C70 a little soft?

[AtticusLake]

Hi,

I'm wondering if C70 owners are seeing the images from the camera a little soft?  Is this a usual thing?

I recently got my C70 (a refurb unit) and started using it.  Overall I love it, but when I dropped some C70 footage into a project alongside some existing footage shot on a Sony PXW-X70, I was a little disapointed that the C70 footage was noticeably softer.

Since then I've shot a bunch of tests, covering:

• both my lenses -- Canon RF 35mm STN and the Canon RF 15-35mm L
• XAVC Long GOP, XAVC Intra, and MP4
• Clog2 and Rec 709

Looks like the same results every time.

Now I'm aware that the X70 may be aggresively sharpening in camera, but it's odd (to me) that the Sony X70 on sharp +0 is significanty sharper than the C70 on +0 -- and even sharper than the C70 on +50, the max.  And the C70 just looks blurry.

Am I being over-paranoid?  Here are some samples...

[AtticusLake]

Hi, thanks for posting that -- I did notice, and I've spent weeks trying to find time to shoot some tests!

Well, I've shot some stuff, and as far as I can see, there's no difference between 23.976 and 59.94, in terms of sharpness.  However my tests were on a tripod, so maybe IS is an issue?  Or if your tests were moving, could it have been motion blur?  Obviously a faster shutter speed will reduce motion blur.

[wobbleman99]

Hi AtticusLake,

I'm not sure why there should be a difference in perceived sharpness with the C70 vs the C300 MK III, and I do not have a C70 to compare with.  However, I did notice that the C300—out of the box—was not as sharp shooting 4k as I would have liked with, for example, a Canon EF L 16-35mm F/4 IS lens with EIS enabled in-camera and shot from a monopod.  And while I may be suffering from visual hallucinations—LOL—I've noticed a marked degree of improvement with the noted Frame Rate boost and some tweaking of the detail setting.  But the biggest degree of improvement was noted after my recent purchase of the Canon CN-E 70-200mm Compact Servo Zoom, and I am beginning to question the image producing quality of some of my older EF lenses.  The fact that the videos produced with the servo zoom are sharp, suggests to me that the problem doesn't reside with the camera.  But all of this aside, adding some sharpening in post does, for the most part, compensate for any softness.

[Blakerunner]

I'm with you on this one.  I have two C300 Mark 2, and one c70.  When I shoot 1080 for network TV, the c70 is very much softer.  This is not great, as I like to deliver matching cameras for the network interviews.  They don't grade the footage shot to shot  in post like you might think, and I am presently futzing with the detail circuit in camera (not desirable, I know) to be able to present matching footage.

[Lukepvsh]

Hey! I know this might be old news, but I had a similar problem, mine was with the RAW files. It felt like it would be sharp in camera, on set, then soft in post. Realized that the sharpness was defaulting to 0 on the RAW file for some reason. Once I put that to the default (10 in DaVinci resolve), suddenly it was tack sharp but not super digital sharp. Love that camera, and keep discovering how useful it is