C300: C300 Mark II Blue LED light issue

cpreston said:
It sounds like this camera isn't going to work in your application. You tried everything including testing all of the color spaces, matrix and gammas and shifting the white balance and RGB values and nothing is going to work. You should probably either sell the camera or get another C100 II to use as a third camera. There is nothing worse than taking on a gig and realizing that you brought the wrong tool for the job. I know you aren't actually looking for advice, but that is what I would give if somebody actually wanted advice.
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I appreciate any advice i can get to help find a solution. I feel that there is a confusion between my issue at hand. I could care less if the c300 mark II matches anything else in the cinema line or any other camera for that matter.... it does not shoot blue lignting properly... not off, but wrong. The quad split monitor was where it was very apparent and also demonstrates a simple answer to the feedback of 'canon sensors always shoot blue that way'.

As to why people don't seem to be jumping on the bandwagon of trashing the C300 II as much as you expected, most of us who own these cameras recognize that they have limitations and try to figure out solutions to make them work. That is why people were giving you suggestions on how to make it work.
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In no way am I blatently 'trashing' the camera. I own one. Pre-ordered and everything to be my workhorse... the issue stands that the color rendering is wrong and unacceptable for a camera, let alone a camera of this caliber/expense. Most of the suggestions have been attempted as seen in the continuting thread, none of which 'make it work'. Best actual solution so far seems to be 'get an Arri'. :) your comment seems to suggest that you own a C300mkii, so do you have this issue at all and if so, how do you resolve it? I would much rather have a resolution from community or Canon instead of a 'deal with it'.... its a $16k camera... it should record blue.

From my own experience, cameras do weird things with highly saturated LED lights that are approaching the clipping point and each Canon camera has completely different kelvin responses.
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Also happens with Blue gelled Arri 650w Tungsten.

I am not surprised that you had this problem with matching the C300 to the C100. I went through and tested the C300 II color matrix to the C100 II when I first got them and realized that nothing quite matches. This is especially true when you realize that they don't have the same white balance points. You can't set them to the same white balance manually and expect them to match. The cinema eos original seems to come closest, but it isn't perfect.
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Matching the cameras isn't priority, but if I did want to, that Blue color would come in handy. Merely used yhat image as demonstration next to actual Blue camera colors... same result next to FS7 and Phantom.

I really just want to get to the bottom of what is going on... i receive suggestions to try, but do other c300II owners have the issue, but it just doesn't matter, or do they not even know what I'm talking about because it's an isolated incident specific to my sensor/camera.. these are the answers i'm not getting. I've visited two rental shops and side by side compared c300IIs, same issue... and when i point it out to the shop, they are in shock.

Of course selling the camera is an option, but still not a solution to the problem the camera is facing.
 
Jon Roemer said:
DP Matt Porwoll has a custom LUT he made for C300 Mark II: CLog3/Cinema Gamut -> BT.709. Works well and does make the blues less purple.
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I tried Matt's LUT and for some reason it's not recognized by LUT utility in FCPX, but that got me hunting. I've always had a problem with purple skys from the C300II, and well I just tried a black magic LUT that I think comes installed with FCPX and it did a great job of cleaning up the blues, so maybe that will help...

Blackmagic 4K Film to Rec709_v2.cube
 

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Barry G said:
I tried Matt's LUT and for some reason it's not recognized by LUT utility in FCPX, but that got me hunting. I've always had a problem with purple skys from the C300II, and well I just tried a black magic LUT that I think comes installed with FCPX and it did a great job of cleaning up the blues, so maybe that will help...

Blackmagic 4K Film to Rec709_v2.cube
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Sorry Matt's LUT does not download correctly. You need to right click it, "download linked file", and then once downloaded you'll see that the extension on the very end of the file says, ".cube.txt". Delete ".txt" so that it ends in ".cube". Once that's done you'll be able to bring it into LUT Utility. That's what I did and it worked.
 
ChristianMoriarty said:
implicted.
......awesome continuation, we're sure to see a response from Canon.
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Appreciated... i really hope so... just sent in camera again today to Canon Service with the same notes hoping to find some resolution. It seems that a lot of owners/operators have the same issue, but not being vocal about it... which makes me on an island against large corporation.

We tried to use the camera on A&E's Nightwatch... but it couldn't shoot police lights properly!!! So there goes that rental.


I'm really reaching out to other owners to see their experience with this issue, if enough people have the problem, we dont have to find workarounds or fixes, ideally Canon will listen and resolve the problem.. hell, maybe they'll add 4K60 for the trouble! ;)
 
Barry G said:
I've always had a problem with purple skys from the C300II, and well I just tried a black magic LUT that I think comes installed with FCPX and it did a great job of cleaning up the blues, so maybe that will help...

