[Trevor Ward]

I just spent 6 days shooting with the c300. So many great things over DSLR shooting. Great image. Sound and monitoring super easy, like a real video camera. Waveform proved useful for me exposing shots and even matching to b-camera (c100 shooting on ninja 2).

More than half of the time, I was handheld, sort of cinema verite style while the main character was moving around doing his life. The other half was interviews.

Interview shooting is great. Easy to set up everything on the camera. Verite style was a bit of a challenge. Though tons better than DSLR, there are still some quirks. I didn’t like the way to change ISO. The button is in an odd place. Actually much easier to change iso on the c100. I also didn’t like how difficult it was to change color temp. There is a menu and specific temps can be dialed in. However, the controls aren’t intuitive and even after a few days with the camera, it still took me a minute to change the settings. I like the side grip on the c300, though wish it was easier to rotate, like the ex1. I would rather just pull out and twist than have to completely unscrew the thing. The sony takes about 3 seconds to reconfigure the handle. The c300 takes 30 seconds or more.

I also don’t like the wheel placement on the side grip. It’s difficult to get my finger up the high.

Todd, you’re right about the camera being top heavy. It was also side heavy and seemed to almost always be flopping over, especially if you have a shotgun in the mic holder. The camera is a bit heavy, espcially with shotgun and a wireless receiver (where to put it?). After a couple of days holding it, my biceps were so sore. But that’s the form factor of handheld versus shoulder mount. I guess I could rig it out with a bunch of stuff for a couple of thousand dollars. It would be nice if someone make a shoulder mount, large sensor camera. It’s only a matter of making something long vs tall.

Focus is still an issue. With this large sensor thing and low f-stop, pulling your own focus is difficult. I used still lenses. Not ideal but we didn’t have the budget for cine lenses.

-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL

[Trevor Ward]

Thanks Todd for your reply. I typically like working with a minimum of f2.8 on lenses for interviews because I often want the bg out of focus. For wide angle stuff and run and gun, the faster lens is more about light than depth of field. So in the case of these cameras, you’re probably right, with such a high iso, it’s probably not a big deal.

It would be great if I could get a decent zoom that went down to f2.8, had a zoom range of 24-150, and could be found for $4000 instead of $40,000.

-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL

[Trevor Ward]

Thanks for the response. My question was sort of a two parter. First, about putting PL glass on the C100. I didn’t realize the adapter was more than just the mechanical fitting. Is that the case for the reverse adapter (using EOS glass on a PL camera)?

I’ll have to look into the various zoom lenses and prices. It’s a definite downside to DSLR/large imager shooting versus camcorder. I was used to have such a large zoom range that worked for everything. Now, I have to put a lens on that tries to match the situation. But situation change quickly. Heck, I may even want to go wide for an interview, but zoom in pretty tight. A 24-70 is just not enough and the 24-105 lenses are too slow.

-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL

[Trevor Ward]

Don, did anyone every answer this well? I am myself looking for motion blur. I’ve got a picture that is moving across my screen and I’d like to add motion blur. Sure, I know how to do this in AE. But what about Premiere? Seems to me that in FCP there was a check box in the motion tab of the clip.

-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL

[Trevor Ward]

Oh, excellent. Thanks so much. I’ve been SUFFERING for 6 months without this knowledge.

-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL

[Trevor Ward]

I can tell you that I went through a LOT with customer no-service. The only solution was a complete wipe of Adobe software and reinstall, from the creative cloud. So you’ll first have to download and install the Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool. Not sure the link, but I’ve saved the file in case I need to do this again.

Using that you can uninstall all the creative suite apps. This is different than just deleting the apps from the apps folder. It’s an actual uninstall. This is the KEY for this to work.

Then, go ahead an install your creative suite and updater or whatever. It’s a dang pain because of all the download time and all the preferences you’ll lose.

To me, this is a simple licensing issue and should be fixable through a simple script or something. But, this solution was all the Adobe could give me (after this happening to me three times as a result of bad hard drives and back up machines). Good luck.

-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL

[Trevor Ward]

what do you mean grainy? Do you mean noisy? In the blacks? Everywhere? Is your lens and L series?

It’s most likely not the camera if you have a cheap lens. The image won’t be very sharp. If it’s noisy in the blacks, then part of that is due to using a camera that costs $600. And of course this is a subjective evaluation of how much noise you see.

-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL

[Trevor Ward]

Bob and Tom, I wanted to circle back around on this issue. I had been using a new MBP 13″ (not the retina model). It has a 2.5 i5 with 16 GB RAM. I upped the RAM from 4 to 16 based on recommendations in this thread. Didn’t really notice a difference. I had been planning on sending you each a clip to test, but it got lost in the list of low priority things to do. Then a week later, my hard drive crashed. I got it fixed. then it crashed again a week later. This time, the Apple store wanted to do some extra stuff to it. I told them I couldn’t be without a computer for that long.

So I bought a 15″ MBP retina. Can’t remember the specs, but it was fast, though only 8GB RAM. Cost me $3000. I opened up the same project and this time, wow, big difference. Could scrub through my AVCHD footage almost like it was prores. Still bogged down a bit on some random AVC mp4 files (not even sure what they are).

After 2 weeks on the machine, I had to give it back. Apple “fixed” my 13″ and I opened the project today and got this message in a small window:

“This project was last used with Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (OpenCL), which is not available on this system. Mercury Playback Engine Software only will be used. ”

So there you have it. I think the reason my footage scrubbed poorly is due to the graphics card in this 13″ MBP, which is Intel HD Graphics 4000 512 MB. Clearly not enough. And I would guess that a secondary culprit is the processor.

I wish I wasn’t on such a budget, because although the size and weight of this 13 is great for when I travel, that 15″ retina model for almost three times the cost really edited my footage better.

-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL

[Trevor Ward]

Hmm, yeah, thats a lot. Not really sure if a 20GB allotment was appropriate for video professionals. Perhaps the other adobe apps that don’t use a lot. I was thinking of using the cloud for my project file. I like the idea of having a constant backup. But the more and more I think of it, I think just having a time machine always connected is the best bet. It’s set to backup every hour. It’s quick and doesn’t rely on fast uploads of large project files (50-100MB) and doesn’t rely on the internet connection for backup (handy when on the road).

– Trevor

-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL

[Trevor Ward]

I’ve had this happen both plugged into the thunderbolt and into the HDMI (on the new retina display MBP). What I’ve done is play a little game.
1. Open display preferences.
2. Click on the box for “arrangement”.
3. Re-arrange the boxes and switch one from the left side to the right side.
4. The screen will blank for a second. then switch them back.
5. Go into Premiere and make sure your preferences for monitor and audio go out to the hdmi or whatever.

-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL