I just stumbled upon this incredibly useful chart, which lists all – notably high-end – cinema cameras currently on the market, ranging from the Sony F3, the Canon C300 and the various RED models all the way to the Alexa.

It’s useful because it gives you a chance to compare the technical features and specifications at a glance. Many people ask me about differences between cameras, here you have it – at least in the high-end range of the spectrum. It even gives you a rough idea about “average national daily rental” rates, obviously talking about the US here, with Fletch Camera being a Detroit company.

Download the Fletch Camera Comparison Chart 2012 right here.

This is something I meant to blog about literally forever, so here it is, finally. People who follow me on Twitter regularly might already be aware of this. This is about an amazing experience we made with a viral self-marketing campaign. First of all, check our video out, and then read and most importantly WATCH our “revelation” at TEDxVienna.

As you know, apart from my own film production company Nino Film, I am also partner in LOA Studio, a design studio that focuses on bringing together graphic design, video and animation to consistent brand experiences.

A while back we met up in Salzburg and I discovered that my buddy Lucas’s table looks just like a giant iPhone. That got us thinking. An hour later I was already shooting a video of the table with my 550D, onto which Stefan had put tracker points for later VFX compositing. Lucas and Stefan stood next to the table and mimicked iPhone gestures on a much larger scale.

Months later, after we realized how big this could be as a viral, Stefan found the time to put a lot of work into bringing the table to life by animating the iOS surface by hand in After Effects. He did a terrific job as he managed to make it look extremely real.

Our crappy Table Connect blog

Before we posted the video online, we tried to stir the interest by putting up an intentionally crappy blog (see it here), where we talked about fake technical specifications, and displayed mock-up images of the (fake) table. Last but not least we put up a countdown for the release of the video.

Without expecting it, Engadget already reported about the project before the video was even online. Then we knew for sure: this was going to be big. As usual with interesting Engadget reports, the largest IT blog on earth, loads of other sites copied the news and so anticipation spread wide on the web.

When we finally posted the video, it went to 1 million hits within 3 days, 2 million within a week – and on one day it even became the most watched video in the world!

Currently we have more than 3.5 million views on the original video

The media went crazy. Discussions whether it was fake or not were endless. Forbes, Wired, The Sun, Gizmodo … you name it. Everybody reported about it (see press clippings here).

All of the big boys reported on our table ... screenshot from The Sun website

What followed were an amazing few weeks with tremendous interest in the fake product – we still get buying requests today. I kid you not, we would probably be rich if we were able to build that table. And so we actually tried to find partners to do just that, but these efforts lead to nowhere – so we decided to reveal our secret, and we had the perfect opportunity at TEDxVienna in late 2011.

Watch the entire revelation of our viral fake right here – believe me, it has an explosive surprise … and don’t forget, everybody in the audience expected the “first live demonstration of Table Connect for iPhone in public”, so they were VERY surprised

I am happy to announce that my feature documentary “Every Step You Take” is available for rental via web stream, for all territories.

It’s only $2.99 / €2.30 / £1.99, so no excuses

To learn more about the documentary, which deals with the pervasive video surveillance of the entire United Kingdom, read this blog post or visit its website here.

I’m proud to announce that our collaborative feature film project, “The Owner”, which is currently in post production, was covered by CNN.

Project initiator and director Marty Shea as well as Michael Canzoniero, a fellow filmmaker who also directed a segment like me, were interviewed in this piece. Check it out!

“The Owner” is headed for a simultaneous worldwide premiere on May 25, 2012. Check back for details on venues soon.

In case you missed it, check out my original article on the project – which I shot right after our shoots in 2010 – right here. Stay tuned for much more.

And in case you didn’t see the first full trailer yet, here you go:

You’ve seen my last post about the BTS shoot by Rodney Charters when he was testing the C300 alongside Lan Bui and Drew Gardner in London. Well, here’s even more of that in interview form, and Rodney is very candid about his thoughts on the Canon C300 – you can see he’s fallen in love, and hearing a major DP talk about it like this makes me looking forward to mine even more.

For instance, he dismisses the lack of 10-bit output for the simple fact that, according to him, the perceptible difference is tiny – even saying that as far as he can tell, the colours information from the C300 is far more detailed than what he saw from the F3 (at 10bit).

