VX4321 wrote:
Are there any owners of the Canon C400 who can comment on their experience regarding the AF system performance vs. the R1/R5 II and the LCD outdoors?
What are you shooting?
Talking heads outdoors? Perfect
Action-
Forget it
That’s about as simple as it gets. Also that goes for the C80, C70,C400 etc.
They are great cameras but they are documentary style- Fast action isn’t in the wheelhouse of those cameras unless manual pulling focus.
Can you do it? Sure. The R51/2, R6mk2, R3, R1 etc all will make the C400 look silly for AF.
Thanks for the reply. I couldn’t get the camera from the CPS.
In wildlife documentary fast action is part of the deal. The R1 AF performance disappoints. Lethargic target acquisition, erratic tracking and focusing errors. Nothing to write home about. The MF for anything moving faster than a turtle during the morning stroll is a challenge.
It sounds like you have a system issue that needs to be worked out. The Canon R1 should be the fastest camera Canon (Or possibly anyone) has for focusing. There isn't anything to upgrade to that will be faster.
So the question then becomes, what lens or lenses are you using? What F stop? How dark is it?
One thing to keep in mind is that a C400 or another cinema camera might be shooting super 35 or super 16. Those are both crops compared to the full frame sensor in the R1 and will have more Depth of Field for the same field of view.
Ex:
Full Frame 50mm F8 Head and Shoulders
Distance 3.3 feet
DoF 6.6"
Super 35 50mm F8 Head and Shoulders
Distance 6.15'
DoF 1' 6"
Super 16 50mm F8 Head and Shoulders
Distance 15.5'
DoF 4' 9"
I bring it up because super 16 can mask focus issues because you have 2' of working room in front of and behind the subject in my examples above. That same setting on a Full frame gives you 3" of wiggle room. So both cameras could be off by 6" in focus acquisition and on Super 16 it's not going to be as obvious and on Full Frame it's going to be a big issue.
