Canon C300 Mark II Australian Release 4k

[Brian Rhodes]

Canon C300 Mark II Australian Release 4k

Canon Australia commissioned a short film to demonstrate the upcoming Canon C300 Mark II Cinema EOS Camera. We received the camera the morning of the shoot being one of the first produced. The film was shot over 2 days using available light only and a majority of focus using the face detection autofocus system. The entire production from shoot to final release took 5 days to be ready for screening at SMPTE broadcast show in Australia. The post was done by Gramercy Park Studios in London using CLog2 profile and XF-AVC codec. The creative was written on the go as we wanted to test the camera in a real world situation.

Canon C300 Mark II Australian Release 4k on Vimeo

[Michael Silverman]

This is really impressive! I wish Canon would have released this instead of "Trick Shot". It's incredible to see what you can do on a sunny day with 15 stops of dynamic range. Thanks for posting!!

[Barry Goyette]

Yeah this has been out for awhile (I actually linked to it in an earlier thread on the 120fps feature of the camera), but it is largely a much better demo of what the camera does than trick shot was (although, really...go back and watch that in 4k...they are putting the camera through it's paces in a true TV production environment, and it does look pretty good most of the time). As long as we believe that all the shots in the Aussie film are available light....sometimes a fill card (or lots of fill devices) falls in that category, so I'm not sure that what we're seeing is pure unadulterated nature. Also the heavily cyan skewed skies make me wonder what they really looked like, but these are quibbles. The reality is this camera handles DR in a very different way than the C300 did and to that I say "hear, hear".

[Barry Goyette]

Brett Danton contacted me via PM and expressed his enthusiasm for the new C300 and also wanted to clear up any misconception I may have created :-):

"I can guarantee 100% that not even a fill card was used, we did behind the scenes to prove it, also the firmware version I was on was early and its even better now."

He also went on to to talk about how they felt available light was the best approach to showing off the camera (and communicating to the largest group of people interested in it), versus something more showy in terms of lighting and production. He also said the autofocus is "amazing", and that he's never seen a camera with this dynamic range, specifically in it's ability to see into the shadows in the interior shots (I'd commented how these shots in particular were a bit mind blowing).

Shooting simply (and on the edge of sanity :-) this way involves a lot of trust in the camera. I think the fact that they received the camera the morning of the shoot, and the quality of the results, says a lot about his skill as a photographer (and possibly something about how forgiving this camera may turn out to be).

He also mentioned that the cyan skies were a grading decision, not an attempt to hide anything (I'll just say here, that while I fully support the artist's vision in making these decisions, from the manufacturer's side, and the potential customer side, expressive grades are probably not the best way to demo a camera (this film, Trick Shot, Philip Bloom's test). By now we have several examples of "normal" color so it's not that big of an issue, really.

He's awaiting moderator approval of an account here, and asked me to share this. Hopefully, we'll hear more from him.

[Jim Martin]

Great find .....and glad Barry was able to confirm no fill was used......the helicopter shot of the girl, the heavy back lit shots...very impressive. The camera is going to do well.....and it "just works", right out of the box!

Jim Martin
EVSonline.com

[Sabyasachi Patra]

I like this a lot.

Look forward to hear from Brett Danton about his experiences with the Mark II. I am heavily tied up in shooting with my existing C300 till jan, so can hope to lay my hands on the Mark II later. So I can only salivate watching this film. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Barry Goyette]

In further conversations with Brett, I'd say he, and his colorist, really like the new camera. It appears that a new round of profiles and firmware are starting to get into the prototypes (Geoff Boyle's DR tests), so maybe we'll see something looking close to final soon. I'm hearing mixed messages on a release date. Some are still suggesting it's imminent, but from experience...when B&H puts a date (Oct 20) on their website, that's about when we'll see it.

[Barry Goyette]

Canon New Zealand just released a 4k version of Brett Danton's film on youtube (I'm not sure if the Vimeo version Canon Australia released ever played in 4k for me).

Canon EOS C300 Mark II - 'Dreaming of Greece' a film by Brett Danton in 4k - YouTube

[Jim Martin]

And, they said they used NO bounce!

Jim Martin
EVSonline.com

[Thierry Humeau]

Did they use EF glass or cine primes?

[Barry Goyette]

Danton has said that they had both, but ended up shooting a lot with the stills lenses to test and take advantage of the autofocus. There's a nice video by cloakroom media that popped up a few days ago, showing the autofocus plus the straight Clog2 image and some nice simple grades. Looks every bit as good. DPAF seems to really be a winner.

C300 MKII - Dual Pixel Auto Focus testing on Vimeo