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How bad is the Canon C500 in 2017?


Samuel Berger

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As you all know, I absolutely love the look of the Canon C300 Mark II. But what about the C500?

 

My daughter auditioned for a role in a Russell Crowe movie a couple years ago, to play the part that went to Kylie Rogers. I'm not surprised they went with Kylie because Kylie was twice the age of the character and looked half her own age. I'm glad my daughter didn't get the part, because the character grows up to be a whore and I wouldn't be able to let her watch her own movie. That was not apparent from the sides. But I digress...The movie was shot on a C500.

 

Now this was a major motion picture with Russell Crowe and Jane Fonda in it. And they picked a C500.

 

Now you can buy a C500 much cheaper than a C300 Mark II. I see some for under $5000.

Are there drawbacks to buying that old war horse in 2017? I'm just wondering how it compares to the C300 Mark II.

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I'd take anything Shane says with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to Canon. It's no secret they guy has a personal bias toward Canon products. The C500 is an okay camera, but much like the other canon cameras, they don't have anything on-par with a true 'cinema' camera - at least in my opinion. Each one of their cameras appears over-priced for the feature set, and always seem to play it safe in the feature department. They also don't have any spectacular color science or DR handling. For the $5,000 you'd spend on a C500, I'd look into other cameras. The 4.6K Ursa is $5,000 as well, as had better DR, better color science, a more cinematic form-factor, and records in a large array of both compressed and RAW codecs. Meanwhile, the C500 shoots 8-bit highly compressed footage. It's not even clear from the spec sheet rather the C500 has the ability to record externally in anything other than 8-bit...

Edited by Landon D. Parks
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Meanwhile, the C500 shoots 8-bit highly compressed footage. It's not even clear from the spec sheet rather the C500 has the ability to record externally in anything other than 8-bit...

 

one would need to output RAW from the camera via sdi and record the raw signal to either dng/other raw codec or transcode it on the fly in the recorder to prores or similar codec for recording.

Odyssey 7Q+ or Shogun Inferno or similar recorder.

 

the onboard recording could be used for some web videos at best, I think...

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So this week there was one on eBay for $3500. It only had one bid so I watched it till near the end....a few minutes before the end, the seller cancelled the auction. I guess he wasn't ready to let it go for $3500. Shame, it included a 24-105 lens. Shane Hurlbut has only good things to say about that camera.

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I have one and record to a Odyssey 7Q+ it is 12-bit in 2K and 10-bit in 4K

 

It is clippy in the hilites but otherwise a decent camera.

 

Shot this on the c500 and a Mavic and Super-8mm :

 

 

 

Thank you Robert. If you had to choose today, would you still go with a Canon?

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I am not sure but I got a good deal a while back on the C500 and the Odyssey 7Q+ is always a useful monitor/recorder and I have the raw license.

 

I might think about a Alexa classic body as they are just dipping under $10K now and the 7Q can record arriraw.

 

The C300-2 looks pretty good and the small form factor is great for putting on a jib etc, similar to an Alexa mini or Red.

 

I don't know what I would buy today though there are so many cameras.

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I ran into this article today:

Canon C500 – Still Worth It? 5 Things I’ve Learnt

https://www.cinema5d.com/canon-c500-worth-5-learnt/

 

But to answer my own questions, I wouldn't consider the C500 anymore because the hot item on the Canons is the DPAF, out of which the C200 is the clear winner. So I'm going to get that, when I can.

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