Combining images using pixels shot with a saturation-prioritizing amplifier for bright areas, and a lower-noise noise-prioritizing amplifier for darker areas, the EOS C300 Mark III produces footage with up to 16+ stops of dynamic range and lower noise. And it’s compatible with Canon’s exclusive Dual Pixel CMOS AF. In short, my takeaway from this, other than the footage looking absolutely amazing, is that the camera is a charm to work with. It is everything I have always wanted with the C300 mkII and more. Coming from the high and bulky C300 mkII with its separate XLR and sound control unit the compact ergonomics is the first thing that really strikes me.
- Alongside his critique, there’s plenty of great sample footage shot with the Canon C300 Mark III to dig into. In Cooper’s opinion, the C300 Mark III has many features that benefit his.
- Downloaded sample #2. In FCP X the file is clipping at 80 on the IRE scale. It happens throughout the video as you change aperture settings. Wonder if that’s normal or if something was set wrong when shooting. C300 C-log footage doesn’t clip until about 110/115. If normal then maybe it’s the difference in dynamic between C300 and 1DC?
- Working with Canon C300 footage – which is XDCAM 422 50/Mbs footage in a.MXF wrapper – should ordinarily be quite straight forward. MXF files will work natively in Adobe Premiere and ingest quite happily through a free plugin in Final Cut Pro 7 and FCPX. You can also bring this footage in through AMA into Avid Media Composer 6.
| August 17th, 2012, 10:32 AM | #1 |
New Boot Location: Portland, ME | We just got our shoot footage back from Saskatchewan, and most of the hundreds and hundreds of clips will play back and export perfectly from Canon XF Utility (v1.3.0 on OSX 10.6.8). We are also using the Avid Canon XF AMA plug-in to AMA link and consolidate our clips in Avid. However, there is one clip which is giving us a tremendous amount of trouble. Here are the vitals: 1) We have copied the entire folder structure from each CF card into its own folder on a hard drive, and are AMA-linking to the files on the hard drive, as well as 'Setting virtual Media' within Canon XF Utility to these Hard Disk copies. We have treated the corrupt one no differently than any of the others which have worked. 2) The corrupt clip is the very first clip on one of the CF card images. 3) In Avid, if AMA linking to the CF card volume, all clips play back fine, except for the corrupt one, which gives us the following error: 'Exception: Failed to get the sample temporal offset from the AMA Plug-in.' 4) In Canon XF Utility, the corrupt clip plays back fine if you play the clip from the very beginning. If you try to click ahead or behind in the timeline, the clip will no longer play, until you play another clip, then click back on the corrupt clip. We can watch the entire 2m40s clip from start to finish within the Utility. 5) Choosing 'Export MXF' from Canon XF Utility has inconsistent results. Sometimes, it will produce a clip that is 4 frames long (the first 4 frames). Sometimes, it will produce an MXF clip that is the full length. However, the resulting exported clip cannot be played in anything except for VLC, and VLC will not properly export it as anything else. 6) Within Avid, AMA linking directly to the original MXF file within the CF card structure gives a clip that will not play and produces the same 'Exception:' error listed in #3. AMA linking to the MXF file exported from Canon XF Utility will also not play, and produces the same error. Does anyone have any experience with fixing these clips? Does Canon have any 'repair utility' for these kinds of clips, like Panasonic makes for P2 media? Thanks in advance! -Tim |
I recently bought the Canon C300 markii and thought I'd share some of the footage and some first impressions here.
Although the markii has the same form factor as the original C300, it immediately feels a lot more solid. The camera itself is slightly larger and built from stronger material. The first big difference is the handle. This is so much sturdier than the original. Rather than having one small screw to fix the top handle, there is now a much more robust solution. The handle is fixed with two thick screws to a plate, which is then fixed with three further screws to the camera. On the whole this is great. It means you can now pick up the camra with confidence, no matter how big your lens or other accessories. The only downside to this is that it does take a while to remove the handle as there are now five allen key screws to remove. Still, a small price to pay.
