Canon XF300 for Theater work

Canon Cameras

Canon XF300 for Theater work

Posted by Rob Gutermuth on April 28, 2016 at 7:30 pm

Hi All

Just got a pair of xf300 cameras to use for my theater productions that we do…

I would love to get people’s favorite settings for their custom Profiles on using these… can you record without one, and then after it’s shot, add one to the clip later?

anyways, it’s dancing, so there would be a lot of movement – but mostly concerned with people saying NOT to just use the flat camera settings, (no profile) and having to do a ton in post.

this is a 4 camera shoot, and along with the 2 xf300 cameras, I also have 2 Canon HF G30 cameras that I’d like to match.

I will be setting the same whilte balance for all 4 cameras, but outside of that… any thoughts?

Thanks

Rob Gutermuth
Media Creations

Rob Gutermuth replied 10 years ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
2 Replies

Al Bergstein
May 2, 2016 at 2:57 pm

Without getting into any depth here, the white balancing and picture matching is going to be a bit tough with those cameras, because the sensors are very different. My experience at trying to match non 300s (C100 and others) is that the 300 has a different color hue to it, more to the pink and others can be very neutral. I would go to the stage you mainly will be using (or the stage for the evening) and look at the stage lighting as well as bring one of each camera.Be sure to use the scopes to get the gray balance in the xf300 dead center. Use a gray card to do that.
Then dial in the Kelvin to match on the other cameras, if they can. If I had one feature add to any other camera it’s that polar scope. It’s the most useful tool I have to get color balanced. When I first set it up I was seeing a small flare in the xf300 white balance. Fixing that was very important.

Best of luck.

Al
Rob Gutermuth
May 4, 2016 at 8:31 pm

Hi Al,

I actually did do that… since the two cameras can be locked to K temp

Im liking 3900 – seems a good mid point between true color, and white balancing.

I can tweak in post of course, but the idea is to get them close to start with…

I agree, I think that the 300 has amazing color as is… but I found it to be less neutral than the G30, which looked more like sony cameras, which tend to run cooler… so I need to watch that, exp the reds.

anyone have a huge library of profiles for the xf300? they care to share?

Thanks!

Rob Gutermuth
Media Creations

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up

Creative Communities of the World Forums