C300: C300 Dynamic Range

denzlite

denzlite

Active member
Hey there, editing for the first time with c300 footage and trying to match it with 5d mk III footage. I'm pretty amazed. Alot of the footage is clipped, especially in the blues... the shooters were using too much power in their panels I think.

Am I seeing this right: When I go in and add a curves and pull it down, there's more info above the clipped region! Say what?! The C300 is actually capturing/retaining this? So for instance with the blue clipping, I'm able to pull that one down and there's no straight line at the top. What does this mean?!

The 5D on the other hand doesn't have the same -- is it a dramatic difference in dynamic range I'm seeing? Cause nothin I do is making these two pieces of video look remotely similar. When I pull down the curves on the 5d footage, it looks like what I'm used to seeing with clipping -- just a straight line at the top.

CC-ing the c300 footage is pretty sweet. Why is that?

Oh and the skin tone on the c300 footage is much easier to deal with with these hot lights. It makes the 5d footage skin too shiny. Ugh, I'm never going to match this up...
 
The C300 records full range (0-110, I think?) IRE so there is detail above 100 IRE. Don't think your shooters were incompetent... the waveform monitor on the camera indicates this, and a lot of footage that LOOKS clipped on the C300 is shot correctly. That said, it's likely they overexposed, as many people overexpose a lot with this camera.

The 5D Mark III might record superwhites, too, not sure... either way, the C300 has gobs more dynamic range and the codec and color are well-engineered. It's just a better camera.
 
You already have the answer above, so this is kind of redundant but:

The C300 has 12 stops of DR when using Canon Log or Wide DR profiles. It's important that these profiles are used to achieve the 12 stops.

When using Canon Log for instance, the C300 (and C100) have access to the whole 0-255 (actually 254) 8-bit RGB value range. At the top end, your waveform IRE100 value equals 235 in the RGB range, meaning that everything recored in camera above that but up to 254 can be pulled down and recovered.

This region is often called, which has also been stated above, super whites.

Now, the fact that super whites can be pulled down and be recovered below IRE 100 is no indication of dynamic range, however. It's more of a setup thing in your NLE.

At the bottom end, Canon Log is designed with a IRE 7,3 setup, meaning that even complete blacks won't go all the way down to IRE 0. It's how the profile is designed and is different from Wide DR.

Regarding 5D mk3, I don't think you get 14 stops with ML. DxO mark rates the sensor for raw to about 11 stops for screen pixels at ISO100 and that slopes to about 9.7 stops at ISO1600, and then further to almost exactly 8 stops at ISO6400.

I'm sure there are many subjective ways to determine DR, but I think it would be hard to achieve 14 stops in any standardized test. You can't just shoot a stop wedge/chart and "look at it" for instance. You also have to consider signal to noise to determine what qualifies as a real stop (if you want to make "real" comparisons).

I consider the Canon Log 12 stops as real in this case.
 
Thanks for the info. Yes, I'm in trouble because the i was able to pull down the clipped blues on the c300 but not on the 5D footage. So for instance, on the interviewee - I can pull down the blue and get some good cc over the whole image for the c300. On the 5d when I try to correct for skin tones, I don't have any blue info left in the highlights and thus (as you can see here) the interviewee's shirt isn't going to match up. Any thoughts on how to push some blue into this while still getting good skin tone?
_not_clipped.jpg_clipped.jpg_blueshirt.jpg
 
Depending on how much work you want to put into it, DaVinci Reslolve Lite is free and has lots of option for selecting ranges of color or luminocity, if your current software is lacking the tools you need.

Needless to say, letting a shirt clip is an operator error and the 5D was not a limitation in this case. It's fine to use powerful lights... but you have to expose for it =)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top