C200: Canon C200 Face Detection On A Real World Shoot

puredrifting

puredrifting

Major Contributor
Hi all:

Yesterday we did a live stream for a large corporate client. I am under NDA so I cannot post BTS images yet unfortuantely but you would be very familiar with this retailer.
We utilized five Canon C200s and just for fun, I decided to use face detection AF as this was a 5 hour live stream so there would be plenty of time to turn the face detection
off and go back to MF if it didn't perform well.

We built a set, had two talent, socially distanced about ten feet apart. The cameras were set up in a line with crossing shots so the left two were shooting the camera right talent
and vice versa with the right two. The middle camera was mostly alternating between a master two shot and a single of the one speaker with a monitor over
his right shoulder, newscaster style.

The set was flatly lit like a news set would be and there were no oblique or weird angles and no shadows on faces. I can report that when wearing a mask,
face detection does not work, it needs the mouth and nose on a face to lock on. Luckily, our talent had just been tested and neither were infected so they felt safe
doing the live stream sans masks. I know some of the more modern AF systems like the FX9 have the eye detection, but the C200 doesn't.

Face detection on the C200s, in this situation was the best I've ever seen it, it worked flawlessly on all five cameras. My B camera op to my left preferred to use MF
so I let him as he had to get some quick product shots that the talent on screen left was holding up on a podium. We utilized a bunch of different lenses, two of the
CN-E 18-80mm t/4.4, an EF 24-70 f/2.8, EF 24-105mm f/4.0 IS II and all of the cameras looked nice but the CN E 18-80mm looked noticeably smoother and nicer
in the close ups. Color matching between all of the lenses was good with only slight differences between the compact servos and the still lenses.

I've tried to use face detection in interviews before with very mixed results, it works well if your talent is flatly lit, not nearly as well if your subject has contrasty, uneven
lighting. For live stage, newscast, game show looks though, I was impressed as hell with face detection, it made life noticeably easier for two camera ops minding five cameras.
That's a subject for a whole different post. We received feedback from the audience all day about how great the talent looked and the set and production values. I kind of talked the
client into spending the extra money to use the C200s and he was very glad that I did.

Originally, client was just going to have us use their Canon Vixias "just because it's a live stream" and I convinced them that upgrading to pro cameras would yield a much better image.
We fed SDI from each of the C200s about 50' away from our production center, into out vMix Live System and streamed out to a secure Vimeo Pro Enterprise account. Lately, since Quarantine,
we have been getting so so performance with Vimeo Live but if your client has the Enterprise account and support, it can still work well. We prefer YouTube Live over Vimeo Live as YouTube's
performance has been more consistent but in this case, Vimeo did the trick.

We had an Emmy Award winning live TV director who was amazingly good, we had our new tally light system activated on the cold shoe of each C200, TD, sound mixer, producer, stage manager
working with the talent cues. Complex show with 25 roll in pieces, we did a live wireless video walk around of the client's facility (I hate wireless video, it's a nightmare as far as consistency and reliability)
but overall, the production was a home run.
 
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Congratulations on wrangling such a complex production. That's been my experience with DPAF too. The C200 face AF works best in even lighting when no one has a beard or glasses, and when the talent isn't leaving the frame and one distance and returning at another. As far as I know, the camera doesn't have AI-driven AF which tracks faces and heads even when they turn away like the new R bodies do. I was hoping that they'd quietly add it in the recent firmware update but I haven't tested it yet. Not holding my breath though.
 
wow, that's a set. Congrats.

I was single OP with two talents talking in 6ft distance. C300iii and R5 for CU.
No change to take care for focus. It was flawless. I switched from Panasonic to
Canon in June mostly because AF and I didn't regret it for s second.
 
QuickHitRecord said:
The C200 face AF works best in even lighting when no one has a beard or glasses, and when the talent isn't leaving the frame and one distance and returning at another.
Click to expand...

Funny, one of our two talent had a beard and wore glasses and frequently left the frame of his CU camera to get some products off of a shelf, (we had the fifth camera set to cover him getting the products in another wide frame camera),
then would re-enter frame. Flawless AF with "Face Only".

FWIW, I did another production a few months ago using eye detection on three of my Fuji X-T3s, with similar results, it worked great but it also was flat, sitcom kind of lighting and no oblique angles.