He talks about a lot of other interesting stuff too, for example using existing light on large production (that’s something that will make heads of some DP’s I know spinning – e.g. he’s is not replacing fluorescent lights anymore because he says it’s simply not necessary any more as you are simply dialing in the right colour temperature with modern digital cameras and match from there).

Thanks so much to Lan Bui and Drew Gardner for doing this great interview with Rodney Charters, it’s a must-see for every aspiring director of photography.

Check out Lan’s blog for detailed info about the content of this interview, it’s surely controversial but I love that Rodney clearly shows a no-bullshit attitude that is sometimes lacking from some other folks who are sponsored from the camera manufacturers directly. Here is also the link to Drew Gardner’s excellent blog, who shares a lot of invaluable information on the convergence of photography and video.

First part (of 3):

Second part (of 3):

Third and last part:

Rodney Charters says the Canon C300 is the "camera of the decade"

I witnessed the live stream yesterday and thought this was worth sharing:

If you ever wanted to hear what a well-established Hollywood DP thinks about the upcoming C300, look no further: Rodney Charters, director of photography best known for his incredible work on the TV series “24″ (here’s his IMDB profile), had a go with the C300 together with Lan Bui and Drew Gardner, both highly talented filmmakers in their own rights.

I met Lan and his brother at NAB last year – they are really talented, kind and down-to-earth guys, knocking out great stuff – check out their work. Lan knew that I shot “13:59″ on the C300 with Mario Feil directing, and asked me a few things about the camera. He seems very happy with it too, and so does Rodney – in fact, he tweeted it’s “the camera of the decade”.

Lan Bui with the C300 and Rodney Charters shooting stills with his Fuji X100

On January 1st, they had another go with the camera and Rodney did a live stream for more than 30 minutes while they share their thoughts on the camera in a very casual fashion (in fact, Drew is sporting a bath robe most of the time, and his little son Sam cries for attention in the background ).

That’s them shooting a few days earlier at the Billingsgate Fish Market in London:

Jokes aside, they love the camera for the exact same reasons I fell in love with it: Its images are lovely, the way of working with it is very natural, and especially the portability of the C300 is incredible. I find it interesting that especially Rodney seems to be very keen on making the footprint of the camera as small as possible, to be as inconspicuous as possible – that’s quite interesting considering he is mostly working with big, heavy cameras, currently mostly the Alexa (shooting Shameless) … sporting a battery that weighs 40 (!) pounds (18 kilograms).

He wants Canon to offer the C300 without the XLR/monitor add-on which goes on top (read my full review here) to get below the magical price point of $10,000. I find the idea compelling as in professional narrative filmmaking, sound is recorded separately anyway in most cases. It would definitely make sense for some people and other manufacturers could possibly create an XLR add-on that comes without the screen (which is great, by the way, very high resolution and it worked like a treat for my 1st AC on “13:59″).

They tried it with the Zacuto EVF and seem to really like the setup. Rodney and Drew are amazed by the lightness of the shoulder setup (which isn’t perfect yet as Zacuto is currently working on the production model of a rig for this camera). I can’t wait to use my Zacuto EVF with my C300 once I get it, hopefully later this month. (Check out my review of the quite awesome Zacuto EVF right here – it goes with me on almost any shoot these days.)

Unfortunately, Lan, Drew and Rodney didn’t manage to shoot something big with the C300 in London, because they had it over the holidays and everything was closed down – Lan though has posted a little something on their Bui Brothers blog, take a look.

Anyway, please share your thoughts after you saw the recording of this live stream.

And in case you are interested in the C300, drop me an email, I know a reseller who is taking preorders and offers a significant discount with a discount code (extended until January 15, 2012) – I only can’t share it publicly.

Some of you will remember that I blogged about an amazing collaborative feature film project that I am part of quite a while back (if not and if you want to see some amazing BTS and stills from the set of my comedic segment, click here).

This unique collaboration by countless filmmakers from around the world, CollabFeature, is now in its final stretches. We are ironing out last editing problems, gearing up for VFX and colour correction and grading, and of course the composers are taking over and scoring the entire 90-or-so-minute film.

For now, I have to leave you with the trailer, which I absolutely love. It has quite some footage in it which I shot for Arne Nostitz’s segment in Vienna (as opposed to my segment which I wrote & directed (DP: Mario Feil), and which was shot in my hometown Innsbruck).

