C100: What is going on with the C100 Native ISO?

MattRobertson

MattRobertson

Well-known member
when I shoot stuff at 850 or higher, it looks really solid. But going down to 320, you see a huge drop in saturation and contrast. Has anyone noticed this? Here are some screens from 850 and then 320 using the Brian Weed 709Log profile everybody seems to love (including me).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrob7/8907219907/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrob7/8907220609/

What is the deal? They were shot at the same aperture (to compensate for people who'd say its just the differences in aperture haha), but just different shutter speeds.
 
sebben said:
Native iso is 850. 320 is a pull iso, so the camera is underexposing digitally.
Click to expand...
I understand that, but why is that an excuse for it to look terrible? This puts us c100 users in a tough spot. Can't go below 850, and anything above 2000 you'll start introducing visible noise (even though yes, it is very clean at higher iso's). With only 3 ND options it becomes tough getting good exposure without going too high in the iso range and not going below 850. How can dslr cameras do lower iso's good while a professional cinema camera not even?
 
The Alexa and Red suffer from this problem equally, if not worse, and they lack built-in NDs. Both pull digitally from a native 800 ISO. If you prefer a dSLR (and most are ISO 100 at the slowest, whereas with NDs the C100 is what like 12 ISO? so I don't see how it's better) use that. Using the sunny sixteen rule and the six stop ND you're at a t11 at worse for day exteriors (which most of us like to overexpose a bit, anyway) and there's no issue with diffraction at that stop. If DoF is a concern, use an external ND as you would with literally any other cinema camera. The C100 is unusually strong in this regard; I think you could level this complaint against virtually any other camera with more validity.
 
So does this mean we should avoid shooting below 850 ISO at all costs? It's better to use ND and shoot somewhere between 850-2000 iOS? I knew 850 was the native ISO but with the 7D there were multiples of the native ISO one could use for less noise. Thanks for showing this example, it's an eye opener for a newbie C100 owner like me!
 
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