Blackmagic 4K Film to Rec709_v2.cube
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That's crazy... first off, that the SKY is purple!! Secondly, that the lut seems to resplve it in post.
Unfortunately, custom LUTs can not be loaded into the camera. The major issue comes to play when i want to deliver with the SD card proxy for some convention that the client wants the media at end of day and would rather the smaller HD files. Super comvenient to hand over the SD Proxy card, but not if the footage is F'd (purple)

Thanks for the share though.
 
I just did a test with the C300II to the C100II and you are correct that the C300II adds a bit of red to the blues in all of the color matrix when compared to the C100 II. The closest to a pure blue are the EOS STD and Neutral and also seem to match the color chart the best. I did a small R-B shift on the EOS std matrix of +5 and the purple turned blue. The comparison video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwegESyKiso&feature=youtu.be

So what to think? Obviously Canon has changed their DIGIC chips and sensor read out. I don't think sending it to Canon is going to help since it shows up in other C300 II's and I would call it more of a poor engineering design decision vs an actual flaw. Also, Canon already designed the solution into the camera which is to change the individual color channel bias. Personally, I wish Canon would just supply a fully mapped out color matrix that would match all of the legacy cameras for multicam shoots. In the meantime, I think it is just easier to buy extra C100 bodies rather than spend hours trying to find someway to match the C300 to the C100 each time use them together. I currently have two C100 II's for just that reason.

But, I stand corrected as to my assumption that blue channels could match with just a change to the built in color matrix or white balance. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
 
Matt Turner said:
We get a lot of clear blue skies on the Gold Coast (Australia), and they have never looked purple!
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After playing around with it, it appears to be alight bias towards red when dealing with a highly saturated blue channel. This causes the purple tinge. In the color chart, cyan looks cyan and matches quite well between the cameras. Most of the time the sky isn't a dark blue and is probably approaching a desaturated roll off into white. I can see a big problem occurring with wide shots and polarizers where the darker saturated blues created by the polarizer will start to turn purple relative to the rest of the sky.
 
Jon Roemer said:
Sorry Matt's LUT does not download correctly. You need to right click it, "download linked file", and then once downloaded you'll see that the extension on the very end of the file says, ".cube.txt". Delete ".txt" so that it ends in ".cube". Once that's done you'll be able to bring it into LUT Utility. That's what I did and it worked.
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yeah...that was the first thing I tried...(tried a lot of approaches, including just manually dropping into LUT utility's folder) nothing has worked for me. I may need to update LUT utility, but I'm in the middle of a couple of big edits, so not going there right now..:-)
 
Barry G said:
yeah...that was the first thing I tried...(tried a lot of approaches, including just manually dropping into LUT utility's folder) nothing has worked for me. I may need to update LUT utility, but I'm in the middle of a couple of big edits, so not going there right now..:-)
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No idea because I'm using LUT utility as well and it's not the most recent one. Mine says v1.44.

I'm sure you know it already, but just in case, you have to remember to install the LUTs via the System Preferences AppyLUTPane.
 
Jon Roemer said:
No idea because I'm using LUT utility as well and it's not the most recent one. Mine says v1.44.

I'm sure you know it already, but just in case, you have to remember to install the LUTs via the System Preferences AppyLUTPane.
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yeah...that's how I usually do it, but CGC support page also details a method for placing LUT directly into the folder where they are stored, which I tried, after the system preferences method didn't work. till no dice. Will try later.

FWIW, while I have on more than a few occasions seen purplish skies, and other saturated blues shifting in that direction, in the case of the screenshots I posted earlier, I had mistakenly applied a cinema gamut LUT when in reality I'd shot in Bt2020. Huge difference in primaries, and this was responsible for the dramatic purple shift that would never happen in australia.

Also, as an FYI, Canon has just released V2.0 of their LUT package, which includes some new parameters for Full and Narrow range. I tried out the Bt.2020 Canon Log 3 to wide DR FF on that clip, and the sky looks pretty good now (after adjusting for an overall red shift in the original file). Still a little redder than I'd like, but certainly something I can correct easily, and more natural than the BM LUT which was a little overdone.
 

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Any news on the Canon C300 Mark II blue issue? From the camera tests posted it looks like the sensor in the C200 is the same as the C300 II ? I wonder if the C200 has the same problem.
 
So, after many many phone calls to CUSA to try and get an update on what is going on with my camera.. it has gone from the service center in NJ to the head technician in NY (Raffi I think)... they have not given me a progress report about what has been done or what was wrong, if anything, yet... but they claim to be sending back my camera today to arrive monday... I'll update the group with their findings and standby for a fun camera test once I get the physical camera returned.

laverdir - I'm glad to see that you do not seem to be experiencing the same problem as many of us with C300IIs... that picture is blue AF. :)
 
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