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Canon XC10 4K camcorder


Andrew Reid
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Is here someone who could give me some some practical advice about the low light behaviour of the XC10? I am 16 years old and till now I shoot interviews, political events and sometimes corporate events. Till now I use a NX1 with Canon lenses (70-200/2.8 eg.) and the Samsung 45mm/1.8. For ENG and "quick to edit events" I use a Panasonic AG-AC8, but the AVCHD is not my dream cam. I will sell the camera within the next weeks...

Now I would like to buy a run & gun cam. From practical points of view and corresponding to my needs, I would like to buy a Sony PWX X70. 4:2:2-10 and a acceptable compression make this cam very interesting for me. But...I am a fan of Canon colour science. So, a XC10 could be a serious alternative and could be my first Canon film camera. C-Log is very nice (PXW X70 does NOT have a S-Log, but very nice images out of the box). The Sony is very usable in uncontrolled low light situations (I do NOT film in the dark) as unpredictable events, meetings, etc. (journalistic work). As I am scholar, my budget is quite tight, so I don't want to buy many cameras for testing (and reselling, if not acceptable for me). Is the XC10 (with its 1" sensor, similar to the PXW) the same quality in questionable/low light situations?

BTW: I am a "long time" guy wanting to invest in practicable solutions and consistent post workflows....

Thank you for advice!

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1 hour ago, Arikhan said:

Is here someone who could give me some some practical advice about the low light behaviour of the XC10? I am 16 years old and till now I shoot interviews, political events and sometimes corporate events. Till now I use a NX1 with Canon lenses (70-200/2.8 eg.) and the Samsung 45mm/1.8. For ENG and "quick to edit events" I use a Panasonic AG-AC8, but the AVCHD is not my dream cam. I will sell the camera within the next weeks...

Now I would like to buy a run & gun cam. From practical points of view and corresponding to my needs, I would like to buy a Sony PWX X70. 4:2:2-10 and a acceptable compression make this cam very interesting for me. But...I am a fan of Canon colour science. So, a XC10 could be a serious alternative and could be my first Canon film camera. C-Log is very nice (PXW X70 does NOT have a S-Log, but very nice images out of the box). The Sony is very usable in uncontrolled low light situations (I do NOT film in the dark) as unpredictable events, meetings, etc. (journalistic work). As I am scholar, my budget is quite tight, so I don't want to buy many cameras for testing (and reselling, if not acceptable for me). Is the XC10 (with its 1" sensor, similar to the PXW) the same quality in questionable/low light situations?

BTW: I am a "long time" guy wanting to invest in practicable solutions and consistent post workflows....

Thank you for advice!

It's not terrible in lowlight but that's not where this camera shines.  Daylight, cloudy, overcast, dusk, interiors that are lit or have lights on, night stage lighting at concerts = awesome footage.  I would shoot interior interviews with at least one z96 LED light on the subject.  I would not use the XC10  for wedding receptions or night exteriors without light. I would not shoot over 3200 iso.  It is my favorite run & gun cam.  I have a C100MK2 and a 5DMK3 but I enjoy shooting with the XC10 the most out of the group. Here is an example of a low lit interior with mixed stage lighting in 4K.
 

 

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@jpfilmz Thank you very much for advice and for sharing this clip. On weekend I will visit a pro broadcaster and equipment seller and get a chance to compare a little bit the Sony and the XC10 in same decent light conditions.

BTW: My (1" sensor amateurish) FZ1000 produces in low light conditons (4K, 25p) better footage than my NX1 with Canon constant 2.8 aperture lens - compared after edited in a 1080p timeline. This is very dissapointing for me, as it demonstrates that sensor size is not the most important factor. One of my friends has a Pana GX85 and a Canon 80D. The 80D produces lovely colors, BUT the GX85 makes far better footage in low light (4K, downscaled to 1080p). Far less noise and artifacts...This is something I can not understand. Panasonic processes the information from little sensors (1" / 4/3) as it seems much more better than Canon or Samsung from bigger sensors.

Thanks again for your advice, next monday I will post about my comparison test (XC10 vs PXW X70) in decent/low light conditions.

