This video is going to serve as a bit of an excursus
to my upcoming Canon C500 Mark II review
and is dedicated to its autofocus performance
with a complete comparison to the Sony FX9
to see which brand has the better autofocus system
in this form factor of camera.
Let's get undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and I fight for the users.
So, I'm separating this video because I don't want
to bog down my C500 Mark II review
with 20 minutes of autofocus testing and FX9 comparisons.
And because I have to give back this FX9 tomorrow
and before I'll be finished my C500 review.
So, I wanted to get this comparison out there
for the people who want it, but I hope to have
my full C500 Mark II review finished later this week.
So far, though, I can say that I'm extremely impressed
with this camera. Alright let's get to testing.
[Batman transition sound]
So, first up, I thought we would just go through the menus.
Obviously, I have the FX9 here now.
I'll do the same thing for the C500.
Alright, so, first of all here,
both cameras have a Transition Speed
and a-- this one, they call it "Subject Shift Sensitivity."
But basically, it's always rack speed and responsiveness.
They just have different names and different, uh,
like the different ways the gauges work.
So on here, one is as slow as it goes,
and seven is as fast as it goes,
and then four is somewhere in the middle.
So, we'll set it to the middle setting.
And then the Subject Shift Sensitivity,
that's how sensitive it is to changing subjects
or something coming in out of the box.
Again, three is in the middle,
one, is it doesn't change very easily,
and five, it's very responsive to things
coming in and out of the frame.
But we'll leave it in the middle settings.
And we'll do the same thing with Canon,
and then we can tweak it if we want to rack focus
a little bit more smoothly. And then for Focus Area
we've got three modes. We've got Wide, Zone,
and Flexible Spot. Flexible Spot you can move around
a little box, Zone is kind of just a big box in the middle,
and then Wide is the entire frame.
Wide is the good way to go if you want to use,
like, face detection, or whatever. And it's one of
the differences so far between the Canon and the Sony,
is that the Sony has these three modes instead of just two.
But we'll choose wide for this first test.
This next one's not that important,
it's just good to know that it's there, which is AF-S,
which means if you're mostly using manual focus,
but you want to use the camera to do,
like, a one shot autofocus for you,
it has it and you can use a Flexible Spot for that.
And then Face Detection, we've either got: don't do it,
Face Priority, but focus on other stuff as well,
and then Face Only. As I said in my review of the FX9,
if you have it on Face Only and then a face disappears
from the frame, it basically switches over to manual focus,
which is handy if you don't want it to then
change to something else, you just want it
to stay where you were when you come back into the frame.
We'll put it on Face Priority because that
is, sort of, the most versatile option,
and that's what I want to do for this first test.
Now, one of the limitations with the Sony right now
that the Canon is getting right
is the actual controlling of that Flexible Spot.
So, if we do choose the Flexible Spot mode here,
we can move it around with the joystick here,
we can move it around, I believe,
with these buttons as well. And then set it,
but there's no touch screen control yet.
And I've heard this is going to be a firmware update,
but as it is right now, that is a lot more tedious
to rack focus because you have to move a joystick
which can potentially shake the camera as well.
Where with the Canon you can very gently
touch the touch screen, which is also a bigger,
better touchscreen, so it's easier to control the focus
even if the focus performance isn't necessarily as good.
We'll get to that in a minute. But it's easier to control it
on the Canon. We definitely need a touchscreen update
for the FX9 to make it even comparable when
it comes to control. Alright, now, for this first test
we're going to do a face detection tracking
to see a couple things. First of all,
how far away does the face detection start to work?
We're using 30mm for our focal length
on both these cameras, and I'm using different lenses,
but I've chosen lenses that I know the autofocus works
really, really well on otherwise, so I'm using
great autofocus performers, but don't worry
about the lenses being exactly the same,
because it's better to do this than it is to adapt lenses.
So, she's about 13' from the sensors,
so right around four meters I think, off the top of my head.
And we are getting a face detection already this instance.
It's coming in and out but we're getting it for the most part.
But the reason why she's coming in and out
is actually because of an exposure problem on the FX9
where it doesn't focus well when overexposed a little bit.
And that's something that we're gonna talk about,
over and underexposure.
The FX9 performs better than the Canon when underexposed,
but the Cannon performs a lot better when overexposed.
And you can see here that we're at 2.8,
but if we stop down to f/4, well, now the face box
even gets tighter and stays fixed on her.
But to keep things even we're gonna shoot at 2.8
on both of these lenses. So, we're at 2.8
and we're at ISO 800. We're this distance away.
And Julie, if I can get you to walk toward me now,
nice and slow. So... A little bit faster than that, actually.
So, you can see it tracks the whole time,
and she goes through an area of darkness,
that's another part of the test. And then it comes right up
and I think you were sharp the whole time,
and that's pretty good. You're within, you're outside
the minimum focus distance, so it'll be fine.