With this trailer and the New Year, we have also announced the premiere date, which will be May 25th, 2012 – in cities all around the world, especially the ones we shot in I will keep you posted on details on where exactly the film will be shown. Also, we FINALLY have a title for this first CollabFeature production: THE OWNER. Stay up-to-date on the official CollabFeature website.

Happy New Year, it will be incredible!!

I have learned that fellow DP Yves Simard, known on Twitter as @CrewsTV, has lost his family’s home in New Zealand in a fire that burned the place to the ground.

Luckily, nobody was hurt and his wife was able to save herself and the children, but virtually all of their possessions are gone.

The ravaging fire didn't leave much back for the Simard family

Read Yves’ own update on where they stand right now by clicking here.

Here’s an excerpt from the full text:

Our kids are safe. At first a bit traumatized but now things are settling in. They are around people that love them very much and they know it. They have truly lost all their possessions. Quaily and I managed to recover their dress-up box. Their imaginary world was saved and I can’t wait to show it to them tomorrow. But literally all they had was the swimming suits they had on and wore to bed, I have no idea what that must be like for them. But kids don’t need much and the boxes of clothes, toys and games that arrived the next day created a Christmas like atmosphere last night that warmed my heart because I could never have been able to do that on my own. They sang and laughed themselves to sleep. Thank you, today that has been my greatest gift. I have so many people to thank.. too many.. I have no idea where to start.

I have asked Yves if there is anything I can do to help, and he said donations for their immediate needs would be more than welcome to help them get through this tough times. The house is insured, so that seems to be good, but they can use our help to get things going again as soon as possible.

Here is the donation link via PayPal he supplied me with:

Please help if you can, let’s make sure this family can have a nice Christmas despite what happened. Thanks to Greg (VisionWrangler) through whom I first heard of the tragedy.

Check out our C300 test short “13:59″ right here:

EDIT: This is the new grade, which is much more subtle and shows more of the camera’s strengths. Thanks to Micha Schmidt for this!

Here’s the new great BTS from Peter Hainzl. Thanks so much!

… and here’s another NEW behind-the-scenes video from Patrick Zadrobilek, thanks again!

Big thanks to our actors Karim Ismael Rahoma and Mirjam Birkl, and the entire crew. It was a fun shoot but a lot of stress! Great to make something like this in virtually no time, great job everyone. The music was composed within less than a day by the extremely talented Cedric Conti, who already contributed the music to Philip Bloom’s INSIPIENS (or “Nino”), which we shot after our Masterclass in Majorca this past June (click here). Thanks so much Cedric! Check out his work here.

An ungraded version of the entire film will be made available for download shortly as well. We shot everything in Canon Log mode. We will post clips from the film detailing ISO values and lens data of various shots in the coming days.

The Canon C300 on a Steadicam rig (photo by Dan Taylor)

Sometimes you just have to grab a chance when it’s in front of you: Both my friend Mario Feil and I were on Canon’s list as testers for the new C300. Until now, only a handful of people were able to use this camera outside of Canon’s press events where they presented it.

Mario, based in Germany, called Canon directly … And was offered to test the camera immediately. Wow! He wanted to come to Vienna recently anyway, so I convinced him to come to Vienna over the weekend to shoot a little short, taking the C300 through its paces.

We have to point out that we received a preproduction unit of the C300 from Canon. Final details about the camera as well as the firmware can be changed until the camera ships in January 2012.

And that we did … Mario had the basic idea for a script and together, we developed it further. He directed “13:59″ and I was DoP. We brainstormed a lot of diverse locations in Vienna, I organised some enthusiastic actors via the quite popular “Filmmakers Austria” Facebook group (with almost 2300 very active members), asked some filmmaker friends for help with BTS, and also got my friend and seasoned cameraman Alexander Boboschewski (aka Bobo) as Steadicam operator on board for the test. He brought Alois Kozar Jr. on board, a great 1st AC who is used to pulling accurate focus day in and day out.

Our actor Karim, me and Mario reviewing shots from the tram shoot - in the rain! (photo by Dan Taylor)

Mario and I wanted to do something narrative as opposed to a mere “camera test” with an assembly of unrelated shots for two reasons: for one, we are bored by it … We have done it ourselves before (e.g. I did it with February, the first ever short shot on the then-new Canon 550D, click here). For another, a real narrative shoot forces you to deal with real production issues. The camera is not the centre of attention nor should it be. Sounds weird for a camera test? Maybe … But this is as close to a real-life production as possible.