The cables running from the LCD to the camera can now be fully removed, which is a major improvement. Also, one cable is for audio and the other video. This is another big advantage for gimbal users, as you can now mount the LCD monitor with just one cable fairly efficiently.
The big change with mark ii really comes when you start looking at the images coming out of the camera. I already liked the image I was getting from the C300 but the markii really impressed me.
The dynamic range is something that immediately jumps out at you. One of the first things I shot with this camera was inside a dimily lit cafe and the sun was absolutely blasting through the windows. The camera handled it so well. I used Log2 Cine gamut, which gives a slightly flatter image than the orignial Canon Log. I know pretty much nothing about colour grading, so I simply slapped the appropriate LUT on. I thought the LUT was a bit intense and made everything a touch to contrasty. I then backed off with the LUT to 50 percent and left it at that. There is a lot more that can be done to grade the image, but I just wanted to put this up as is, so you can see what comes out of the camera. The shots using Clog 2 are at the begining part of the video above.
The shot below is a jpeg screen grab from an ungraded shot, using BT2020.
The next thing, which I just couldn't believe was the low light ability. I was tentaively going higher and higher with the ISO expecting to see grain and digital noise and it just didn't happen. I was shooting with the camera on a Ronin, so I didn't want to shoot with the lens wide open. In order to have half a chance of getting anything in focus, I decided to stop down and use the ISO. To further complicate things I was shooting half speed at 50p and 120 shutter (we were in the USA, hence 120 rather than 100).
The shot above was taken at night a couple of hours after sun set. The only light illuminating the face here is from an iphone.
Canon C300 Sample Footage Free
The lens flares are deliberate. I was using my Leica 35mm lens which flares like crazy if you don't use the hood or matte box. I personally love it, so use it as an effect.
The shot above was taken just after sunset. Again there is no lighting here. Despite the lack of light, I really like the natural look of the image, it could certainly benefit from a grade, but I am pleased with this as a starting point. This is an image straight out of the camera with no LUT applied. For all the night time shots I didn't use LOG but shot with the BT2020 profile. This gives a decent amount of dynamic range and requires less work in post.
One of the feature I was keen to try out was the face tracking and focus. Since all of these shots were taken on the Ronin, I wanted to see if auto focus or assisted focus was possible. I found that, to my surprise, the face tracking and focus worked pretty well, with a few caveats.
The face tracking does work and the focus is smooth enough to use. However, it really functions best in decent light conditions. In daylight, or if you are lighting your subject well, the face tracking quickly picks out a person and tracks them. However, in these dark street scenes, where the director did not want any lighting, the face tracking struggles to see the face.
Another issue is that the auto focus does not work at all in slow mo. I found the best way round this was to shoot in 50p and then conform this to 25p in the edit, which gives you your half speed, but keeps the audio and the auto focus features.
A funtion that I really like was focus assist. If you are using a Canon lens, the camera is able to tell you whether to pull fowards or back to acheive focus. This was amazingly useful, particualarly when the camera was on the ronin. Even if you are using peaking, it's really tough to see what is in focus when you are running around with the ronin, but the focus assist really made it easy.
Often I would set the focus at a distance I wanted to be from the subject, and then turned on focus markers. Depending on whether the two triangles are above or or below the single triangle, lets you know which way to pull (or move). On the left shot the focus is set towards infinity and the focus is behind the flowers. In the shot on the right the focus is set too close and the focus is infront of the flowers.
Canon C300 Mark Iii Sample Footage
This was particualarly helpful on the Ronin, and I would just move the rig closer to or further away from the subject.
It is also very useful in an interview situation if you are shooting at a wide aperture and your subject is moving backwards and forwards a bit. It is nice to have control of the focus yourself so you can decide if you want to pull focus or not.
Canon C300 Sample Footage Chart
The only thing I didn't like about the focus was that the digital zoom in now doesn't work once the camera is in record mode. This seems like a step backwards to me. This will apparently be fixed in the next firmware update. For now, I just need to learn to trust the focus guide - so far they have been amazingly accurate.