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Digital Cinematography Camera Evaluations, July 2018
  • Sony Venice

    It fires up quickly, changes modes quickly, has an easy menu, is compact and balanced.
    I’d rate this camera at EI 400 with a latitude in the highlights of 4 stops and 2.5 in the shadows.
    this is 6.5 stops beyond the DR of the charts.
    I’d rate both the camera and my meter at EI 400 to get the best from this camera.
    Note: The highlights clip slowly and smoothly and the colour is not that “Sony Look” it also has the most consistent colour across the exposure range.

    RED Monstro

    I would rate the camera at EI 500 and highlights clip at 2.5 stops with shadows going at minus 2.5 stops.
    That gives 5 stops beyond the DR of the charts.
    Note: Reds and Yellow clip hard at plus 2 stops so the overall latitude is really 4.5 stops unless you’re very careful. I’ve had people say I could get better results in RedCine but this is a test on a level playing field.

    RED Gemini

    I’d rate this camera at EI 800 with highlight latitude of 3.5 stops and shadow latitude of 3 stops. That’s 6.5 stops beyond the charts DR.
    I’d set both the camera and my meter at EI 800 to get the best from this camera
    Note: The red chip at 25% clips as a hard orange at half a stop below maximum latitude so be careful with reds with this camera, overall I really like it.

    Panasonic Varicam

    A clear and sensible menu system.

    I’d rate this camera at EI 800 with a highlight limit of 4 stops and shadows of 2 stops. Thats 6 stops beyond the chart DR.
    I’d set the camera at 800 and my meter at 400 to get the best from this camera.

    Kinefinity Mavo

    Fires up pretty quick, some of the menus are very confusing, separate settings for EI and ISO.

    I would rate the camera at EI 800 with a highlight latitude of 4 stops, I’m not sure what the shadow latitude is because of post issues but it looks like it could be very good indeed.

    Fuji X-H1

    Lots of menus, if you’re a DSLR user they make sense! we used flog recording at 200Mbps the best it can do and although I’m not impressed with the amount of sharpening and NR that was present in the standard setting it is possible to reduce these considerably and I’m experimenting with this at the moment.

    Would rate this camera at EI 1000 with a highlight latitude of 3 stops and shadow limit of 2 stops (see notes). DR 5 stops beyond the charts. I’d set the camera to 800 and my meter to 500 to get the best from this camera.
    Note: this camera clips hard in the yellow and red well below the 3 stop point so be careful.

    Canon C700 FF

    Menu system was a little easier to use. Recording to XF-AVC internally was easy. No issues with startup time. We had all the usual issues licensing the Codex reader, it shouldn’t be this hard. I think Canon really missed a trick here by not releasing a FF camera that included the raw recording from the C200.

    I would rate the camera at EI 500 with a highlight latitude of 3.5 stops and shadows of 3.5 stops.
    DR is 7 stops beyond the charts.
    I’d set the camera to 800 and my meter to 500 to get the best from this camera.

    Canon C200

    Starts up quickly, menus take some time to get used to. There’s a lot there but it’s not all easy to find.

    I would rate this camera at EI 800 with a highlight latitude of 3.5 stops and shadows of 2.5 stops.
    I’d set the camera to EI 800 and my meter to EI 500 to get the best results from this camera. DR is 6 stops beyond the charts.

    BlackMagic Ursa Mini Pro

    Starts up quickly and had a very clear and easy to use menu.

    I would rate this camera at EI 800 with a highlight latitude of 3.5 stops and a shadow level of 2 stops. I’d set the camera to EI 800 and my meter to EI 500 to get the best results from this camera. DR beyond charts is 5.5 stops.
    Note: Yellow again clips earlier than other colours.

    Alexa Mini

    Starts up quickly and has very clear and easy menus.

    I would rate this camera at an EI of 1000 with a highlight latitude of 5 stops but the shadows only give 2 stops. I’d set the camera too EI 800 and my meter to EI 320-400 to get the best compromise between highlights and noise. DR beyond the charts is 7 stops.

    Check raw at http://cmltests.net/Digital-Cinematography-Camera-Evaluations-2018.html

  • 1 Reply sorted by
  • Awesome, nice find