It’s definitely a bold move … Using a camera you have never ever used for a proper production is not something I would ever recommend for any paid jobs. In this case, I wanted to know if the C300 can be as intuitive and straightforward in use as a Canon 5D Mark II or 7D.

No, I didn't want to give it back to Canon ... here with the excellent ARRI Mini Follow Focus (photo by Dan Taylor)

Ergonomics, built quality

What can I say … It was an absolute pleasure to work with, could hardly have been any better. We took the thing out of the box, fiddled with it for 5 minutes and were ready to go. Try that with a Red Scarlet or Sony FS100! Both are really great cameras in their own rights, but there is no way you can use them without seriously getting to know all the buttons and functions first. Not so with the C300 – from the first time you hold in your hands you realise here is a camera company who actually talked a lot to filmmakers when designing it and that resulted in a very natural and ergonomic device. (E.g.: take only the fact that there are 4 record buttons on this small camera body, and a lot of assignable buttons for all sorts of functions …)

The Canon C300 with the fully rotatable monitor on top of the handle

When I saw the C300 for the first time I wasn’t quite sure what to think of it … It looked similar to an FS100 at first sight, with the monitor on top … But the similarities end there. One fundamental flaw of the FS100 is the fact that the monitor on top can only be tilted … Not rotated or moved in any other way. So if you want to do a high angle shot you’re basically screwed as there is no way you can see the image if you are lower than the camera itself. You are forced to use an additional EVF like the quite excellent Zacuto EVF or a field monitor.
The monitor that comes with the C300 can be mounted on top, but elsewhere as well – also, it is fully rotatable, which turned out to be essential for our workflow. Would an external monitor for the 1st AC be better to pull focus? Undoubtedly, but it turned out that it worked like a treat with the basic setup as well. The quality and resolution of both the monitor as well as the viewfinder on the back is superb. As a DP / camera operator you can use the viewfinder while the 1st AC uses the monitor. Alois also found the peaking function to be extremely helpful and precise for focusing … We used red peaking.

Run-and-gun shooting with the C300 in the tram (photo by Dan Taylor)

You might say that a small camera is not necessarily a good thing as quite often that means you have to rig it up quite a bit to make it usable handheld (or simply to impress clients … Which is a dumb reason, but yes, it has to be done for some of them indeed …). The C300 can be used handheld without a rig – it actually works quite well if you rest your left hand below the base plate while holding it on the rotatable grip in your right hand, that really surprised me. It’s a Hasselblad style of working. The small form factor and low weight make this possible, even if a Canon L 70-200mm IS II lens is attached. Having said that, this works for shorter periods … And if you don’t have permissions to shoot in a tram (like us) and need to be as unconspiciuous as possible

But for longer handheld shots, you are always better off with a proper rig, and we needed that as all the shots except for a few effect shots and some 300mm shots were shot handheld. Why? Rolling shutter test! Some of the shots we did would wobble like crazy, disintegrate even, if shot on a 5D. The C300 sensor (it’s Super35mm size) is VERY well designed for video when it comes to rolling shutter, never have I seen less of it in a CMOS based camera (except for the Alexa, but that’s a whole different league entirely). Many of the tram shots were shot with the Canon L 24-70mm f/2.8, a great standard zoom lens, but it has one flaw – there is no IS. However, even without the rig, we were able to get decent shots with it on the C300, and there is no sign of wobble anywhere, even when there was a lot of vibration while riding the tram.

Canon C300 on an ARRI rig, on top of the Steadicam (photo by Dan Taylor)

So regarding the rig … Canon was smart enough to show the prototype of the C300 to several accessory manufacturers, so they had their stuff ready on the day it was announced. A smart move for all involved parties as there is no waiting period for proper rigs when this camera hits the market in January, as there was for quite a while when video DSLRs popped up for the first time and nobody really knew what to do with them in the beginning.
To cut a long story short, ARRI got in touch with us shortly before the shoot and loaned us a full rig including their custom C300 plate, rods, shoulder pad, follow focus and matte box for the test shoot. A great set-up that helped us a lot.

