Wandering Ear Posted September 14, 2013 Report Share Posted September 14, 2013 I worked with the C500 the other day, and I like it even less than the C300. First, the fans are really loud! They only have two settings, ON, and AUTOMATIC. Neither of which are satisfactory for getting good sound. ON means 100% fan speed, which to my ears was about equivalent to an Epic on 50% or so. AUTOMATIC kicks the fans down to a manageable level, but on my shoot, it lasted two takes of about 45 seconds each, then the fans slowly started ramping up speed, until an overheat error came on screen and they kicked back up to full. The worst part was the fan speed kept changing until it overheated and kicked on full. I decided I'd rather give post a track with a higher noise floor, but one that is at least consistent. The DP and AC had constant trouble with the camera, and spent several hours of the day on the phone with Cannon trying to figure why it does this, or how it does that. I don't know the details of the issue they were having, I mostly overheard bits of the conversation, but our day went long because of extended periods of downtime caused by the camera. Nobody on the shoot liked working with it. Rant over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olle Sjostrom Posted September 14, 2013 Report Share Posted September 14, 2013 I hear ya. Did a C100 gig a few months back. Same story; loud fan, worthless TC... The DP had nothing good to say about it. One of the features were 2K recording for example. Yeah. That only works if you use an external recorder (!?!?) -1 for canon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDirckze Posted September 14, 2013 Report Share Posted September 14, 2013 I've just finished 3 days with the C-500, no troubles at all, and couldn't even hear the fan over the noise/whine of the HMI ballasts... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted September 15, 2013 Report Share Posted September 15, 2013 The C300 has become very common around here now. It works ok. I've used it taking a TC feed from the cam, with a Lockit and with a hail-Mary jam, and sent it audio from various flavors of wireless and cable feeds. I haven't had fan noise issues with it. The C100 was more of a deal, everything about it is more prosumer and harder to deal with. philp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted September 15, 2013 Report Share Posted September 15, 2013 Doh, just did a Canon C300 job the other day. In that case, the on-camera talent were far enough away from the talent that we couldn't hear the camera fan. I don't doubt that the C500 (being 4K instead of HD) could potentially be twice as noisy. I really hate the ergonomics of the Canon C300/C500 design. There's no place to put anything on the camera, particularly with timecode boxes and wireless receivers, and it's not a comfortable camera to hold. They would have been much, much better off just making it about 50% larger and more "handholdable," like in the classic shape of a pro 16mm or ENG camera. The thing is just a bulbous box that looks ugly and is the opposite of ergonomic, at least from what I see. The Sony F5/F55 makes much more sense to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrej H Posted September 15, 2013 Report Share Posted September 15, 2013 It is noisy. In all the interiors it was painfully obvious how noisy it is... But other noise was louder, so not such a problem - too bad that even on those few occasions where there were no other noise sources and we could have really clean sound the camera was still humming along. I was positively surprised when we worked with Arri Alexa on a few days - super silent thing... Also it looks and feels plastic - more than my Roland R-88 recorder - and more fragile... the audio input attachment looks like a toy - you are afraid to attach XLR into it - looks like it could break easily... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Tresch Posted September 15, 2013 Report Share Posted September 15, 2013 C300 is a great camera. C500 is a no go when you shoot with sound. It's "twice as" noisy than a F65. Pat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wandering Ear Posted September 15, 2013 Author Report Share Posted September 15, 2013 I've had good success with the C300, and although I agree with Marc, it's not ergonomic at all, it does it's job and didn't get in the way of mine. The C500 on the other hand....... The DP was surprised by it being advertised as going up to 60 fps, but trying it on set they could only do it if they ran it to an external recorder, with a proprietary firmware that could only be delivered by cannon directly. They wanted to shoot 40fps, and after many phone calls and delays, we shot everything sync again. I only overheard the conversations, so there may be some details I missed, but it wasn't right. The other thing they found out is it cannot output color bars to an external monitor. Why? who knows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studiomprd Posted September 16, 2013 Report Share Posted September 16, 2013 " Nobody on the shoot liked working with it. " but it has 4k Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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