cowpunk52
Veteran
Hello, everyone! Long time no see! Just thought I'd give a brief performance report after shooting with the C300 for 6 days on the frozen Great Slave Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories. Basically, the C300 performed flawlessly. Even the battery situation was not as bad as I expected. I shot 10 hour days, all exterior in the extreme climate, and usually ran through 2 BP955 and half a BP975. At one point, after a particularly harrowing snowmobile ride, the camera was nearly completely covered in ice and snow, but still fired up and shot without a hitch. I didn't use any type of cover for the C300, although I probably should have.
I only had one issue with the Canon, and it was actually a lens problem and not a fault of the C300. At one point, shooting an interview outside on the lake after dusk, the aperture blades of my 24-105 lens stuck and I couldn't adjust the iris. Temperature was about -18º Celsius (0º F) at that point. We warmed the lens with a few handwarmers inside a coat for about 10 minutes, and it worked a treat for the remainder of the shoot.
During the shoot, we also had a couple of backup cameras - a Sony EX1r and a small Sony Handycam (don't recall the model) that the producer carried around in her coat. The EX1r was out shooting additional footage, and after the first day, the body had become brittle from the cold. The handle cracked, and the microphone shockmount snapped off. Sensors on the EX1r would last about half an hour before glitching out randomly, turning the picture all kinds of shades of green and red. Eventually, after a few hours, the camera would shut itself off and had to be warmed up in order to work again. In its defense, after warming up for a bit, it was always able to fire back up and shoot some more, however we used it very selectively after the first day due to the issues it had in the cold.
I was also impressed with Handycam that we used. Once set up, it was very simple for the producer to take out and shoot at a moments notice without worrying about any adjustments. Being small enough to live in a coat pocket when not being used kept it warm enough to not suffer any issues with the cold. The image was nice with good colors, although too saturated for my taste. Also, no ND meant a lot of very stuttery footage (we shot 24p).
Here are some C300 frame grabs from the shoot. I shot using the cineLOG profile and I was particularly pleased with skin tones throughout. These are straight out of camera with no adjustments.
Gallery Here with full resolution samples: http://imgur.com/a/cVltJ#0
I only had one issue with the Canon, and it was actually a lens problem and not a fault of the C300. At one point, shooting an interview outside on the lake after dusk, the aperture blades of my 24-105 lens stuck and I couldn't adjust the iris. Temperature was about -18º Celsius (0º F) at that point. We warmed the lens with a few handwarmers inside a coat for about 10 minutes, and it worked a treat for the remainder of the shoot.
During the shoot, we also had a couple of backup cameras - a Sony EX1r and a small Sony Handycam (don't recall the model) that the producer carried around in her coat. The EX1r was out shooting additional footage, and after the first day, the body had become brittle from the cold. The handle cracked, and the microphone shockmount snapped off. Sensors on the EX1r would last about half an hour before glitching out randomly, turning the picture all kinds of shades of green and red. Eventually, after a few hours, the camera would shut itself off and had to be warmed up in order to work again. In its defense, after warming up for a bit, it was always able to fire back up and shoot some more, however we used it very selectively after the first day due to the issues it had in the cold.
I was also impressed with Handycam that we used. Once set up, it was very simple for the producer to take out and shoot at a moments notice without worrying about any adjustments. Being small enough to live in a coat pocket when not being used kept it warm enough to not suffer any issues with the cold. The image was nice with good colors, although too saturated for my taste. Also, no ND meant a lot of very stuttery footage (we shot 24p).
Here are some C300 frame grabs from the shoot. I shot using the cineLOG profile and I was particularly pleased with skin tones throughout. These are straight out of camera with no adjustments.
Gallery Here with full resolution samples: http://imgur.com/a/cVltJ#0
Last edited:
