C300: C300 MKII: Usable High ISO (not low light)

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funkytwig

Active member
Hi. A client of ours has brought a C300 MKII and is shoting video for us tio edit. They are shooting in a well lit room (most high ISO discusions are for low light and obviously with decent light the ISO can be higher)). We want them to be able to maximise depth of field (these are instructional, not artistic, videoes) so was wondring what the maximum ISO we should advice? They are shooting 4K and we may punch in 200%.

PS, I know aptiure, zoom and how far away they are affects this (shutter speed needs to be fixed at 25), just interested in ISO.
 
funkytwig said:
Hi. A client of ours has brought a C300 MKII and is shoting video for us tio edit. They are shooting in a well lit room (most high ISO discusions are for low light and obviously with decent light the ISO can be higher)). We want them to be able to maximise depth of field (these are instructional, not artistic, videoes) so was wondring what the maximum ISO we should advice? They are shooting 4K and we may punch in 200%.

PS, I know aptiure, zoom and how far away they are affects this (shutter speed needs to be fixed at 25), just interested in ISO.
Click to expand...

The key with this camera and the C700, C200 is to keep the exposure as bright as possible without clipping regardless of ISO. I've gotten very acceptable results at 12,800 with this mantra, and bad results when shooting at lower ISO's when the image looked darker. It seems crazy, but often you can use the ISO to brighten the image and make it cleaner (look up Philip Blooms ISO ramp for the C200 to see this in action). If you want a number, most would tell you that 3200 ISO is very safe, and that 6400 is really good too, but it will depend on your requirements.

For god's sake :-) -- Test in your own environment as lighting, white balance, shooting gamma and post processing will play a big role in how well this camera performs for you at any ISO. I recently shot an impromptu dance performance in an old nightclub with almost no lighting on the dancers. What was there was highly colored (candelabra LED through rose colored glass globes) ambient lighting. Using a canon supplied LUT brought up very nasty noise in the shadows, yet when I simply adjusted and colored it to taste in FCPX, the footage looked remarkably clean, and balanced, and was shot at ISO 10,000.
 
I wouldn't balk at 6400ISO if you aren't too worried about shadow detail, and I would be more than willing to shoot higher than that if you are more concerned about content than IQ. Also, it is highly subject to the picture profile you are using. I would suggest using one of the normal, nonlog profiles and adding some noise reduction to the profile in camera. Generally, +3 NR is not noticeable and cleans it up nicely. If you use a log profile, it can be difficult to separate out the noise in the blacks from all of the detail in the shadows that get compressed by the log curve.
 
Matt Porwoll shares some very useful tests on his blog. Here's a link to one post, but there are other solid tests as well:
http://mattporwoll.com/canon-c300-mkii-review-part-2/

At higher ISOs, I shoot in C Log up to 6400. What gets lost in a few stops less dynamic range gets gained in less noise.

I generally only use C Log 2 at the native 800 ISO and in controlled lighting situations. The last commercial I shot was in a hospital with partially controlled lighting so we used C Log 3 up to 2000 for the most part. Have gone up to 3200, but not often. We did need to use a few noise filters in Baselight in the transfer on a few shots.

I'm sure this in a known thing, but thought it useful to mention it's good to black balance after switching to higher ISO. ABB is fairly quick on the c300 mark ii.

Good luck with your shoot.
 
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