4K, or Ultra HD, is the hot video buzzword these days. All the manufacturers are touting their 4K cameras and display devices, even though 4K content is sparse and expensive to produce. Or, is it?
Most camera manufacturers are offering 4K systems, and while many of the really nice cinema 4K cameras are still more than $10K (the original Canon C500 cinema camera is at $10K; the C300 MK II is $16K), some have also put out more budget-friendly models. But the big question is, why should you care about 4K footage? Many churches are still running with their older SD projectors or 720p HD. Why shoot 4K at all?
The best reason is one a church can relate to: the emotionally powerful testimony video. When you need to do a jump-cut, or when the testimony is hitting an emotional high, you really want to change to a close up of their face. This means that either you need two cameras—one for the wide shot; the other for the facial close-up with an on-the-ball camera operator keeping their face framed—or, you shoot with a 4K camera, and simply crop into the footage to get the close-ups at editing time. With a 3840x2160 image, you can crop in significantly before you start exceeding the limits of your targeted output resolution. If your church is running 720p projectors, that's a 3X zoom factor you gain in post. And no one needs to ride the camera to make sure you're getting proper framing on the close-up. So, you can get a waist shot, bust shot and facial close-up all from the same piece of footage. That's awesome.
CPM takes a look at the Canon XC10 4K camera in this article. With an MSRP of $2,499 and street price around $2,000, it certainly caught my eye. My big question, of course, is what do you get for that $2,000?
Overview
The XC10 is a video and still-photo camera that can shoot 4K footage at up to 29.97 fps and HD footage at up to 59.94 fps. 4X over-cranking for 120 fps is available as well, but drops the resolution down to 720p.
When recording 4K footage, the camera uses its CFAST card slot. At the best bitrate, a 64 GB card will hold 20 minutes of 4K footage. HD footage and photos are recorded to the SD card slot, saving significant money in media cards if you'll only occasionally need to shoot in 4K. (At this time, a SanDisk Extreme Pro 64 GB CFast card sells for $210.)
This is a fixed-lens camera with a 10X optical zoom capability. No servo control here—you zoom by twisting the lens ring. And this camera's F-stop will vary as you zoom in—the maximum F-stop zoomed wide is 2.8; zoomed all the way in the iris will close down to a maximum F-stop of 5.6. There's also a focus ring, which is servo controlled for its auto-focus and remote controlled modes.
The camera body is what you'd expect to get if a C100 mated with a DSLR and produced an offspring. It has the rotatable side grip of the C100, with some of the controls of the EOS DSLRs for selecting shooting modes. It has anywhere from full auto, mostly auto, shutter priority, aperture priority, and full manual. Most of the manual settings are accessed via the touch-screen menu system, with one dial on the handle used to control the most obvious exposure setting for the selected mode.
On the left side it has switches for autofocus, on-screen display information, and a push-for-temporary-AF. It also has jacks for an external microphone jack (3.5mm stereo unbalanced), HDMI output, USB, and power.
"On the rear of the camera is an LCD touchscreen, used as both a control system as well as the primary image display."
Jim Kumorek
Owner, Spreading Flames Medi.
On the rear of the camera is an LCD touchscreen, used as both a control system as well as the primary image display. The LCD display can tilt upwards to assist in low-angle shooting. There's also a snap-on eyepiece to turn the LCD screen into a viewfinder for better visibility in high-brightness situations.
Last but not least, the XC10 has a built-in microphone at the top front of the body, and a hot shoe mount directly behind the mic.
The XC10 uses the same LP-E6n battery that Canon's DSLRs use. The camera is capable of charging the battery when plugged in; no external charger is supplied with the camera. A new battery should last for 80-90 minutes of shooting.
The XC10 can be controlled via its built-in web server interface over Wi-Fi. So, if you're using your XC10 as a second camera angle and don't have a separate operator, your smart phone can let you check its shot, adjust settings and focus, and start/stop recording.
Operation
Getting the hang of the XC10 was pretty quick and easy. The lack of external controls makes it a more approachable camera to those not immersed in the world of professional video.
The autofocus is a bit slow—it'll take several seconds to respond and get focused. However, it's not slow to the point of being detrimental. And for more novice videographers trying to get some artistic shots, it can have an advantage. Leaving it on manual focus and using the AF button to create a rack focus while you move the camera works pretty well and is very accurate. Canon reports that the autofocus speed will be improved with a firmware update that was released June 30, 2016. The new firmware also includes additional selectable shutter speeds of 1/25 and 1/ 50 and MP4 recording modes.
Navigating the menu system to change settings like shutter speed, ISO/gain and iris isn't too awkward, and the tiny thumb-operated joy stick and touch screen makes navigating the menus fast and pretty painless.
All in all, the camera is easy to operate. I'd prefer balanced external audio connectors, but there's not really room for it on this size camera. Using an ENG wireless microphone system like my Audio Technica System 10 works well with this camera, as it has both balanced and unbalanced output options and connects directly to the 3.5mm stereo mic input. The audio recording using this system was clean and accurate.
But, how did the footage look? That's the key question.
I would rate both the 4K and HD footage as nice. It's not nearly as crisp as what you'd get from a Canon C100 or C300 with EF L-series lenses. It's also not nearly the cost of these cameras. The color was very pleasing.
Shots I took in an interview setting worked very well for the kind of editing I mentioned earlier, and at the viewing distance from screens at most churches, the lower sharpness would not be noticeable. And the 4K sunset time-lapse clips I shot while at the North Carolina outer banks look pretty cool.
The 4K footage did not play back perfectly smoothly in Adobe Premiere using my pretty powerful editing system. (This isn't a problem with the camera; rather, it's a common issue with working in 4K.) Generating lower-res proxies from the footage to edit with and then swapping it out for the real thing might be needed as part of your post-production workflow, at least for any project that will require significant editing.
I did notice that the rolling shutter artifacts can be pretty noticeable if you move the camera suddenly. I have a hand-held shot where I tried zooming and panning simultaneously, and the distortion of the vertical lines in the shot was fairly obvious.
The photos taken with the camera are of similar quality to the video footage, with photos produced at 4000x3000 resolution.
Wrap up
So, what is the XC10 good for? If you're into high-end video production, this is not going to be your go-to camera for the best quality video. However, if you have a youth ministry that does video production work, or you send teams out on missions trips, or want a quick camera that inexperienced people can get testimonial footage with, this may be just the ticket. It's low enough in cost that it's not the end of the world if something happens to it while your missions team is serving in Africa; it'll get very nice shots on auto mode with minimal training; and the 4K footage will let you crop in and fix framing issues in post and still get good HD results for your auditorium screens.
If you desire to get nice audio capture with professional microphones like a shotgun condenser mic, you might want to invest in a separate field recorder like the Zoom H4n, which has XLR inputs and phantom power. You can easily sync the audio in post using the audio captured by the camera's built-in mic as a visual sync aid.
If you'd like to see some of the footage captured with the camera, check out this video I threw together from b-roll I shot of my wife working with some teenage girls at CORRAL Riding Academy, a non-profit organization that helps at-risk teenage girls: . This was shot with available shot and completely “run and gun”—none of the shots were set up ahead of time. And the final shot was a photo taken by my wife with her smart phone, not with the XC10.
