C300 Discussion

Justin Molush · November 3rd, 2011, 06:43 PM

I want to see some footage from it before I make any judgements.

I recommend everyone else do the same.

John Cummings · November 3rd, 2011, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Marriage

Canon could have really pulled out an ace here but I'd call this a 7 of Clubs.

LOL That is right on the mark.

Nate Weaver · November 3rd, 2011, 06:45 PM

I wish Canon had seen this as an opportunity to one-up the F3 by recording 10bit internally. Even to MPEG2 50mbit, if it had to be.

That alone would justify the price premium.

Nate Weaver · November 3rd, 2011, 06:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin Molush

I want to see some footage from it before I make any judgements.

I recommend everyone else do the same.

I'm sure it's beautiful, and the camera will be able to make amazing images.

But some of the shortcomings are known quantities.

Mark Kenfield · November 3rd, 2011, 06:50 PM

You can watch Vincent Laforet's short film 'Mobius' shot on the C300 here:

Quite frankly, the image looks superb. And seems to handle what must have been a very contrasty daylight extremely well.

The $20k price tag is genuinely surprising (and disappointing) though. I wonder what the lenses will come in at?

David Rice · November 3rd, 2011, 06:54 PM

Hyped as a dream, but delivered as a nightmare. I'm walking toward the ocean......

Daniel Browning · November 3rd, 2011, 07:03 PM

Canon has revealed the identity of the "second shooter":

Canon Global : News | News Releases

Tito Haggardt · November 3rd, 2011, 07:04 PM

i have been wondering if re arranging these color wells into a super pixel that reads out at the 1920 x 1080 is possible on my 5D, which seems to have a lot more pixels in the stills than the video. i wrote magic lantern last night and suggested it as a possible hack.

i don't know a lot about this stuff and could as usual be very wrong. appreciate any thoughts. it might seem off topic but it might be this is whats behind this c300.

aloha
tito

David Heath · November 3rd, 2011, 07:05 PM

I fully expect the quality of the pictures to be very good - at the price they had better be!

But for that price I'd expect more. Not just great images when correctly exposed and colour balanced, but with flexibility, the ability to grade etc. That really means RAW, or S-log at the very least, and they need high bitdepths to be effective. And given it's a 4k chip, at this price I'd expect to be able to get the 4k resolution for recording.

Let's see what Red have to offer......

Nate Weaver · November 3rd, 2011, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Heath

at this price I'd expect to be able to get the 4k resolution for recording.

Let's see what Red have to offer......

It will be superior on paper, flawed in execution, and 9 months late.

Steve Kalle · November 3rd, 2011, 07:17 PM

WOW!!!

I totally expected to be annoyed by all the fanboys, but it seems almost everyone is extremely disappointed in the C300. Canon's marketing department should be fired for creating all this hype when there is nothing special about the camera. At the least, they should have shown a mockup of the body so people would have had some sense of where they were going. This camera is more like a Red Epic in that it requires a lot of accessories for decent ergonomics; thus, the total package costs far more than just the body.

Their log gamma is not any better than the F3 with Hyper/Cine-gamma because they are limited to how much DR can be squeezed into an 8 bit codec (appx. 11-12 stops).

I also think that Canon really messed up with the price and peoples' desire to use their EF lenses. If people have been accustomed to the low quality and low price of DSLRs, then why would they want to spend over 8 times as much (ie. 7D) just to use EF lenses? Most of these people are very price conscious; so, the $16k seems astronomical to the $1800 of a 7D.

Steve Kimmel · November 3rd, 2011, 07:17 PM

Canon's specs here:

Canon U.S.A. : Professional Imaging Products : EOS C300 PL

Henry Coll · November 3rd, 2011, 07:22 PM

It's hard to tell from this Laforet short, but taking into account how Vimeo compresses stuff, looks like the F3 with S-Log handles better the highlights and has more latitude than the C300. That is specially evident in some of the high contrast scenes in the C300 movie, where there's plenty of noise in the shadows.

That's not surprising considering the C300 appears to be 8bit@50Mbps while the F3 outputs uncompressed RGB at 10 bit through dual link.

At $20k I fail to see how this new Canon C300 can compete with the F3.

David Heath · November 3rd, 2011, 07:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tito Haggardt

i have been wondering if re arranging these color wells into a super pixel that reads out at the 1920 x 1080 is possible on my 5D, which seems to have a lot more pixels in the stills than the video. i wrote magic lantern last night and suggested it as a possible hack.

i don't know a lot about this stuff and could as usual be very wrong. appreciate any thoughts. it might seem off topic but it might be this is whats behind this c300.

Sorry - but no. It's the fact that the sensor dimensions are exactly 2x 1920x1080 that makes it possible to read it simply and effectively the way they do in the C300. In the cases of DSLRs, the numbers don't work so well - they aren't an exact multiple of 1920x1080. I wrote about such in this topic - http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/digital-...ml#post1689657

Quote:

It may not be necessary to do a full deBayer/downconvert (difficult to do well) *IF* the number of photosites are chosen carefully - and that means being in an exact multiple of 1920x1080. The issues with pevious DSLRs and the AF100 is that this hasn't been the case in those cameras - the sensors were designed just with stills in mind, and compromises made for video.

