Colour Quality from EOS R5 vs EOS C70

[juiH]

hi,

i recently gave away my Canon C70 and am looking for a replacement device. i usually do a combination of both photography and videography however i now seldom have a partner who can cover me for photos when i do video with my C70 and vice versa.

i was wondering why the colours of the EOS R5 seem to be so much poorer than those of the C70 and what i expect from a mirrorless camera. i tried it in h.264 and in h.264 and as i understand it the colours are meant to be 10-bit 4:2:2 which is also the specification of the C70.

is there something about the Digix processor or firmware of the C Line of cameras that make their colours better? i am aware that the C70 has a DGO sensor however there were prior C Line cinema cameras which did not have this form of sensor for videos or filmmaking.

[Hazel_T]

Hi juiH,

There will be some variance in how colors are rendered from model to model due to the different sensors and processors. There can especially be a difference between cameras from our photo line like the EOS R5 and cameras from our cinema line like the EOS C70. 

Our cinema line cameras more functions to control the color space of your footage and since they are designed specifically for video work they will tend to have better quality video. That focus works both ways since photos from the EOS C70 won't look quite as good as a photo from the EOS R5 since the EOS R5 was designed specifically with photography in mind. 

In h.264 the camera is applying more baked in information into the file. The color profiles the EOS R5 uses aren't the same as the profiles used in cinema cameras, so it will have a different result. If you shoot RAW footage with the EOS R5 it will be more similar to RAW footage from a cinema camera since the camera isn't baking any profiles into the file in that case. Then in post you could color grade the footage to be closer to what you envisioned.

A different option would be to use the EOS R5 C. That camera is essentially two separate cameras in one body. When the camera is in photo mode it acts as an EOS R5 photo camera with the same capabilities of an EOS R5. When it is in video mode the camera uses a cinema camera menu with cinema camera profiles, color spaces, and functions. That way you could get the photo quality you need from the EOS R5 and video quality more similar to what you were seeing with your EOS C70 cinema camera.

[juiH]

hi Hazel,

i was looking at test footage i had shot with the Canon EOS R5, the Sony a7Siii, the Sony FX3, the Canon C70, as well as the XF 405 and XA 55.

i was wondering whether some of the issues i face with the EOS R5 might be to do with the downsampling from a 45 megapixel sensor to a 4K DCI or 4K UHD image. i did not try 8K RAW. if this is the case then the R5C might face a similar issue. i have never tried the C300 or C200 but did try the C100 years ago.

i had noticed that the C70 footage shared a similar quality as the Sony a7Siii and Sony FX3 which was that the image seemed to flow more smoothly when panning from side to side from whereas the EOS R5 image seemed to be composed of multiple high resolution images which were shown in quick sequence to each other. all the footage was shot at a frame rate of 29.97 though i cannot be sure of the shutter speed of the R5 when i did the test. i realise that it ought to be around 1/50 or 1/60 or 1/48 of a second.

my guess is that this may be a result of the downsampling or some form of rolling shutter