JB, my co-producer just bought the eight light kit for VMix http://www.metasetz.com/wordpress/tl-2-tally-light/
I have to say, off the camera, the seemed a little flimsy, esepcially the control box, it's plastic, not metal, very light weight.
We had someone trip on an Ethernet cable and pulled it off of the table and into the floor but the box was okay after the fall.
It's interesting, for it's light weight and flimsy feeling construction, they worked flawlessly.

If you're not on vMix as we are or TriCaster, they make a Universal version that supports a lot of switchers http://www.metasetz.com/wordpress/tlc-u-universal-tally-controller/
 
Clermond said:
wow, that's a set. Congrats.

I was single OP with two talents talking in 6ft distance. C300iii and R5 for CU.
No change to take care for focus. It was flawless. I switched from Panasonic to
Canon in June mostly because AF and I didn't regret it for s second.
Click to expand...

Right? The S1H and some of the new Panasonics look to be great cameras. But their AF isn't even at the midpoint level, which I consider my Fujis and my now older tech AF system on the C200 to have.
I think the lack of great AF is actually hurting sales of Panasonic and BMD cameras as they aren't even in the race if a buyer decides they need effective AF. Not everyone needs AF but I certainly do.
The AF on the newer cameras like the A7 SIII, C300 MKIII, C500 MKII and FX9 are even better than my gen 2 AF. The FX9 when I shot with it a few months ago, was so good.
 
I shot two days trying to use face detection and tracking with a C200 this week but it's seriously lacking in reliability. The touch screen is also not to reliable not taking commands and just refusing to lock onto things. When it works it tracks much better than what I can do by hand but got to far away and AF on C200 is useless.

I think your experience with C200 and AF looks like being ideal use of the AF from that camera just to bad it's limited in what can be done.
 
Talk about timing...I too just had a shoot where the talent were wearing masks on-camera. This was my first shoot with the DPAF face tracking and needless to say it didn’t work with the mask so it was a little disappointing. Luckily, using the continuous, flexible spot worked fairly well. The interviews were conducted over two days and they were two camera interviews so as a single-operator I used the extended monitor cable so I could watch both cameras’ focus and adjust via the touch screen when needed.

All in all, I was happy with how the DPAF performed especially given the challenges of the shoot. It would’ve been nice to know going in that the talent were going to wear masks on-camera.
 
J.Brown said:
I shot two days trying to use face detection and tracking with a C200 this week but it's seriously lacking in reliability. The touch screen is also not to reliable not taking commands and just refusing to lock onto things. When it works it tracks much better than what I can do by hand but got to far away and AF on C200 is useless.

I think your experience with C200 and AF looks like being ideal use of the AF from that camera just to bad it's limited in what can be done.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's why I was so thrilled because my C200 face detection experience with filmmaking with it was about the same as you experienced, not very useful. For run and gun, documentary or shooting in contrasty, uneven light, forget it,
I use zone AF or manual focus.

It's nice to know though that in certain situations, it's pretty useful though. Fortunately for me lately, few live stream clients want moody, contrasty lighting ;-0
 
digitalinnovations said:
Talk about timing...I too just had a shoot where the talent were wearing masks on-camera. This was my first shoot with the DPAF face tracking and needless to say it didn’t work with the mask so it was a little disappointing. Luckily, using the continuous, flexible spot worked fairly well. The interviews were conducted over two days and they were two camera interviews so as a single-operator I used the extended monitor cable so I could watch both cameras’ focus and adjust via the touch screen when needed.

All in all, I was happy with how the DPAF performed especially given the challenges of the shoot. It would’ve been nice to know going in that the talent were going to wear masks on-camera.
Click to expand...

Yes, I use zone AF a lot more than face detection because it's much more reliable and consistent. From what I hear, the AF on the C500 MKII and the C300 MKIII is a generation newer though and is
more on par with the Sony which is probably the best on the market. Eventually, we'll give up our C200s and will probably move to the C300 MKIIIs in a few years when they become cheap.
 
Clermond said:
wow, that's a set. Congrats.

I was single OP with two talents talking in 6ft distance. C300iii and R5 for CU.
No change to take care for focus. It was flawless. I switched from Panasonic to
Canon in June mostly because AF and I didn't regret it for s second.
Click to expand...

In the era of 4K and greater raster size with 1080 monitoring, I don't know how you are supposed
to judge fine focus when shooting such huge rasters when you literally cannot see the fine focus?
I'm told that the latest Canon AF on the C300 MKIII isn't quite as good as the Sony I experienced on the FX9 but it's pretty close
and it is so useful in so many situations.
 
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