C300: C300mkii in Rwanda

J

jm.gardiner

Well-known member
Recently I had a documentary project take me to Rwanda for about a week. It was truly an incredible trip. I used the mk2 with the 17-55mm 2.8, 24-70mm 2.8II, 70-200mm 2.8IS. Had the mk2 set for 2k/12bit/4444 for verite and 4k/10bit/422 for the B-roll shots. Went as high as 6400 in some situations.

Here are some colored selects from the B-roll I sent to the director. Small note, one shot towards the end was shifted upward in the frame by mistake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MADjM6V2Ps&feature=youtu.be


Couple of my favorite frames:
RWANDA_SELECTS.00_01_41_00.Still020.jpgRWANDA_SELECTS.00_03_44_16.Still012.jpgRWANDA_SELECTS.00_03_47_05.Still061.jpgRWANDA_SELECTS.00_03_50_21.Still062.jpgRWANDA_SELECTS.00_01_52_18.Still030.jpgRWANDA_SELECTS.00_03_01_21.Still016.jpgRWANDA_SELECTS.00_00_54_15.Still051.jpgRWANDA_SELECTS.00_01_02_15.Still052.jpg
 
Amazing stuff! The more I see the C300 mkII being used in capable hands it seems it really is capable of highly organic/cinematic images.
 
Good looking frames John, sounds like an adventure! Post a link to the finishes piece when it is out, if you can. C300 MKII seems perfect for this job. That first frame has a heavy blue-green color spectrum, which is unusual for Canon, were these all shot Log 2, 3 or something else? Are you involved in post? I just did my first shoot yesterday with my new 17-5 2.8 IS, it's a very nice lens, great for run and gun, glad I bought it. This lens paired with the 70-200 2.8 IS II is my new two lens package for travel and run and gun. Love them together.
 
Great footage with that package. Curious, how was customs going into Africa with the camera and all the support, did you go the ATA Carnet route, or just personal photography no Carnet?
 
Thanks, this is just a quick creative grade I gave the footage to show the director some different options to suggest different moods. Nothing finalized here.

mix of log2 & 3
 
Nice work John. Keep it up. Like the 17-55? Im always surprised what this relatively cheap lens can do. Im always pulling mine apart to clear dust in front element, but its one of those lenses that just seems capable beyond what you pay for.
 
hey noel, since you are using the panasonic varicam LT as your main camera, care to share your experience about it? likes and dislikes, codecs/color/workflow...etc.

i've read on this board many differing opinions by Eric coughlin hating its ergonomics and so on, just want to get another perspective from another user, what is your personal take on the footage comparing c300 ii vs varicam LT?
 
Really great work, John. Although I understand that this was a quick creative grade, could you speak a little bit to your post workflow? Did you de-log the footage yourself? Transform the color space with a LUT (rec709?) and then apply corrections/grade?

I have a c300 mk ii arriving in a few days and am presently experimenting with various post workflows.

Also, did you use the various autofocus features much or did you mostly pull focus yourself?

Appreciate hearing a bit more about your process. Thank you for sharing.
 
Thanks Kohl,
This is all run through my my 2015 27inch Imac 5k Retina on adobe CC. I just import the card files from the hdd. No transcoding or anything.

I colored using a combination of built in Canon LUT's, Lumetri creative luts and a few film convert luts as well. Usually I start with the standard canon or lumetri lut and tweak from there. These are pushed a lot further than what we'll actually use for the piece. This is more to just show the director what can be done with the footage.

When I first bought the camera I had absolutely no interest in the autofocus. I'm usually running my Canon cine zooms. However I think I ended up using it for about 75%-90% of this footage. It was pretty great to setup a wide shot click AF for the wide and let it roll. Rather than punching in rolling past focus etc.

I used the AF to track the motorcycles in the street scene early on on in the sequence. I did not use the Face tracking AF since there were just so many faces on screen during the verite bits. It was overall successfull. I had a few moments where the AF freaked out loosing the contrast on the subject. Once you get your camera test out the AF speed options before using in the field. I really hope they create AF presets for different situations.
 
Appreciate learning about your workflow and experience. Impressive what can be done with this footage pretty quickly - provided quality footage is present in the first place - as is the case here.

Just watched the clips again. Very cool to be able to see the outline of the sun in the super bright highlights. Great detail in the shadows as well. Seems to be a pretty robust codec that is still fairly lightweight.

Very much look forward to testing out the AF. For the type of projects I have coming up in the next several, the AF was the deciding factor regarding camera choice for me.

Great work and will keep an eye out for whenever this film gets released.
 
jm.gardiner said:
I used the AF to track the motorcycles in the street scene early on on in the sequence.
Click to expand...

Man, the autofocus nailed that motorcycle shot, very impressive. If that doesn't sell a doc shooter on Canon's AF, I don't know what would. How did you focus when the little kids were following you? Just by eye? Looks as if you had the camera down at their level so it must have been using the monitor? That was pretty good focus tracking as well.
 
Yeah, I've grown to love the AF. Not perfect, but man it was really helpful when I was juggling a bunch of things in the field.

Puredrifting, yes most of that was AF on the kids, very challenging situation. The kid getting pulled around by the goat was also AF on the 70-200, he runs right outside of the AF zone so moments after that the focus jumps to the background, I haven't figured out a perfect solution for shutting AF off/on yet. The grip could use one more button for AF trigger.
 
John,

I use the grip assignable button as "tracking". When you tap tracking, the camera goes into manual focus mode, essentially replicating AF Lock - but with the added bonus that I can now start object tracking from the grip.
 
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