If you can back up again. And then stop there.
And turn around for us, please.
So, another thing is now we need to make sure
that it doesn't change focus. Now, if we were in Face Only,
this wouldn't really be a problem because it would
stay on her anyway, we're in Face Priority.
So, we just want to check and see how reliable it is.
If it's going to switch to something like that light
above her head, which, often-- we're in Log right now,
we're going to be in Log on both cameras.
Sometimes that happens, it might jump to the light,
or jump to the shelf over there.
But from what I can tell...
So, it looks like-- I put peaking on so I could check.
It looks like it stayed focused on her the whole time.
Now, if you can walk away,
still facing away from us Julie, please.
And it tracked her. And then turn around.
And face again.
Alright, and one last time
quite rapidly, please, come at the camera.
And now do, like, a lean back and a lean forward, please.
OK, take a step back, please.
And then lean forward from there.
OK, perfect. So, I think that we've got
a pretty good result there. Now, one of the things
I want to show you is the difference in the exposures.
So, if you could take one more step back...
Right, now we are on f/2.8.
And if we underexpose significantly,
so we can go down to f/4, f/5.6,
f/7.1, f/8, f/11.
So, there at f/11-- Can you turn your head,
just kind of, like, in a circle?
At f/11 we completely lose her.
And we're really dark if you look at the waveform, its...
But even at f/8, as you can see here,
which is extremely dark, it manages
to keep the face detection. But if we go the opposite direction
and we open back up to 2.8, and I get you to back up
a little bit to where you're more lit. OK, great.
And now let's bump it up to 4000 ISO.
And then we can stop down from there.
So, 4000 ISO, it's overexposed,
but we're not crazy overexposed and there's just no
face detection at all. We stop down to f/4...
Stop down to 5.6... F... So, around f/8 now
at the 4000 is where it starts to come in. So, you can see
we have to be exposed here around neutrally.
We have to be exposed almost correctly in order
to get anything. And if we open up at all,
Face Detection goes away. Alright, so, now
I put something in the foreground of the shot
and we're just going to rack focus back and forth
and see if we can dial in a setting that does
a really nice, you know, sort of cinematic focus rack
and for this, again, we're going to have the problem
where I have to use the joystick on the Sony,
so I'll do the best that I can. But, uh, let's bring up the menu
and we'll set this to Flexible Spot.
And right now you can see that it's on Julie
and then I'll bring it down to the colour chart.
And there we go. And then back to Julie.
And back to the ColorChecker. And it works fine.
And it's responsive, and it's good.
And these are on the neutral settings.
But if we wanted something a little bit slower,
let's see if we can dial it in. So, we'll choose that there.
And we're going to turn Face Off completely,
just so it doesn't choose to go on the face
when we don't want it to.
And then for the Subject Sensitivity,
we'll make it... let's go with a two for responsiveness.
And a two for speed. So, this should give us
a pretty smooth, uh, focus transition.
Now, one thing that I don't like is that you can't actively
move the pointer right now with the joystick,
you have to go in. I have it set up to be a button
where I press two and then choose Flexible Spot.
And now I can move it. But it doesn't just automatically let
you move it all the time, which is something the Canon does,
and I'll show you in a minute, that I quite like.
But anyway, let's go back and forth now
with our two and two setting.
So, put it over here on Julie.
And it's a very, kind of smooth...
I think that's a pretty good speed for smoothness,
and back to the ColorChecker. And then back up to Julie.
It's just hard to be accurate with the joystick
of where I put it. If this was touchscreen
it'd be a lot easier. And then back to the ColorChecker.
But we also have some fast options, let's check those.
So, let's make it really responsive,
and we'll set the speed to ultra fast so we can see
just, kind of, how fast we can get it.
So, let's go to Julie... It nails it every time.
There's no hesitation. As soon as it gets the subject,
it stops. It doesn't...
Do any sort of hesitation at the end.
OK, so now we've got the Canon C500 Mark II here.
Let's go over the focus options on it as well.
So, here we go, we've got...
You can set your AF Mode between Continuous
or One Shot. So, it also has the One Shot option,
which is great. Cameras that don't have One Shot AF
are really frustrating when you want to just
have manual focus for the most part.
Uh, AF Frame Position is a little bit different.
So, it's got Selectable and Center Frame,
which is kind of like Zone vs Flexible Spot,
Now, Center Frame, as you can see,
just puts this in the middle and you can't move it.
I'm moving the joystick around.
But if you put it to Selectable, then now
moving the joystick around moves it.
And, like I said, something I like about the Canon
is that you can continuously move the focus point
with the joystick, you don’t have to turn it on
to be able to do that.
Then we have the choice between Large & Small.
So, this is the Small size. Then we've got our speed.
We have a little bit more refinement over the speed.