The new ARRI Mini Follow Focus turned out to be exceptional for use with Canon EF lenses. As you know those are stills lenses and hardly any of them offer hard stops on either end. That makes them incredibly tough to use with many follow focuses, as most of them are still designed for proper cinema lenses that actually can be turned beyond their infinity or macro limit. The ARRI Mini Follow Focus even has two hard stops, so you can simply define those limits and off you go … There is no difference between cinema and photo lenses any more regarding the limits when you use this follow focus.

Canon EOS C300 vs. Sony PMW-F3, side by side

When you compare the body of the C300 to an F3 you realise that this is a very different camera, although they play in a similar price league. The C300 is less than half as big and much lighter.
For the F3, Sony took a very traditional camcorder design and dmply applied it to a S35mm sensor. It can be compared to the form factor of an EX1 or HVX200. Internally, it works just like an EX1/3, same codec, menu structure, etc.
The Canon C300 on the other hand clearly borrows many traits from DSLRs that a lot of cinematographers like me have grown to love over the past few years, while at the same time putting in all the bells and whistles of traditional camcorders that we were missing from DSLRs. In many ways it is a great fusion of “the best of both worlds” and one of the first cameras that dares to be different (although I guess the Epic and the FS100 can also be counted in that category). You can actually see that Canon’s DSLR and camcorder divisions were working closely together to make the C300 a reality, and they succeeded in many ways.

Grabbin' it on the grip ... a very intuitive camera indeed! (photo by Dan Taylor)

The grip handle on the right is very sturdy and gives a nice and confident feel when you hold the camera in your right hand only. It’s adjustable, but unfortunately a ring has to be unfastened to adjust it, and that is simply a little to much hassle sometimes if you want to grab a quick shot from a different angle. The best way of adjusting a side handle that I have used so far is on the Sony EX3 (and EX1 I believe), where you simply push a button and turn it to the position you need. Very quick and very simple. The handle on the Sony NEX-FS100 on the other hand feels much more flimsy and I actually feared that it might fall of when a heavy lens is attached to the camera (not to mention the terrible, terrible cable that goes out of the side handle and has to be connected at the back of the camera, always getting in your way …). Anyway, the one on the C300 is a sturdy handle but there is definitely room for improvement for the next model.

Sturdy side grip of the C300

We were always shooting with the monitor package on top, that can either be attached directly to the camera or with the handle in between. Part of this package are the two XLR ports with all the audio settings right below the monitor. The entire package is connected to the camera via two wires that can easily be attached, with one carrying the image signal to the monitor and the other one carrying audio.
Having this in a separate unit that can be detached means that if need be, you can even shoot more minimalistic without any monitor or audio. If you take the entire thing off, the camera looks even more like a DSLR.

The built quality of the C300 is superb, it feels just like a 5D Mark II when you hold it in your hands – the entire front part of the camera is built of magnesium and the mount can take even the heaviest lenses. While it’s probably not very advisable to do for a long period, we even put a Canon 300mm f/2.8 L lens on it and still mounted the whole thing on the camera body rather than the lens itself, and it still felt very sturdy.

Order ...

All the ports on the C300 are protected by rubber covers. While the protection is for sure a good thing for the ports, the way they are attached to the camera is a bit flimsy … If you use the XLR ports for example, the protection covers tangle down on the side, and I think they won’t be there for a long time … There is also a lid that covers the battery, but only if you use a small battery (like the one supplied with the camera). We of course had to buy a second one and bought one with a higher capacity, and it was too big to be protected by the lid – so you have the choice of simply leaving the lid open or taking it off entirely (which is a good idea anyway if you ask me, because I think it’s a part that is easily lost).

... and chaos!!

Just for pro’s

One thing you must be aware of is the fact that the C300 has no internal microphone whatsoever. This is of course a controversial decision – it means that you will simply record no audio if you don’t attach an optional microphone. I personally think it was made because most Canon IS lenses are noisy … You can actually hear when they are stabilising while shooting, which is also audible via internal microphones. If you have ever used the internal audio recorded by a DSLR you know what I mean.
You simply must use this camera with a top microphone, in our case I attached my excellent Rode NTG-3 on top, and for the other audio we used a wireless lav microphone. The NTG-3 is a passive microphone that needs phantom power – no problem at all, the C300 has optional phantom power via XLR built in like any other proper camcorder.
I have currently working someone on an edit of a corporate film that I shot with a DSLR, and it’s 4.5 hours of short bits of talking heads where we recorded the audio separately. It’s an absolute nightmare to sync even using Pluraleyes, even while it’s an essential and extremely helpful piece of software, external sound recording is just a pain that produces a lot of work in post production especially if there are many takes. Internal sound recording is something we have always had with every camcorder, but DSLRs forced us to do it differently … And now it’s back, and I really can’t imagine doing it differently again after using the C300 for a while. Syncing in post is a pain!! (And so is converting footage in order to be able to edit … but that is a whole other story …)

