C300: C300 mkII slow-motion resolution (crop) vs full sensor

AndreeOnline

AndreeOnline

Veteran
The Canon C300 mkII's slow motion mode has been much criticised for its good for nothing mushiness in early videos.

Curtesy of Tim Fok from Cinema 5D, we have the following images comparing similar framing of the high quality 25 fps HD mode vs the crop 100 fps mode:

100p.jpg




25p.jpg


If your browser doesn't scale them correctly, I apologise for leaving them at their native size, but I feel that is most appropriate. Open in a new tab for full size 1:1 viewing.
 
The top image, the 100 fps, actually looks sharper than the bottom one, the 25 fps. This leads me to conclude that 25p on the C300 Mark II is mushy garbage and to get a usable image out of the camera we'll have to shoot everything in 100 fps, which means 1/200 shutter speed, which means we'll need a lot of light, which means this is not a good low light camera anymore. Come on, Canon!

At least I'll be able to slow down some interviews in post; sometimes people talk too fast.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
The top image, the 100 fps, actually looks sharper than the bottom one, the 25 fps. This leads me to conclude that 25p on the C300 Mark II is mushy garbage and to get a usable image out of the camera we'll have to shoot everything in 100 fps, which means 1/200 shutter speed, which means we'll need a lot of light, which means this is not a good low light camera anymore. Come on, Canon!

At least I'll be able to slow down some interviews in post; sometimes people talk too fast.
Click to expand...

ERIC!.....always tryin' to stir it up! ;)
 
Don't turn yourselves into fools people! Everything you write here has a date and a signature…

The images are essentially the same. The softness on the sides are lens related. I'm not sure what lens/aperture was used, but the 100fps is at 100mm and the 25fps is at 200mm. These are unsharpened log images with some contrast added in PS; they look well resolved (this is HD, not 4k) and clean to me.

The main point here being: the slow-motion mode works exactly as Canon wrote in the white paper: it's a crop of the sensor with full pixel quality. But most of us knew this already*.




*What some of the reviewers perhaps didn't know is that Dual Pixel auto focus doesn't work in the slow-motion mode. That leaves everything up to the shooter.
 
pilkiwilky said:
Here is some 120 fps test footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijlPzpfbIxI&feature=youtu.be
Click to expand...

In the close up shot of the horse head, the focus is spot on. In most of the other shots the critical focus is not on subject. That will lead to impression of softness. Also white horse in bright light doesn't help as far as contrast is concerned. What apertures were you using?

How fast can you change from normal shooting mode to slow motion ie from 4K to 100/120fps? For me that is more critical.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi
 
You can switch pretty quickly. First thing I did was setup my custom menu and assigned a few buttons to go to that setting quickly. The S/Q frame button is a huge help, once you're there just press that button and wheel thru the frame rate options.

However! The big problem I'm having is if you're in Log and using a LUT, every time you change recording modes your LUT shuts off and even if you have an assignable button for it programmed it won't come back on unless you go back thru the menu and manually select which outputs will display the LUTs. Quite infuriating for switching back and forth!
 
pilkiwilky said:
Here is some 120 fps test footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijlPzpfbIxI&feature=youtu.be
Click to expand...

Thank you for the test. Is it just me or are several of these shots out of focus? The first shot I see that looks to have proper focus is about :15 into the video.

Is it difficult to judge exposure and focus in the higher frame rate mode?
 
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