I spent some time today looking at how gradable the C300 C-Log footage is. I chose to compare this against my F3 as I know many of you would like to know how they compare.  Rather than try to show the differences with some jpeg frame grabs I have provided a link to some high quality TIFF from grabs at the bottom of this post. Please download these and take a look for yourself because the difference is very small indeed. Now I did only look at one scenario which was the usual view from the back of my house and today we had some very bright sky with scattered cloud. Quite a challenge for any camera to deal with. I tested the cameras with their internal recordings as well as outputting to a Samurai, recording ProResHQ 422.

Rather than go all out to try to break the codecs, I really wanted to see how they would perform with an average grade, so the grading is not extreme. Due to the very different base color differences, the images from both cameras are quite different. I didn’t try, to bring them closer together in the grade as I felt doing this may skew the results in the favour of one camera or the other due to whichever had the most pushing to get it close to the other.

So, what are my conclusions? Well both the cameras grade well, even the 35Mb/s 4:2:0 of the F3 holds up OK.

The C300 50Mb/s 422 comes out a little cleaner than the F3 35Mb/s 420 after grading.

The F3 recording to the Samurai at 10 bit ProRes HQ is cleaner than the C300 50Mb/s 422 after grading.

The C300 recording to the Samurai at 8 bit ProRes HQ falls between the F3 ProRes and the C300 native 50Mb/s. It’s closer to the C300 50Mb/s than the ProRes F3.

So, no surprises at all. This was what I was expecting and confirms my view that for run and gun the C300 is going to be a great choice, but for applications where an external recorder is not an issue the F3 has the edge.

There are no big surprises in the results. [downloads_box title=”C300 and F3 Tiff frame grabs (24MB)”]
Canon C300 and Sony F3 frame grabs.
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When I get the time I’ll repeat the test with a low key scene. The results may be different!

Due to an unprecedented number of cancellations and postponements I have a lot of open  slots in my diary between now and mid April. So, if you need training (one to one or groups), consultancy services or simply a good old fashioned DoP or Camera operator (2D or 3D) do get in touch. I’m very affordable!

I’ve had the C300 up side by side with the F3 today. So far, remarkably similar performance, although the colorimetry is very different. One interesting observation is that the C300 sensor appears to be about 10% larger than the F3’s sensor. Certainly with the same lens I get a wider FoV from the C300. C-Log and S-Log look quite different. Another observation is that the F3 appears to be slightly more sensitive at any given ISO, maybe by over half a stop.

More to follow as I evaluate my test results.

My Canon C300 has landed. First impressions are very good. I’ll be doing more tests in the coming days. Stay tuned!

I’ve just returned from a very enjoyable week shooting 3D with Geoff Boyle in the Swedish mountains. We were in Hemavan, running a 3D workshop using a wide range of cameras including Sony F3’s on a Hurricane Rig, a TD300 and an NEX3D1E. The shooting parts of the course took place up in the mountains where at times we had to deal with temperatures below -20c, howling winds and blizzard conditions. Our primary monitors were Transvideo 3D views, a 6″ Classic and a 10″ Evolution. These were the perfect monitors for this type of shoot where we needed portability, ruggedness and the superb 3D toolsets incorporated into these monitors.

One the first day of the shoot, all of the equipment had to be hand carried through snow that was waist deep, the second day our only transport was snow scooters. Bigger, bulkier monitors were out of the question. While the monitoring options on the built in LCD of the Sony TD300 are quite good, it’s just much too small to correctly see the disparity between the left and right views accurately. This is where the Transvideo’s excel. The Transvideo difference modes and zoom function, combined with the adjustable disparity grid makes accurate assessment of the stereoscopic image straight forward and easy. This was especially useful on this shoot as it was very easy to show the students exactly how different camera settings and interaxial’s affect the 3D image.

I’ve been lucky enough to have used a wide range of 3D monitors over the last few months from many manufacturers. They have ranged from un-useable to quite good, but none have come close to the Transvideo’s. Current monitors with small polarised screens (less than 20″) are completely useless as on set monitors because the resolution drop caused by using alternate lines for the left and right images makes accurate alignment very hard, in fact you can be 3 pixels out and it’s all but impossible to see.  Monitors that only have SD, low resolution or composite inputs are also of little use, as again you can’t see your alignment. So, while there may be cheaper 3D location monitors on the market, my recommendation will always be for a Transvideo monitor. They are in my mind simply the best tools for the job.

Those of you that may have been following my development of this adapter should know that Mike now has a good stock of them. There on his web site for order. Great news is that as well as the F3 it works really well with the Canon C300 and APS-C DSLR’s. If you buy the F3 kit you can remove the rear part and then the adapter will work on the C300 or 7D etc making it really versatile.

Just got the news that the Canon C300 I ordered back in December won’t be landing for a little while longer yet. Boo-hoo, I really want to start getting the picture profiles dialled in.

Just got back from helping Geoff Boyle run a 3D workshop in Hemavan, Sweden. It was a great week and I think everyone, me include learnt a great deal. We shot quite a few scenes of snow scooters, skiers and snowboarders in all kinds of weather from blizzard to beautiful sunshine. We also shot a local band at a ski party.

The TD300 performed very well, especially when conditions were extreme. We had one morning up on the mountain where it was -18c with a howling blizzard. The main TD300 issue was with the concentric control rings for the lens and rotary iris dial. All impossible to use with gloves and constantly getting bumped and knocked. The TD300 however was a bit of a disaster when we came to shoot the music gig as the sound pressure from the bass was making the vertical alignment vibrate up and down. Not pleasant to watch! The Hurricane Rig performed very well at the gig without any vibration issues. However when up on the mountain, keeping snow out of the mirror box in the blizzard was a bit of a pain. We also got completely buried by a blast of snow from a close pass by one of the snow scooters. The shot looks great as a wall of snow flies towards you.

I think everyones favourite camera though was the little NEX 3D1E. You could get this camera into all kinds of places. You could ski with it, do on stage handheld with it and the pictures are pretty good for such a small camera. Being so small it’s a hard to operate the tiny controls and we ended up resorting to using the auto set function to set up conversion and focus most of the time, but it generally did a good job.

Pictures and clips will follow when I have some more time. I have more workshops coming up soon for 3D, S-Log and grading. Watch this space.

Here’s a new video about my recent adventures in Norway. The video is all F3 S-Log. The time-lapse sequences were done with a Canon 550D and a Teletrack motorised pan and tilt head.