It’s also noteworthy that the C300 has absolutely no auto functions – no autofocus, no automatic audio levelling, no auto iris, no automatic anything. It’s definitely a bold move that excludes amateurs from the start (and so does the price, certainly), but I think it is the right way to do it. Too many auto functions would have meant more compromises in different functions and as a professional you adjust everything manually anyway. It’s however ironic that RED Epics and Scarlets with EF mount now offer better autofocus with Canon lenses while the new new Canon camera doesn’t … Oh well.

Mario Feil with the Canon C300 ... yeah I let him use it from time to time to keep the director happy (photo by Dan Taylor)

Image quality

Of course this is the part most people have been waiting for …

All video shooters using Canon DSLRs fell in love with the look of the image these cameras deliver. Especially the 5D Mark II’s image has a quality to it that no other camera has yet quite achieved in my opinion. It’s a very distinct look and people have striven to get most out of it with picture styles that are as flat as possible, giving a bigger range for colour grading in post production – Technicolor CineStyle, Marvel, the normal “flat” look pioneered by Stu Maschwitz and so on …

Picture profiles where just one way of reducing the shortcomings of Canon DSLRs’ video mode. The biggest drawbacks are moiré and aliasing, artifacts that occur due to the “quick and dirty” way of how the sensors in the DSLRs are read out, using so-called “line-skipping” where only every third line or so is read out on the sensor to interpolate an HD video image from (click here for a blog post that explains how it works). (The upcoming Canon 1DX is the first Canon DSLR that actually downscales / debayers the video image).

Checking out the Steadicam shots by Bobo (photo by Dan Taylor)

What can I say, I think it’s non-existent in the Canon C300. We weren’t able to spot a trace of aliasing or moiré in any of the video we recorded, and we often intentionally pointed the camera at objects that are notoriously prone to these artifacts.

It’s especially noteworthy that the image out of the C300 is tack sharp – look at fine detail like hair at full resolution and you will see just how detailed it really is. It’s quite clear there’s a 4K sensor working internally which clearly results in much more detailed images. Due to interpolation video images from Canon DSLRs never were really sharp if you compared them to images from any other true Full HD camcorder. We still found the image sexy, but it was far from perfect. It’s hugely better now, because this is clearly a sensor that was designed to shoot video.

Measuring the distance to the camera for the focus puller (photo by Dan Taylor)

The C300 is rated at ISO 850, that’s the native ISO value. Therefore, this mode gives you least grain. ISO is supposed to be an absolute value, after all it stands for “International Standardization Organization” … however, we found out that 6400 ISO on the Canon 1D4, the “queen of the night” so far, equals 20,000 ISO on the C300. Mario will upload some examples shortly and I’ll post them here.

The Canon C300 is incredibly light sensitive. We shot many scenes in pitch black night, and we sometimes couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces, and the camera was still able to pick up detail. It goes up to a whopping 20,000 ISO … Of course this is quite grainy, but nothing you couldn’t get away with for a professional production. The grain in Canon DSLRs used to be incredibly colourful, which was extremely unpleasant and made the image look very electronic (as opposed to Nikon DSLRs, which have many downsides as video DSLRs, but they are much better in low light than current Canon DSLRs and their grain is more pleasant as well).
This was shot on an iPhone by Mario when we were shooting in the middle of the night at the oil refinery … here you can actually see that we actually saw … nothing. But the C300 did!

All of the long shots at the refinery with the fog and the lights in the background were shot at 20,000 ISO on the C300, as was the shot on the mountain looking down on the city of Vienna (with a ribbon of fog covering the city). I tried this EXACT same shot in February of 2010, when I shot the 550D short film up there with an f/1.4 lens. It was simply not possible to get half-decent exposure, even at ISO 1600 (the barely acceptable maximum for Canon DSLRs in video mode) and wide open. This time, it was no problem, I could even stop the iris down a little to get a little more depth of field.

