Pre purchase questions on XC-15

[Marcello Mazzilli]

Hi,
Can somebody help me decide answering these questions?
(All abour 4k not hd)

1- is hdmi output 8bit or 10bit ?
2- is the camera international (24, 25 and 30 fps) or if I get it in us I eill not have 25 amd in Europe I will not have 30fps
3- a part from included xlr adapter what are the differences with xc-10 exactly?

Canon suggests this as a b-camera for c300 m2 workflow but if answers are 8bit and no international fps settings this is not true!

Thanks,
Marcello

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Marcello Mazzilli

1- is hdmi output 8bit or 10bit ?

HDMI output is 8-bit

2- is the camera international (24, 25 and 30 fps) or if I get it in us I eill not have 25 amd in Europe I will not have 30fps

From what I can tell from looking at manuals from Canon USA and Canon Asia, the camera is not international. You have one model with 50.00 Hz and 24.00 Hz and another with 59.97 Hz and 24.00 Hz.

3- a part from included xlr adapter what are the differences with xc-10 exactly?

XC15 has a Waveform monitor.

Canon suggests this as a b-camera for c300 m2 workflow but if answers are 8bit and no international fps settings this is not true!

Having tested one extensively against by other B-cam (currently an A7R Mark II) this is absolutely a b-camera for the C300 Mark II. Canon has done tremendous work with 8-bit and having come up through the ranks of the C100 and C100 Mark II, 8-bit is not a big deal on these camera (though I wouldn't trade the 10 and 12-bit on the C300m2 for anything). No international FPS settings only effects a very niche amount of users who live in PAL territory and want to mix and match PAL and NTSC framerates for slo-mo effects.

I ultimately did not choose to go with the XC15, although I was very tempted. Three reasons: the fixed lens is very nice, but also limiting. You can never get wider than 24p, and f/2.8 is only available at that focal length. You hit f/4 by 50mm and so on. NR is very good, but I found that in any kind of undesirably lit environment, you were hitting 12,500 ISO very quickly. With the A7R Mark II, I could always go with a fast prime and remain at 800 ISO. I have a lot of requests for shallow DOF from my clients. You can absolutely get shallow DOF on the XC15, but only if you zoom in, which closes down f-stop and also eliminates that option for tighter spaces. As a comparison, a shoot I have coming up at the end of the month on my C300 Mark II will make significant use of the 35 and 50mm primes set to f/2 to get the desired shallowness for the client. This would be hard to duplicate on the XC15. Finally, the autofocus uses TTL and only focuses on what is in the middle of the screen. I got burned on one of my test shots because of these, even though I was sure the subject was centered (it latched onto the buildings in the distance behind the subject). Manual focusing is fly-by-wire, very touchy, and the peaking can be hard to see on the screen. The A7R Mark II on the other hand, has a very similar setup to DPAF on the C300 Mark II. Given that my B-camera is going to be gimble, jib, and miscellaneous hard to reach shots, it's nice to have a similarly strong focusing system like the Mark II.

I am watching the GH5 with interest, especially after the firmware over the summer that will unlock 400Mbps Intra recording modes for 4K (all modes save 4kp60 will be 10-bit 4:2:2 and the camera will be international). If the hype holds up (and released clips so far look very promising), it could be a true B-cam to the C300 Mark II after that update, save for DPAF (the GH5 uses contrast detection).

[Marcello Mazzilli]

I did some tests with the Neumann Gh5 files found on the web.
Files are good but I found there is quite some noise (ie: the girl jacket filming the subset)