Adam Wilt's C300 Quick Review

[cowpunk52]

Over on PVC, Adam Wilt has posted an excellent overview and review of the C300. It's a nice read, but no real surprises for anyone who's been using the camera since it's been available.

My favorite quote is right at the beginning of his conclusion, though:
'The C300 isn’t the cheapest LSS camcorder, nor does it have the highest bit depth, nor is it the highest in resolution. What it does have is that elusive Zen quality of “It Just Works”.'

Of course, the beginning isn't bad, either:
"The US$16,000 Canon EOS C300 looks like nothing else, and works like it, too: its ergonomics, controls, and menus are rules unto themselves. It’s a fearless re-imagining of how a large-single-sensor camera should be designed, held, and operated, but it doesn’t hurt that the C300 inherits the broadcaster-approved, edit-ready XF codec from Canon’s 1/3” camcorders along with Canon’s usual looks-good-right-out-of-the-box image rendering. The camera renders crisp, clean images with 12+ stops of dynamic range, and the package handholds very well; overall, I’d rate this experiment as a success."

read the entire 5 page review here: http://provideocoalition.com/index...._review_canon_c300_super35mm_lss_cine_camera/

 

[Noel Evans]

Theres only one small thing in Adam's article I can disagree with:

Cautions
8-bit video recording and live outputs: no 10-bit capability, so camera is probably better used for WYSIWYG shooting more than for shoot-it-flat-grade-it-later styles of working

.

Havent found in my travels anyway that this statement reflects the way I can and do use the camera.

 

[alpi69]

No big surprises.
Nice effort of Adam to write all this.

 

[KyleProhaska]

That focusing grass feature is so cool...I love that.

 

[Dino]

What I learned while hanging out with Adam Wilt and Art Adams briefly during testing of the C300 and FS700 is the former tends to moire on fine horizontals, the latter on verticals. The noise with the C300 is finer, more film like than the larger FS700 noise and it's cleaner. The FS700 tended to have jaggy edges with some chromatic crawl on vertical highlight transitions--very un-film like, also the FS700 rolls off horizontal resolution compared to the C300--a more aggressive OLPF I guess. The FS700 does have great dynamic range, which was impressive to all of us. Overall, besides the better codec, I find the C300 image to be more refined, as it should be for the price difference.