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Just to throw in my two penn'orth: I received my XC10 (its purchase partly inspired by this thread) late last week and gave it a baptism by fire on our family trip (3 kids, aged 20 months to 13 yrs) to Disneyland Paris. I can certainly bear witness to its effectiveness as a 'shot getter' - I was able to get far more footage than I would have done with my GH4. I had an initial play with the files last night and they seem to grade up very nicely so far. The 2 best elements of the camera, for me (and after pure IQ) are the amazing stabilisation and the tracking autofocus. I also found the digital teleconverter in HD mode incredibly useful.

 

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15 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

Has anyone tried to use a teleconverter, wide angle adapter or an anamorphic lens with the xc10 ?

I just ordered an XC10. I'll try it out with an Iscorama pre-36 in the coming weeks.

Some of the footage I've seen on vimeo has been quite drab with dull, video-ish colours. And some has been been very nice indeed. Aside from the usability of the cam, I'm very interested to see what I can get out of it in terms colour when shooting C-Log.

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I bought the XC10, I love the color. But

one of the things I don't like about XC10 is the unnecessary and exclusive use of CFast for video recording.

The highest data rate is 305mbs, which is less than 40MB/s. A Transcend SDXC UHS-I U3 can handle write speed of 60MB/s. A Sandisk in the same class can handle 90MB/s. UDMA7 CF cards can handle more than 100MB/s.

I am sure Canon has no intention of releasing a future firmware update to enable a data rate of more than 500mbs. Then why did they made the choice of having CFast instead of CF? 

If they want to so blatantly champion the CFast standard, couldn't they at least match it with USB3.0 so that we can take advantage of the download speed? Instead, they burden us with a CFast reader, while take away the one thing we need, the battery charger.

In a lot of ways, the design of XC10 makes sense. But in this respect, not at all.

Is there any chance Canon can release a firmware update to allow us recording video on the SD? 

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40 minutes ago, Zpotter said:

I bought the XC10, I love the color. But

one of the things I don't like about XC10 is the unnecessary and exclusive use of CFast for video recording.

The highest data rate is 305mbs, which is less than 40MB/s. A Transcend SDXC UHS-I U3 can handle write speed of 60MB/s. A Sandisk in the same class can handle 90MB/s. UDMA7 CF cards can handle more than 100MB/s.

I am sure Canon has no intention of releasing a future firmware update to enable a data rate of more than 500mbs. Then why did they made the choice of having CFast instead of CF? 

If they want to so blatantly champion the CFast standard, couldn't they at least match it with USB3.0 so that we can take advantage of the download speed? Instead, they burden us with a CFast reader, while take away the one thing we need, the battery charger.

In a lot of ways, the design of XC10 makes sense. But in this respect, not at all.

Is there any chance Canon can release a firmware update to allow us recording video on the SD? 

You can shoot HD video up to 50mbs to SD cards on the XC10. 

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46 minutes ago, Zpotter said:

I bought the XC10, I love the color. But

one of the things I don't like about XC10 is the unnecessary and exclusive use of CFast for video recording.

The highest data rate is 305mbs, which is less than 40MB/s. A Transcend SDXC UHS-I U3 can handle write speed of 60MB/s. A Sandisk in the same class can handle 90MB/s. UDMA7 CF cards can handle more than 100MB/s.

I am sure Canon has no intention of releasing a future firmware update to enable a data rate of more than 500mbs. Then why did they made the choice of having CFast instead of CF? 

If they want to so blatantly champion the CFast standard, couldn't they at least match it with USB3.0 so that we can take advantage of the download speed? Instead, they burden us with a CFast reader, while take away the one thing we need, the battery charger.

In a lot of ways, the design of XC10 makes sense. But in this respect, not at all.

Is there any chance Canon can release a firmware update to allow us recording video on the SD? 

To reframe, Canon likes to err on the side of reliability. Canon may want an engineering 2x safety factor, so 80MB/s would be their required minimum. 100MB rated may not be met for continuous writes as some cards are much slower than their rating. E.g. ask 5D3 ML users about actual CF performance: I have a 128GB UDMA 7 card sitting on my desk that wasn't even close in rated write performance. CFast 2.0 cards are held to a much higher performance standard, and I haven't read any reports of CFast 2.0 cards running slow.

Even better, CFast 2.0 cards over USB3 are blazing fast- if you shoot a lot of footage and/or need to do on-set transfers, file copy time savings is significant. I wasn't thrilled about having to get yet another set of (expensive) cards and readers, however in practice the performance is pretty amazing and useful.

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3 hours ago, Zpotter said:

I bought the XC10, I love the color. But

one of the things I don't like about XC10 is the unnecessary and exclusive use of CFast for video recording.

The highest data rate is 305mbs, which is less than 40MB/s. A Transcend SDXC UHS-I U3 can handle write speed of 60MB/s. A Sandisk in the same class can handle 90MB/s. UDMA7 CF cards can handle more than 100MB/s.

I am sure Canon has no intention of releasing a future firmware update to enable a data rate of more than 500mbs. Then why did they made the choice of having CFast instead of CF? 

If they want to so blatantly champion the CFast standard, couldn't they at least match it with USB3.0 so that we can take advantage of the download speed? Instead, they burden us with a CFast reader, while take away the one thing we need, the battery charger.

In a lot of ways, the design of XC10 makes sense. But in this respect, not at all.

Is there any chance Canon can release a firmware update to allow us recording video on the SD? 

The encoding is done in hardware, so it is limited by what the hardware can do. And for the XC10 that is 305 mbps. That will not change.

They will not enable recording 4K to the SD because the slot can't handle the data rate.

The data rate you see on your card spec is the read rate. Write rates are a lot lower, and the minimum write rate (the spec which is critical for recording stable video) is lower still. I doubt that there are too many (and probably none) SDXC UHS-I cards that could handle a video feed coming in at 305 mbps.

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27 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

sooooo I just got the xc10. Still getting the hang of it but there is some potential in the image...

the variable aperture is driving me crazy but I think im gonna just use the xc10 like its a 24mm 2.8 prime 

Welcome aboard... I look forward to seeing your results. Have you tested the 1080 and the 4K?

Once you get the hang of the slip into f/3.7 and start riding the aperture wheel, the low end... 24-50 really shines.

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2 hours ago, mercer said:

Welcome aboard... I look forward to seeing your results. Have you tested the 1080 and the 4K?

Once you get the hang of the slip into f/3.7 and start riding the aperture wheel, the low end... 24-50 really shines.

I tested the 4k which was phenomenal. Im testing the picture profiles, I dont wanna use c-log or wide dr. I need to figureout which profile displays the least amount of noise & also how the in camera sharpness affects the image. 

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48 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

I tested the 4k which was phenomenal. Im testing the picture profiles, I dont wanna use c-log or wide dr. I need to figureout which profile displays the least amount of noise & also how the in camera sharpness affects the image. 

You know c-log has zero in camera sharpening. I've only used c-log and wide dr. I glanced at cinema eos for a sec, it seemed okay... But I didn't stay on it too long, I just like 1080 c-log with the 5-Axis too much to deviate for too long. 

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27 minutes ago, Amook said:

Here's a few clips in c-log Hd, as well as some 60p shots. I'm not a very good at color grading so I know it could be better. I had my daughter in a pack on my back of all these shots so the stabilization helped a lot.

 

Looks great. The lowlight holds up well. I just love the 5-Axis 1080 C-Log from this camera. I haven't tested the 60p yet, but it looks good. Was this shot with AF? Any post sharpening?

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I'

7 hours ago, Amook said:

Here's a few clips in c-log Hd, as well as some 60p shots. I'm not a very good at color grading so I know it could be better. I had my daughter in a pack on my back of all these shots so the stabilization helped a lot.

 

This little camera is nice but what would be cool is something like a XC10 that uses the c300 mark 2 sensor (xc30). Not just to benefit from DPAF but also from a larger field of view. The fixed lens should be constant aperture 2.8 from 24mm to 200mm. the media and codec could be the same. 

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