  Strictly limited to friendly off-the-cuff clips, discreet, usually camera phobic subjects and settings, no sound other than built in mic ( 'cos I overlay music and only occasionally fade-in some sound). So for the time being strictly a solo venture, but it's already risked being escalated into a team affair on a few occasions.

Thanks for the link to your GH4 page ( I didn't know you had one ), and particularly the FCPX tutorial – sorely needed. I've downloaded a trial copy but never gathered the courage to install it after following the comments in the motion forum and unimpressive experiences with iMovie. Consensus seems to be FCP7 with a million and one negatives on FCPX from the pro crowd. It's only plus from what I can see is price.

My gut feeling is that if this is the reaction so far, then Apple will have an impossible task to establish FCPX as a defacto standard. So it'll be limited to those pros who actually need it and cost conscious novices/amateurs. And anyway it's still 300x more expensive than Resolve Lite. Not exactly a blueprint for success.

I agree with you that  Resolve looks like the way forward for anything remotely serious. You've got a free entry into a great piece of software with a 2-step upward path to the full editing suite. After that you're into the pro production suites.  FYI, perhaps you might want to consider adding this link to Sam Morgan Moore's DaVinci Resolve for Newbs and Photoshop-ers to your GH4 page.

The hardware side looks to me almost a bottomless pit. So I'm trying to limit myself to the RX100 and Filmic Pro on an iPhone. 2k it is. Have to admit though that all the 4K output I've seen is impressive, but we're already at 6K and 16stops DR on the RED, by the time you read this it'll probably be 8K – it's money-to-burn unless one's got a specific requirement.

I'm down in Athens at the moment and this city is crawling with press and journalists (from over 86 countries apparently).  They're are the to-be-expected film crews and associated rigs, plus Canon DSLR's for the PJs  (though I suspect that those are the ones limited to covering the Press centre)  but out on the street, I'm amazed at how many are carrying GH4's .

Truth is today that the camera has become little more than an accessory, both in stills and motion. So my philosophy is to buy the best you can in lenses, and let the camera manufacturers take us where they will. Glass lasts, cameras less so.

Nice still, by the way – very organic .
I'm now off to embrace Karl Marx and my soon-to-be comrades ..

All best,
Manoli


*
A whole post, and I almost forgot to mention Photoshop as another solution. It's a serious alternative , for me - familiar environment, editing tools and no learning curve plus it's easy to adjust sound levels, fade-in /out etc etc – it's worth giving it a look. I think it also works on CS6 .  Combined with FilmConvert its a powerful combo for simple projects.

Also, just saw Gone Girl (good movie) which apparently is the first Hollywood feature to be cut entirely in PremierePro.  Adobe must be doing something right.

[eronald]

May I ask a general question to all posters here doing or wanting to do 4K video?  What is the output medium/audience you are targeting?  I'm thinking large commercial displays?  I had a friend from graduate school who wrote code for Silicon Graphics to synchronize multiple displays to show one large video.

I'm trying to relate to my own experience.  I have 3 1080p HDTVs in my home 2 LCD and 1 Plasma.  The 70" one in my living room has a viewing distance of approximately 13 feet from front of screen to my eyeballs.  While I can see the difference between SD and HD easily, even running the SD through some sharpening and color/tone routines, seeing the difference between 720p and 1080p source material depends on the image material and the quality of the 2 encodings.  I just can't seem to get worked up over 2160p as a home use medium like I did HDTV.  Guess if I had a 110" projector theater or some other medium that would show a difference in quality.

The idea is that if a camera/lens does 4K it is sharp; the video can be downsized with hopefully better color rez, or cropped, or shot wide and stabilised. Also a camera that can do 4K@30p can probably do 2K much higher, with obvious advantages for stabilisation or slow motion. Think of it as a sedan with a large engine. It can probably go fast, but that means it will also accelerate well, brake well, and possibly even go up steep grades.

Edmund

[Telecaster]

I made a fairly brief but fun foray into video last year with Blackmagic's Pocket Cine Cam. The main thing this taught me is that if I wanted to get serious about it I'd have to dive deep both in terms of hard/software and time allocation. In the end it was the latter I just couldn't commit to. In my 30s, but with today's tech available, I'd probably have gone for it. But I'm almost 55 now and life is getting to be more about having experiences while I still can and less about documenting 'em with maximum precision.    So…I let the notion of serious video drop. Instead I'm just using my Oly E-M1 with its handy stabilization when the video fairy taps my shoulder, then doing as little post work as necessary to get acceptable results. The fact that the E-M1's video is relatively thin in terms of post latitude keeps me from getting tweaky about it.