We can go all the way down to -7,
and then all the way up to +2,
so we have ten individual... versus, I think it was seven
notches on the Sony. Both are good for achieving
the degree that you want, but there is a little bit
more control on the Canon.
And then same for the Response,
we've got up to +3 and down to -3,
where I think there was only five.
So, again, more on the Canon.
But we're going to leave those at zero & zero,
because that's the neutral setting,
just like we did on the Sony.
And then our other options over here
are Face Detection, it can either be On or Off.
And then, just like with the Sony, we can either
have Face Priority or Face Only.
So, we're going to have Face Priority
with Face Detection on, and this should be
a pretty comparable configuration with what
we have with the Sony. Again, we're at 30mm.
And we're going to have Julie go stand 13' away;
about four meters away, again, and do the same tests.
Alright, so Julie's in position, and as you can see,
we haven't switched over to face detection.
So, this is one regard where the Sony
is a little bit stronger in.
Our exposure's the same, we're at f/2.8, ISO 800.
And we're actually a little bit overexposed,
just like we were... the problem with the Sony.
Um, but that's not the defining factor here on the Canon.
If we stop down, it doesn't switch over
to the Face Detection. So, it's not an overexposure problem.
In fact, the Canon is excellent at overexposure
and we'll cover that in one second.
But Julie if you can slowly walk forward,
I'll let you know exactly when Face Detection starts to work.
There. So, if you can stop there.
So, you can see that you do have to be considerably closer
for the Canon than you do for the Sony.
I would say that Julie's
probably about six to seven feet now.
So, just over two meters away,
versus the four meters on the Sony
for the Face Detection to start at 30mm.
Now, obviously, the more-- the longer of a lens that you use
the further away you can achieve this result.
So, now what we'll do here is I'll show you
the over and underexposure aspect.
So, I can crank our exposure way up here to 25,600.
Can you just do like a little circle with your head?
And... turn off to the side and back.
And you can see it still works even at, I don't know,
30 stops over. I don't know how-- we're quite overexposed.
But, if we go the opposite direction,
it's not as good as Sony. So, we're at 2.8. Let's go to f/4.
We're still good. f/5.6 is still good.
So, this is what I was talking about here.
At f/8, which was fine on the Sony, it's really hunting a lot.
And I can see that you're losing focus a lot, just...
It's coming in and out. So, the Canon doesn't handle
underexposures well,
but handles overexposure excellently.
And, again, we're in Log on the Canon as well.
But the Sony is the opposite.
It handles underexposure better and not overexposure at all.
Overall, I prefer the Canon because I would rather
overexpose than underexpose.
So, this is a more useful system
to the way that I like to shoot.
Let's go back to 2.8 and then we'll get you to do
a little bit of that coming in and out of the camera, please.
So, if you can lean in.
Good. And lean back.
And again.
And back. So, that's all fine.
So, now if you keep backing up all the way to the wall,
you'll see that the face detection lasts longer
as you back up. So, a little bit more.
And now you're back at the 13'.
So, it can keep you if you back up,
but if you turn around, please?
And then face the camera again...
I think it already lost you before you even turned around
but now it's not going to find her again
until she comes forward, all the way back
to that two meter zone... about there.
Now it picks you up again. And it's reliable
that it's always around the same distance
that it'll pick you up. Um, so now,
let's do the turn around test. So, if you can turn around,
we'll see what it does.
So, the focus went to your elbow, which is kind of strange
because that means that if you moved your arm
you could get unpredictable results.
And then we lost you. But is it maintaining the focus?
It seems like it's doing a pretty good job.
This is one area where I feel like the Canon
could use a little bit more work is when it loses a face...
Not when in Face Only. Face Only, it's fine.
But when in Face Priority, when it loses a face
and the subject turns around, it can sometimes do
some kind of funky stuff because it switches to this box.
So, to give you an idea, if the box was placed...
on this chart. And then take a step forward, please.
Now it's focusing on her face. But now if you turn around...
It doesn't stay on that subject. It went to the elbow,
which is weird, and it'll give up on the elbow
in a second here. Wait for it...
Now it switches over to the chart,
and then it focuses on the chart.
That's not really behaviour that makes a lot of sense to me.
And this is one regard where the Sony is good at,
it's more intuitive to be, like, "Meh, it probably wants me
to stay on the person that turned around."
And this is, obviously, one of those situations
that you could solve by putting on Face Only,
which I will show you right now,
but the Sony is definitely better in this regard.
So, we put it on Face Only.
Julie, if you could turn around, please.
So, there, it's grabbed her face. Turn around.
Then, once it loses the face it doesn't do anything.
And you can see in the top corner.
That the AF turned grey. But what it's not going to do
is track her as she walks away.
So, if you could walk forward, Julie, please?
She just slowly walks out of focus.
