C300: Best camera for all situations

The real issue here is that all the $12k cams are a bit messed up. There is no clear 'winner' no really well conceived camera for solo, corporate and wanabee movie making.

The clear winner is the F5, ..almost .. but the f5 falls over because you make (a lot) more money owning a 55 and renting it out a bit!

True pragmatists like BGiles and MDavis have managed to knock wanabee movie making off their lists and then the Canons get sweet. But every corporate job should be topNtailed with some art - fail to do that and you dont look cool like the 700 kiddies with the slo-mo or even the 5d kiddoes with the creamy bokeh. To avoid cool shots even in corporate world is IMO done at peril.

IMO the C300 does not really have the image to be worth the cash - it is closed - the 700 and F5 (and even F3!) have options to take the image to a true high level that is missing from the similar price C300.

But for packing in the Thinktank and flying to that conference - well it is the tightest packed 50mbs camera with ND and XLR, again unless you have a specific 50mbs need is the C100 better with the AF?

Unless I fell on a used C300 for £2.5g I think I would always head towards the F5. If I did see a used C300 for £2.5g Id be all over it - even just for those Thinktank jobs.

Buying new? The F5 is all over it for 20% more wedge- 35 - to 440mbs 4:4:4 onboard, future ProRes, High FPS, Option to rent 4k Raw recorder, and no odd ergonomics.

S
 
Last edited:
One thing - two! Two things! (what have the Romans done for us...) Over and above the F5:

IS lenses that work, and AF that works too. Yes, I know, professional cinematographers don't use IS and AF, but I am not, as you so sagely put it, a cinematographer. I've found both to be intensely useful, and an F5 would have been an absolute bottom vent of a camera last week. Seriously, the F5 is a superb camera, as is the 55, but it's gone one step beyond 'little black sausage of joy' and firmly in the 'stick it on your shoulder' camp.

Oh and BTW, even we corporate harlots do a few cool shots now and again. LOL
 
Yep the IS/AF thing is good - does the C300 have that yet?

Of course the 700 has IS/AF options too, which to some extent lifts it beyond the 5/55

Indeed you do cool shots of course - but the 700 is way cool if you like that sort of thing

S
 
Yup, C300 can be retrofitted with dual Pixel AF - regardless of canon's cries of 'Never!' Earlier. Pretty sure we will start to see it as a factory installed thing before the year's out. IS is in-lens so that's cool.
 
morgan_moore said:
The real issue here is that all the $12k cams are a bit messed up. There is no clear 'winner' no really well conceived camera for solo, corporate and wanabee movie making.

The clear winner is the F5, ..almost .. but the f5 falls over because you make (a lot) more money owning a 55 and renting it out a bit!

True pragmatists like BGiles and MDavis have managed to knock wanabee movie making off their lists and then the Canons get sweet. But every corporate job should be topNtailed with some art - fail to do that and you dont look cool like the 700 kiddies with the slo-mo or even the 5d kiddoes with the creamy bokeh. To avoid cool shots even in corporate world is IMO done at peril.

IMO the C300 does not really have the image to be worth the cash - it is closed - the 700 and F5 (and even F3!) have options to take the image to a true high level that is missing from the similar price C300.

But for packing in the Thinktank and flying to that conference - well it is the tightest packed 50mbs camera with ND and XLR, again unless you have a specific 50mbs need is the C100 better with the AF?

Unless I fell on a used C300 for £2.5g I think I would always head towards the F5. If I did see a used C300 for £2.5g Id be all over it - even just for those Thinktank jobs.

Buying new? The F5 is all over it for 20% more wedge- 35 - to 440mbs 4:4:4 onboard, future ProRes, High FPS, Option to rent 4k Raw recorder, and no odd ergonomics.

S
Click to expand...

What's missing from the C300's image? (Other than maybe a stop of DR?) I adore the F3 for what it is and am fond of the F5, but I don't find either camera to have a better looking image; on the contrary I find the skin tones less warm and rendition of foliage to be less vivid and crisp. Canon excels at rendering memory colors in a pleasing (if not fully accurate) way. I know the whole 8 bit argument and the F5 does have more DR (but the tonality of SLOG is kind of muddy with shadows that have noise that's less pleasing than the C300 or F3 even), but we're not talking specs, we're talking image and I simply disagree that Sony has a better image.

I find the image on the F5 to be merely good and the F700 to have a very "video"-like image unless recorded to something like an external recorder, harsh and flat with poor tonality. The lower amount of skew on the F5 is useful for vfx and the slight DR improvement is useful in some situations, but SLOG 2 is a bit of a pain... those highlights come at the cost of muddy shadows. Canon Log is not great either, to be fair. The pro res upgrade I envy, though!
 
morgan_moore said:
The real issue here is that all the $12k cams are a bit messed up. There is no clear 'winner' no really well conceived camera for solo, corporate and wanabee movie making.