Hence optimum numbers would be 3840x2160 (2x), 5760x3240 (3x) etc. Total photosite numbers would then be 4x, 9x, 16x etc greater than 1920x1080. In other words - 8 megapixel, 18 megapixel, 32 megapixel etc. Now, what is this new Canon - hmmm, 18 megapixel.......?? Let's see if it's actually 5760x3240.

The principle is that you take a square of photosites (2x2, 3x3, 4x4 etc) and just extract the red, green blue values straight from the corresponding photosites. Each case gives full 1080p resolution with relatively simple processing..

Typical for a stills sensor might be to do it similarly to how the C300 does it, but need to miss blocks out, so only read the photosites below in bold, deriving one "output pixel" from each block of 16:

G R G R
B G B G

That would be OK if the sensor dimensions were 7680x4320 (4x 1920x1080) - but still sensors are less than that. Hence why the resolution tends to be more like 1200 horizontally - the sensor dimensions are more typically likely to be 4800 horizontally. This then gets scaled up to 1920x1080 for recording. It's easier to scale up than scale down.

David Knaggs · November 3rd, 2011, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

It will be superior on paper, flawed in execution, and 9 months late.

They reckon it will ship on December 1st, for US$9,750.

November 3rd, 2011, 06:43 PM	#61
Justin Molush Major Player Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Montreal Posts: 388	Re: C300 Discussion I want to see some footage from it before I make any judgements. I recommend everyone else do the same.

November 3rd, 2011, 06:45 PM	#63
Nate Weaver Wrangler Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 2,100	Re: C300 Discussion I wish Canon had seen this as an opportunity to one-up the F3 by recording 10bit internally. Even to MPEG2 50mbit, if it had to be. That alone would justify the price premium. __________________ My Work: nateweaver.net

November 3rd, 2011, 06:50 PM	#65
Mark Kenfield Major Player Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 470	Re: C300 Discussion You can watch Vincent Laforet's short film 'Mobius' shot on the C300 here: Mobius on Vimeo Quite frankly, the image looks superb. And seems to handle what must have been a very contrasty daylight extremely well. The $20k price tag is genuinely surprising (and disappointing) though. I wonder what the lenses will come in at?

November 3rd, 2011, 06:54 PM	#66
David Rice Major Player Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Sitka Alaska Posts: 470	Re: C300 Discussion Hyped as a dream, but delivered as a nightmare. I'm walking toward the ocean......

November 3rd, 2011, 07:03 PM	#67
Daniel Browning Major Player Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 949	Re: C300 Discussion Canon has revealed the identity of the "second shooter": Canon Global : News \| News Releases

November 3rd, 2011, 07:04 PM	#68
Tito Haggardt Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Ocean View Hawaii Posts: 88	further to David Heath on page one of this topic i have been wondering if re arranging these color wells into a super pixel that reads out at the 1920 x 1080 is possible on my 5D, which seems to have a lot more pixels in the stills than the video. i wrote magic lantern last night and suggested it as a possible hack. i don't know a lot about this stuff and could as usual be very wrong. appreciate any thoughts. it might seem off topic but it might be this is whats behind this c300. aloha tito

November 3rd, 2011, 07:05 PM	#69
David Heath Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 2,699	Re: C300 Discussion I fully expect the quality of the pictures to be very good - at the price they had better be! But for that price I'd expect more. Not just great images when correctly exposed and colour balanced, but with flexibility, the ability to grade etc. That really means RAW, or S-log at the very least, and they need high bitdepths to be effective. And given it's a 4k chip, at this price I'd expect to be able to get the 4k resolution for recording. Let's see what Red have to offer......

November 3rd, 2011, 07:17 PM	#71
Steve Kalle Trustee Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 1,554	Re: C300 Discussion WOW!!! I totally expected to be annoyed by all the fanboys, but it seems almost everyone is extremely disappointed in the C300. Canon's marketing department should be fired for creating all this hype when there is nothing special about the camera. At the least, they should have shown a mockup of the body so people would have had some sense of where they were going. This camera is more like a Red Epic in that it requires a lot of accessories for decent ergonomics; thus, the total package costs far more than just the body. Their log gamma is not any better than the F3 with Hyper/Cine-gamma because they are limited to how much DR can be squeezed into an 8 bit codec (appx. 11-12 stops). I also think that Canon really messed up with the price and peoples' desire to use their EF lenses. If people have been accustomed to the low quality and low price of DSLRs, then why would they want to spend over 8 times as much (ie. 7D) just to use EF lenses? Most of these people are very price conscious; so, the $16k seems astronomical to the $1800 of a 7D.

November 3rd, 2011, 07:17 PM	#72
Steve Kimmel Major Player Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 256	Re: C300 Discussion Canon's specs here: Canon U.S.A. : Professional Imaging Products : EOS C300 PL

November 3rd, 2011, 07:22 PM	#73
Henry Coll Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: germany, spain Posts: 66	Re: C300 Discussion It's hard to tell from this Laforet short, but taking into account how Vimeo compresses stuff, looks like the F3 with S-Log handles better the highlights and has more latitude than the C300. That is specially evident in some of the high contrast scenes in the C300 movie, where there's plenty of noise in the shadows. That's not surprising considering the C300 appears to be 8bit@50Mbps while the F3 outputs uncompressed RGB at 10 bit through dual link. At $20k I fail to see how this new Canon C300 can compete with the F3.