So, this is where the Sony is pretty good at,
"Oh, it wants me to track the subject that's now turned away."
The Canon doesn't really do that.
And there's no way to get it to do that reliably.
And it's one of my major problems
with Canon Autofocus, is that not only do you have to have
the Face Detection in the right spot,
but you also have to have the box in the right spot.
And in this case, you would want to use the smaller box.
And place it where you expect the subject to go, like this.
So, I'll put it about... I should use the touchscreen.
I'm used to using-- See, the touchscreen is so good
on the Canon, I don't know why I'm using the joystick. OK.
So, Julie if you turn around
and come toward the camera, please.
So, it switches to face. If you can lean in a little bit...
And then lean back. And then turn around and walk away.
Now, it'll switch to the other type of focus.
And because she's still in that box,
we're getting a pretty good track of her,
and she stayed in focus the entire time.
And if you back up at me even like that, if you can,
the best you can...
then she'll also stay in focus this way.
So, the unfortunate part with the Canon
is you have to, sort of work around it,
where the Sony's kind of more intuitive in this regard.
So, now we'll do a more rapid test of the Face Detection.
So, if you can come at the camera more quickly?
Good. And then back up.
And back up more, and more, and more, and more.
And then come to the camera quickly, please.
Stop. And then do a step back.
And then forward.
And then step back.
And then back up to the light again.
So, they're both good in this regard.
We'll do the racking focus.
But this time I get to use the touchscreen,
which is obviously much nicer.
And I'm just going to move it over here to the colour chart.
And back to Julie. Just tapping on her.
Colour chart.
And back to Julie.
So, that's pretty smooth. It's pretty quick, though.
The neutral setting on the Canon seems to be
a bit faster. So, for me, I'd probably want
to slow this down... -4 and see what we've got there.
Julie.
Colour chart.
So, that's a nice result.
We can even go a little bit faster than that.
But the point is that it's also got really good
fine adjustment for the speed. I would say,
maybe for this particular shot, a -3 is a nice speed
to rack focus on. Julie.
ColorChecker.
Yeah, it's pretty good. So, both are great for that.
Let's see what our max-max speed is,
just like we did on the Sony.
So, we'll put everything to as fast as it goes.
Julie.
ColorChecker.
Julie.
ColorChecker.
Julie. ColorChecker. So, same thing.
And I was using the joystick on the Sony,
so we could see if it, before I even get over
to the subject if it starts to change.
Yeah. What I would say is that Canon's fastest mode...
this is a pro and a con, but it's probably mostly a pro,
Canon's fastest mode feels a little bit slower
than the Sony's fastest, but the Canon one seems
a little bit smoother in the way that it starts.
The Sony seems like it, kind of, like,
quickly throws it, and the Canon's going quickly too,
but that start-- it's like a smooth acceleration throughout,
rather than, like, like a ramp.
And I would say that even though the Canon
is a little bit slower, I think I like the smoothness
of it's fastest better. OK, one more thing
I want to show you on the Canon which I really love.
I talked about this before when I reviewed the EOS R
and other cameras, but it's the Manual Focus Guide.
Doesn't really have anything to do with autofocus,
but it uses autofocus for it, which is why it's really cool.
So, if we switch the lens over to manual focus,
we lose our little focus target.
But now we can press Focus Guide,
which brings up this little mini game
that I said I loved so much on the previous Canon cameras
where, if you're out of focus, it uses the phase detection
to not only tell you which direction to go,
but how far you have to go and when you hit your target.
So, white means that we need to turn it
in this case clockwise to bring
the two white triangles together.
And when they overlap each other... I went too far.
When they overlap each other, you get--
And so, see how now they're underneath.
So, that means we need to go counter-clockwise.
And when they turn green, we're perfectly in focus.
And what's even better is it works with the face detection.
So, Julie, if you can come close to, you know,
where the face detection was working before.
Then now, see how it jumped to her face?
I didn't even do anything. So, now we've got
our Focus Guide on her face.
And now we can turn this thing to pull that in focus,
and we get confirmation that we're in focus.
And even better, it also uses eye Manual Focus Guide.
If you can come really close so we can see your eyes.
You'll see that it follows the eye in
so that we can focus instead on the eye. Fantastic feature.
[Batman transition sound]
Overall, I would say that I prefer
the Canon's implementation here
from a functionality standpoint.
I would say that the Sony system
is more reliable when it comes to tracking,
which, when it comes to autofocus
should be the only thing that matters,
but Canon's ability to overexpose,
the convenience of the instant joystick,
and the larger and activated touchscreen
make its implementation much more useful.
Plus, I still get a kick out of that Manual Focus Guide
every time I use it. I think that the Sony
is just one firmware update away
from taking the title back, but until they address
that overexposure problem and the lack of a touchscreen
Canon wins this round.
Alright... I'm done.