IMO the C300 does not really have the image to be worth the cash - it is closed - the 700 and F5 (and even F3!) have options to take the image to a true high level that is missing from the similar price C300.

But for packing in the Thinktank and flying to that conference - well it is the tightest packed 50mbs camera with ND and XLR, again unless you have a specific 50mbs need is the C100 better with the AF?


S
Click to expand...


Disagree about the image quality of the c300, because I do think it really hits the IQ really well. The C100 with AVCHD doesn't cut it for me though the camera is very similar to the 300 and I have seen beautiful work done with the 100.
You are right about the Sony options for better recording codec, and I wish the C300 had a higher quality option, but keep in mind that those higher quality options come at a price, as in more money and more kit to make them happen.
Packing either my 500 kit or 300 kit in a think tank and heading off to someplace to shoot a doc is one of the great pleasures of owning a C series camera. I can do a huge amount with what I can carry in one think tank.
The other thing I keep coming back to is form factor. I've taken a minimalist approach with my C series cameras and don't do the should rig, franken rig route. Having shot *years* with shoulder mount cameras, I'm digging the smaller form factor of the C series cameras, as they have become some some of my favorite cameras to shoot . I know a lot of people specifically don't like the c series form factor, but I'm not one them.
 
Firstly Id say the 700 is 'unusable' without a recorder (The F3 too) - giving a huge 'package' advantage to the C300 over them. I like the C300, just don't feel it produces good value (to my business) with the cost and throttled codec.

The Canon image is fine, good, but IMO when you have codecs with 4 to 8 times more data, well you get more wiggle room - the SRcodec on the F5 will produce a nice image if you shoot daylight under tungsten - it is that flexible

Is wiggle room of value? well that depends on a bunch of stuff - certainly not if you nail every shot and have the light/time to do that. But corporate mixed light etc. is one place where it comes in to play Id say, and of course 'arthouse' looks

The C300 is a great camera but IMO it is not 'the best camera for all situations' as per the thread title, not even the best sub $20kcamera.

S
 
Last edited:
Not going deep here but I did a little test and found the C100 to have a little more detail or sharper image at 1920x1080 than the GH4 did at 4K resized in Premiere Pro by 50%. Very close. Thats good news for using the GH4 as a B Camera and having the ability to reframe. It also says how good the 4K sensor is in the C100.

Camera porn!!!
GH4 and C100.jpg
 
Not for hand held quick shots, definitely. Not for run and gun documentary. You have to rig a separate handle on rails to gain quick access to magnify, iris and record for handheld. But on sticks the C500 with an Odyssey 7Q does offer a lot of options, just huge files if you shoot 4K.
 
Erik Naso said:
Not going deep here but I did a little test and found the C100 to have a little more detail or sharper image at 1920x1080 than the GH4 did at 4K resized in Premiere Pro by 50%. Very close. Thats good news for using the GH4 as a B Camera and having the ability to reframe. It also says how good the 4K sensor is in the C100.

Camera porn!!!
View attachment 86195
Click to expand...

This IS good news. I really need a B Cam that can compete with the C100 image without breaking the bank. :)
 
Addressing the OP's first post, if he has been satisfying clients with EX1s then I believe the C100 will be a great step up although if money can be scraped up for a C300, that I feel would be the better choice. Finding a used one will be difficult until a new model is announced.

I own a C100 and am "fairly happy" with it. The OP mentions he does a lot of talking heads, me too. Some weeks it can be over 50%! When doing talking heads there are parts of the background of solid color that are not moving and I sometimes see noise in post in areas of one solid color where nothing is moving, at low ISO around 1000, feel it's just the nature of AVCHD. Most clients won't notice, especially if the viewer's attention is drawn elsewhere in the frame, but most all pro editors probably will notice.

I also shoot a lot of TV shows and the default they ask for, in the Canon family, is the C300. 90% of broadcast shows want a unit that's 4:2:2 so it seems I must buy a Ninja Blade but that will cause me ergonomic issues in terms of adding ANOTHER item to the rig.

So my two cents (or pence) is if you have the money for a used C300 go for that rather than doing a C100 with a NB, but that's only if money is not an issue. Coming from EX1s you will love a C100. Here is a video you probably haven't seen because it's BTS of a new American TV series. They went with the C300 but had the deep pockets to go PL mount and very expensive glass:

http://vimeo.com/92251804

The OP mentions money is an issue and then there was a lot of discussion about F5s, 55...that makes no sense to me for his budget. I've been shooting freelance every week for 34 years and my favorite camera is the one that makes me the most money for the longest period of time. Nothing else really matters because if you can't make good money with that particular model then you can't stay in the biz to even care what camera to use because: you were washed out of the business. Every time you buy a new camera it is actually a Money Hole until it breaks even. I usually own several cameras and I originally keep spreadsheets on them so I can see when they break even. If OP's market are EX1 type clients then a C100 would be perfect, but only the choices of rig, accessories and lenses make it doable for "all situations".

Good luck
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top