C100: Canon Log. Wow!

I appreciated the post Eric... Im looking forward to seeing for myself how much latitude we may have when using this camera. As I said earlier, I hate shoring flat, Cinestyle on the 5D rendered awful results for me, I much prefer getting the shot in camera as close to the finished piece as possible.. then enhancing in post!! Keep up the good work Eric ;)
 
Erik Naso said:
The frame grabs are jpg. Keep that in mind. On my playback monitor it looks great. Showed it to a couple producers and they like it as well. But what do I know. I like to grade footage. I always have.
I have the C100 for a week and when I was reading the manual and found the log settings I was surprised and thrilled. Sorry I didn't go out and shoot the right sample for everyone. I was impressed with how easy it was to get a good looking image. Nothing more. Please disregard my happiness. Nothing more to see here.

I just wrapped a long all outside shoot in crazy contrasty conditions. Scrims, bounce boards and LED panels where a big help. I did shoot it in Log. Im happy I did. But what do I know. :)
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Let them pixel peep. We'll just enjoy our sun!
 
Cosimo Bullo said:
Yes, I know, the bitrate is doubled in the C300
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The bitrate is doubled, yes, but it's 50mbps of MPEG2. The C100 is MPEG4, which is basically twice as efficient. And, the C100 isn't having to expend its effort encoding 4:2:2. So while the C300 should be better, I think the C100's codec will likely be quite competitive with it, other than the 4:2:0 vs 4:2:2 thing.
 
Barry_Green said:
The bitrate is doubled, yes, but it's 50mbps of MPEG2. The C100 is MPEG4, which is basically twice as efficient. And, the C100 isn't having to expend its effort encoding 4:2:2. So while the C300 should be better, I think the C100's codec will likely be quite competitive with it, other than the 4:2:0 vs 4:2:2 thing.
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Agreed. To directly compare bitrates between these codecs could make you draw false conclusions.
 
Differences Ive seen have been fairly negligible in normal shooting conditions - Im talking looking at 2 of the same shots that I shot. The noise pattern is definitely changed by the avchd, it is a smaller noise pattern and looks a bit more videoy than the C300, but seeing as the sensor performs particularly well in lowlight, Im not sure where that would ever come as an issue. In high detailed water with lots of movement its a bit more blocky than the C300, more akin to what Ive seen with the AF100 (supported by what I see in the waveform as well) and I definitely see the fine edge detail is cleaner on the C300 whereas the fine noise from the AVCHD tends to give it a hardened edge look. FWIW as I type Im comparing the shots side by side.

Keeping it in context - to see these things clearly you need to stretch the image beyond normal anyway apart from 1 factor and thats the slightly harder edge of the C100. I wouldnt sweat those things, especially when you factor in price. but I will state categorically you get what you pay for.
 
cpc said:
You can see from the diagram that the WideDR has pretty much the same DR as Canon log. What is different is the DR distribution. While Canon log is near-flat (it is not flat in the blacks, which is really a smart thing to do for a 8-bit camera), WideDR keeps lots of resolution in the mids and compresses the highlights without clipping them. This is exactly what a good film transfer to digital does to the upper part of the curve. This way you retain good tonal precision in the mids (which means good non-plasticky skin), and get the highlights soft rolloff.

Using Canon log only makes sense if there is crucial detail in the highlights that you need to expand (that's rare, and usually means bad exposure), or if there is detail in the shadows you need brought up (the more common case). Even then, AVCHD is hardly the right choice. You need a low compression low contrast friendly codec, so better use an external recorder + 4:2:2.
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So, for basic narrative shooting where you have control over the lighting it's better to shoot Wide DR, right? No sense (generally speaking) in shooting log.
 
KINOKS said:
So, for basic narrative shooting where you have control over the lighting it's better to shoot Wide DR, right? No sense (generally speaking) in shooting log.
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Put it this way:

The Canon Log maps the difference between Black and Reference White between 7-63 IRE.

You need to decide for yourself how you want to distribute the 256 available levels of your 8 bit space.

How much do you care about highlight rolloff? How much about mid tone tonality? Skintones?
 
I find it amusing how people that have nothing to say dismiss and label people that have something to say as "pixel peepers". And this happens in a thread demonstrating how the image holds up, no less. A thread that is by its opening post a pixel peeping thread. No need to add entropy to the system, folks, thanks.

Erik, maybe it is better to post uncompressed grabs when you want to show your excitement with the image, instead of playing hurt.
 
It doesn't need to be a pixel peeping thread though. He was just excited about how well the image looked overall using log. I don't see why you would need to pixel peep unless the discussion was on edge detail, or something like that.
 
Well, this is a public forum. One man's "great" is another man's "passable". If I see an image with what I perceive as problems, I point out the problems. If these problems are due to the sample's jpeg compression, then it is not a good sample anyway and doesn't demonstrate what it is supposed to demonstrate.

The point is, an OP like this is bound to start a discussion. Dismissing the participants in the discussion is bad form. "Ahhh, let the pixel peepers talk..." is empty words and disrespectful on top of that. If you have nothing to say on topic, keep quiet. It doesn't take lots of brain to ask yourself "does my post add value to the discussion?" before pointlessly increasing your post count and unloading a chunk of useless bits on the internet.
 
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