Having tested now various mirrorless full-frame cameras for the last 2 years in our cinema5D lab, I was really curious to put a “real” cinema camera with a full-frame sensor through the paces one day. This day had finally arrived when the Canon C500 Mark II was available in the cinema5D headquarters earlier this year. Will it take the crown in our lab tests? Read on … A lot has been said and done on the Canon C500 Mark II already, for example by my colleagues Nino or Ollie here or here. So without further delay lets jump right into the lab test … Dynamic Range Result of the Canon C500 Mark II at ISO 800 Please have a look at how we test dynamic range of cameras here. The dynamic range of the C500 Mark II using the internal 10bit XF-AVC codec at UHD 25fps using Canon Log2 / C.Gamut (Color Matrix “Neutral”) shows a very strong 13.1 stops at a signal to noise ratio of 2, see figure 1 below (noise reduction “off”). This result comes directly behind the ARRI Alexa (14 stops), and is the second-highest value we measured so far – pushing the Panasonic S1H (12.7 stops) from the second to third place! Fig. 1: IMATEST dynamic range result for the Canon C500 Mark II at 25fps, UHD, 10bit XF-AVC codec (CLOG2 / C.Gamut) at ISO 800 The waveform of the Xyla21 stepchart confirms this: Fig. 2: Waveform plot of the Xyla21 stepchart from the Canon C500...
Published By: CineD - Wednesday, 15 April, 2020