Re: Cameras are starting to arrive
 

News isn't just reporters camped outside court rooms etc. Many news reports involve structured interviews, in depth stories, investigative journalism and can often be mini documentaries. This is where the C300 should do extremely well.

Re: Cameras are starting to arrive
 

Usually you want a camera that does everything and having shot quite a lot of the stuff I wouldn't pick the C300 as my main camera for news. It's something that so unpredictable that you may start doing a soft news feature item and end up covering a full blown riot or an explosion all in the same day.

Re: Cameras are starting to arrive
 

We are no longer in the age of a camcorder and lens costing over £50k and requiring a truck load of batteries to support it. These days it's quite affordable to have a couple of lower cost cameras, maybe an XF305 for the scrums and the C300 for the more considered shoots. I know that at least one UK dealer has taken a substantial order for C300's for news. The larger news agencies will often have separate crews shooting the long form pieces while other crews cover the breaking stories. Besides a C300 with a stabilised 18-200 lens, while not ideal, in the right hands would be able to cover almost any story. Throw in a long lens as well plus the low light performance and it may even have an edge over most handy-cams in a lot of situations. You can always put an 2/3" ENG zoom on the C300 using the MTF B4 adapter.

The only negative aspect to using a C300 for news as I see it is the shallow DoF. This can be mitigated by stopping down. Given the high sensitivity and low noise of the C300 that won't be too much of a problem. A C300 at 1600 ISO has no more noise than an XF305, yet is 3 stops more sensitive.

Re: Cameras are starting to arrive
 

Indeed, there a quite a few camera options now out there and making use of the C300's modular design may be one way way to go. Certainly a shoulder mounted layout makes more sense with the larger zoom range range, which will tend to be front heavy in the C300's factory layout.

Given the budget restrictions now on news, it would be hard to for a freelance to justify spending £50k plus on a camera just for shooting news unless they had a contract. I was speaking to one cameraman who runs a facility company for news coverage and he regards the C300 as a relatively low cost extra option.

News coverage tends to be a rather broad church with 24 hour news channels also needing magazine programmes as part of their schedule. At the very least to break up the routine of repeating the same news stories endlessly.