C300: C300MK2 at EVS

J

jm.gardiner

Well-known member
I'm a mk1 owner and I just handled the mk2 at EVS. Here are my quick reactions.

PROS:
- Really great image and construction improvements.

- Dynamic range looks really impressive. Highlights don't burn out as dramatically as the mk1, seemed to gradually roll off into white as opposed to the mk1's jump.

- Dialing the ISO down to 160 or 320 there is virtually no noise at all. I pointed it towards the dark part of the room and the image on monitor had no trace of movement in the shadows. It looked like a still image on screen. This really excites me as I often rate the camera lower when shooting low contrast sets.


CONS:
- The crop factor on FPS over 60p is the biggest let down. It must be about a 1.7 crop it punched in to make a 30mm look like a 55mm-ish. Really really bummed about this. Guess I'll have to pickup the new Canon 11-24mm next year.


It'll work for my business and personal filmmaking needs. So I put down a deposit to reserve one of the early arrivals.
Anyone else have a chance to check it out? Thoughts?
 
1.7 (slow mo crop) x 1.53 (C300 crop) = 2.6. Still less than the 2.88 crop factor of a Black Magic Pocket Camera.

So in slow motion crop mode, Tokina 11-16 x 1.6 = 18.7-27.2. Sigma 18-35 x 1.7 = 30.6-59.5. Works for me. Still interested to know how good the actual image quality is from the 120 fps; I hear complaints about the FS7's slow-mo image quality.


It's nice that you can do ISO 160 in addition to extra internal ND stops so you can do f/1.2 while outside and keeping a 180 degree shutter speed.
 
Sharpness in high speed mode looked fine on a 30inch panasonic display. Looking at the charts I didn't see anything that looked like an issue.

My 16-35mm will be getting a little more work on this cam for sure.
 
Thanks for the lowdown...didn't know about the crop factor. Good to know.

Did you get a sense of the weight? Not so keen on hand holding this guy without a rig and I hate adding gak to a camera to make it shoulder ready.
 
The weight difference wasn't too bad. Though, I have the zacuto studio baseplate and mov-cam top handle on my mk1 so it didn't seem any lighter or heavier to me.

Also noticed that the layout of the Color Profiles menus is very different. No more Custom picture setup menu, it's all in the main menu system. There are additional menus and color space options so even for someone who really knows canon cameras it's going to take a few shoots to figure out where all the settings are in menu. That being said, there are a variety of good looking profiles which will be great for neutralizing the brand look of the camera in those multicam scenarios.
 
Thanks for the detailed post Mr. G.....and for those of you in town, the camera (and the XC-10) is here today until 4pm ish......so come on down!

Jim Martin
EVSonline.com
 
I think 4k-HD was around 300mb/s and Cinema 4k was around 410mb/s.

http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/profe.../cinema_eos_cameras/eos_c300_mark_ii#Features

Canon rep said they were going for the best in class image quality rather than high frame rates or other features. Frame for frame you're getting more data/less compression compared to Sony FS7.

Which fits with Canon's approach to engineering. Even if they're a little behind the curve on somethings their images tend to hold up.
 
Looking at it, this is what I think:

On the left you have your formats (4k, 2k) and then in gray your PROJECT settings. Think of this as timeline settings in your NLE.

Then in the chart itself you have your actual recorded frames per second. You can set actual recorded frames in 1 fps increments, but for convenience just the most common are listed. If you record 120 fps into a 29.97 project you get 25% slow motion. That is quarter speed. 120fps in a 59.97 project gives you half speed as expected (50%).

If you only shoot 1fps in a 50p project you get 500% speed, or 5x.

Hope it makes sense.
 
Yes, the other gotcha bit on the high speed was you can only do 10bit/2k 120fps.

No option of 12bit/2k/4444 120fps. Apparently data rate would be too high and Canon's never opted for a "burst mode."
 
Yes 12bit is normal speed.

For the crop, you don't need a 3000$ 11-24mm to combat it, you can get a 299$ 10-18mm IS STM, which is very sharp to me taking 18mp stills (6K). Don't forget that little hidden gem.
 
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