I have quite a few C100 MK1s that work fantastically in the low light of theatre and dance productions. Been happily using them for a few years, however I wanted to investigate the following:

Although I deliver in 1080P, I like the idea of having 4K image so I could for example take a very wide safety shot of the entire stage and then crop the image down if I need to to make some alternate camera shots with only needing 1 camera.

So I managed to get my hands on a C200 + Ninja Inferno, 4K output recording at ProRes 422 on the Ninja.

What I did:

C100 - Safe shot - Full stage
C100 - Closer shot - Mid stage

C200 - Safe shot - Full stage
This gave me then the option to create a copy of the Safe shot, zoom in the image a bit (only 80%) and match the mid stage shot. So 2 shots with only 1 camera.

Now this is where I was surprised, the quality of the shot taken with the C100 was much better than the C200 zoomed in to only 80%. I have tried a few settings but nothing seems to improve it. I was expecting to see at the least the same quality (I even hoped for a little better) but it really is not as good at all from the C200...

I also saw quite a lot of noise in the recording on the Ninja from the C200 when setting the same ISO/F stop as the C100 + Ninja Blade.

Any suggestions, anything I am missing?

Thanks
Vince

It is still only an 8bit output from the C200 over HDMI

Generally speaking higher resolution sensors do worse in low light because the pixels are smaller and take in less light. This is why the Sony A7IIS is better than newer versions in low light. Then on top of that you’re zooming in.