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C300 = Fail
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And all of this ugly happens no matter what you get from it? How is it with c-log and external recorder.
I am suppose to DIT and grade a short shot on c300 in January. Any advice is welcomed. -
HD-SDI is still 8bit… so no doesn’t really make a difference. 8 bit also means c-log is a really bad idea. My advice, shoot on a real camera.
To be clear I mean specifically hd-sdi on the c300. Obviously the HD-sdi spec supports many more bit depths.
Colorist | Online Editor | Post Super | VFX Artist | BD Author
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[Juan Salvo] “8 bit also means c-log is a really bad idea”
Cannot stress this enough.
One word: HORRIBLE.
Way worse than underexposed 5298 when Eastman first brought it out. C-Log is not log, it is compressed linear. Was just asked the question last night about any anti-log curves that might be available, but no, there is none. Cinematographers shoot “off the chart” anyway, so there is no “put the contrast back in” filter. Dropping the lift is a one-way ticket to Noise City…
The 8-bit reveals itself very, very quickly if you need to stretch the pedestal at all. The vectorscope display shows a broken, stepping gamut grating that would not make an effective horse-fly swatter.
Of course the Long-GOP means the CPUs are working very, very hard to sustain frame rates, tracking is questionable, often the preview turns into a noise garble… and secondary qualifications? Might look okay parked on the frame, but hit “Play” and your qualifiers start flapping like flightless waterfowl. Edges are choppy, the noise makes it almost impossible to be exact with HSL qualifiers.
Actually, when I do hit “Play”, my UPS power supplies start screaming in overload — I checked the display once… the MacPro was drawing 850 watts.
Oh, and when you get the media back on the timeline you will find that most of it is a frame delayed within the edits. Sometimes more. But for some reason, even when handles are set to none, you get another 2-3 frames on the head and tail of every clip.
Borders on fraud, IMHO.
jPo
“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
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Though disheartening, it’s good to hear that the the C300 footage I just went through wasn’t irregularly bad… just regular bad… oh… That said, it did look better than the 7D it was intercut with.
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Or maybe bmc will finally be available to act as mini alexa.
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Margus
DaVinci 9, OSX 10.7.4
MacPro 5.1 2×2,93 24GB
GTX 470 / Quadro 4000
Multibridge 2 Pro -
Agreed – worked with a colleague on some C300 footage when the camera first came out, and even though it was shot by a truly great DP, all complaints I’m hearing in this thread were issues for us, too.
It’s mind-boggling that anyone would buy this for $15k.
JT
John Tissavary | colorist | owner
The Post Collective -
Just to clarify, the footage I was working with was shot by one of San Francisco’s finest DPs. Looking forward to working with the BMD camera!
Perry Trest
POSTDIGITAL, Inc.MacPro 12core 2.66Ghz
24GB RAM
Slot 1 = ATI 5770
Slot 2 = Quadro 4000
Slot 3 = DeckLink SDI
Slot 4 = Nitris DX HIC
Internal 6TB software RAID-0
Tangent Wave
HP DreamColor -
After another day of C300, I wouldn’t dismiss it as quickly as most in this thread…
If I were ranking my preference in cameras to grade from favorite to least, it would be something like Alexa, Epic, F3, C300, Red One/MX, 5D/7D.
I think ranking those in price it would be almost the same- Alexa, Epic, C300, F3, Red One/MX, 5D/7D.
The C300 seems uninspiring but kind of generically in the middle. It does kinda feel like the last “video camera”. Mostly I see it come up for branded web content/long form commercials etc.
KC
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I’m gonna chime in kinda late here. I was actually pretty happy with the material I’ve worked with. A DP friend of mine owns a C300. We went out in the evening and shot some golden hour footage exteriors, and low light material in a subway station. All in Cannon log. I thought the latitude was pretty good. I did notice some fringing on high contrast areas, and a little banding in some highlights, but overall I thought it held up pretty well. (Although I will admit went in with pretty low expectations!) Nothing like any of the horror stories I’ve read here. As for playback I had no problems on a Windows system with 3 GTX 580s (2 for for CUDA, 1 for GUI) & a 6 core Intel CPU. Couldn’t make it slow down no matter how many color correction nodes I threw at it. NR is another story… 😉
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Right, well the DP and the production made the camera decision, so in that light would c-log to Aja KiPro be better then video gamma?
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