As for 4k video…I've seen some very nice stuff for sure, but I've gotta say I'm just as impressed by the 1080p coming from downsampled 4k (or higher in some cases) data. When done well it's clearly crisper & cleaner than typical 1080p. I'm more interested in 4k TVs as still photo displays.

-Dave-

[dwswager]

I would recommend going to a large retail store and observing 4K footage on a 4K TV, next to traditional footage through an HD TV.

You won't want the traditional HDTV, once you see them side-by-side.

Admittedly, with more and more 4K TVs coming out, it means the prices for large standard HD TVs are going down, but with 4K Blue Ray players coming out soon, I for one didn't want to purchase the HD TV. I still use the other 2 HD TVs in my home, but not in my living room, and not for watching streaming 4K programs.

It's kinda funny how we're both arguing different sides of the fence now: you demand squeezing the last bit of resolution out of your camera, which is why you want the D810, but you won't do it for your TV ... while I see the other values in cameras without the max resolution of the D810, but yet I go for the 4K UHD TV

Actually, one of the impediments to me clicking the buy button for the D810 is the fact it's not 4K in its video. I have a feeling the next iteration of both Canon and Nikon will (besides the pricey 1D-C), and I am going to  wait and see who offers what next. Just can't get excited about the NX1 or GH4 as something to "drop anchor" with and invest heavily in. But I could for a 5D Mk IV with 4K, or a D900 with 4K ...

Jack

I get that if you want to pan or zoom into the video then yeah, you are better off with more data.  This is what I do with still and why I want 36MP versus say 22MP.  But that would be downsampling the video back to 2K.  And here is a big difference.  With a still image, I am likely to get up close and inspect detail; look into an image.  Stills are a medium that lends itself to that.  With video, I'm not going to do that.

I'm just never likely to have a TV larger than 70" and not likely to sit closer than 12 feet from it so at those size/viewing distance, I'm just not sure 4K buys me anything over (and here is the point) well done 2K video.  If networks, production companies and cable/dish/DirectTV already hose up 2K video because of bandwidth issues, what are they likely to do to 4K?  The quality has to be maintained throughout the chain all the way to the display. 

I see uses for 4K video, but don't see it as a general use/distribution format for the foreseeable future.

[Alan Klein]

... I'm more interested in 4k TVs as still photo displays.

-Dave-

Me too.  I'm sorry that I made slide shows at 1080 in Premiere Elements outputting 2k BluRay DVD's.  I plan to expand to forthcoming UHDTV, then I have to go back and resize every image, something that's not worth the effort. Moving forward, I'll size to the new 4K.  The problem with buying UHDTV, is that your Playstations, sound systems, etc will also have to be replaced as they don't handle 4K.  You can keep the speakers but the electronics are kaput.

[SangRaal]

Another good reason for not buying a Canon USA 1-DC (or 1-DX) at Canon USA fair market price is that after numerous years of Abe-nomics the Japanese economy is in a stagflation spiral, the Yen has been markedly devalued. Canon has brought back to Japan all manufacturing of their pro cameras to keep home market employees at full employment levels and can export them for lower prices. Currently in Hong Kong a 1-DC is selling from authorized resellers for 54,000 HKD($6,900 USD); 1-DX is about $4,100 USD. Also allegedly Canon is set to announce in the next 3 months updated pro models.  

[eronald]

I made a fairly brief but fun foray into video last year with Blackmagic's Pocket Cine Cam. The main thing this taught me is that if I wanted to get serious about it I'd have to dive deep both in terms of hard/software and time allocation. In the end it was the latter I just couldn't commit to. In my 30s, but with today's tech available, I'd probably have gone for it. But I'm almost 55 now and life is getting to be more about having experiences while I still can and less about documenting 'em with maximum precision.    So…I let the notion of serious video drop.

Actually, I haven't been shooting for months, and this video business has  made me pick it up again, and even pay models. Also, it makes me think about camera positions, field of view, how to get the actors to do what I want  etc - maybe video is interesting not necessarily for the results but for the process it facilitates ... I find when I think about still photography I think mainly in terms of the image, and don't really envision the process so that it is hard to renew myself.

Edmund