We had an F3 as well, but due to lack of time as well as lack of the S-Log firmware on the F3 we were not able to put the two side-by-side in the same lighting conditions and with the same lenses. I expect the low-light race to be pretty close, but this is for somebody else to test once they get a chance to shoot with the C300. (Philip?)

The WFT connector is for the supplied wireless transmitter - you can control the camera remotely, but we didn't have a chance to try it out ... (photo by Dan Taylor)

We shot the entire film “13:59″ in Canon Log mode. It’s Canon’s new log format that gives you a lot of latitude to play with in post. I you have a Sony F3 you can optionally purchase the S-Log firmware upgrade which costs about $3,200. It’s a lot of dough for a piece of software (though it comes with a 32GB SxS card), but it makes the F3 to what many have dubbed a “Mini Alexa”. The comparison between the low light sensitivity of the two cameras with and without the S-Log feature in the F3 will be something very interesting to see, but keep in mind that it’s an unfair comparison as the S-Log is an optional purchase for the F3 which makes the camera much more expensive than the C300. S-Log – if recorded onto an optional external recorder – is definitely of a higher quality for the following reason:

The F3 has one big advantage over the C300: it gives a you the ability to get a 4:4:4 10bit signal out of the dual SDI port, enabling you to record it even uncompressed (if that’s your thing) with a recorder like the AJA KiPro or KiPro Mini. Again, another expensive additional purchase that has to be considered, but the ability to have this function is amazing, especially because 10bit gives you much more to play with in colour grading.
With the C300, you get only an 8bit 4:2:2 image out of the SDI. The reason behind this that I heard from somebody close to Canon is the new processor they are using, the DIGIC DV III, which is not capable of 10bit output. According to Canon though, the differences are negligible, but that is something that has to be proven by a colourist working with footage from both cameras – I’ll update the blog once we hear back from ours.

But, as mentioned above, the F3 is internally really an EX3, and it uses the same internal recording onto SxS cards in the XDCAM EX format, at 35 Mbit/s in a 4:2:0 colour space. I love the format and still shoot very often broadcast stuff with my 3-year-old EX3, but to be honest, the standard is quite obsolete now and there are much more efficient codecs. The fact that Sony put such a relatively weak codec into a quite expensive camera that is capable of so much more was a big disappointment for me.

Canon on the other hand developed a completely new codec with a 4:2:2 colour space and 50Mbit/s that was first used in their XF300/305 camcorders. That was surprising as they are small-chip camcorders and as such, they usually get much weaker codecs built inside – but it probably was a testing ground for Canon to get the format known and accepted by broadcasters before they put it into the C300. It’s a great codec that just fits a lot of broadcaster’s needs – for example, the BBC rarely accepts anything less than 50Mbit/s for broadcast, and it has to be 4:2:2.

The great crew and cast of our guerrilla 13:59 test short "13:59"

The Canon C300 features something else that we are missing from DSLRs (and even the FS100): ND filters! 3 different intensities at 2, 4 or 6 stops (plus 0). They can be switched in and out using a button rather than a mechanical switch, which is great, because they don’t get stuck. (But yes, the camera internally switches them mechanically, but it’s an triggered through an electronic button mechanism rather than a real mechanical switch as with virtually all other cameras – which also saves space inside the camera body, because they don’t have to rotate.)

Image-wise, last but not least, rolling shutter is absolutely minimised. Of course it is there as it is with every single CMOS-based camera, but it is negligible and won’t be a problem in 99.9% of shooting situations. Heck, we even shot a tram at 50km/h going through the frame, and while that thing looked like a rocket the last time I shot it even with an EX3 (not to mention a 5D Mark II), the issue was much less apparent in the C300. It’s clear the sensor is read out much faster than the ones you find inside DSLRs. As mentioned above, we shot only run-and-gone style, 95% handheld, and there was never a trace of CMOS wobble or rolling shutter.

I think Mario and I are convinced of this camera ... here with the Canon 300mm f/2.8 in the darkness!

Conclusion

The Canon C300 has much to love, and very little not to like. Its biggest downside is clearly the lack of 10bit output, but I can count on one hands the times that I have really needed that.

Canon fulfilled most of my wishes here:
- small form factor, light
- no aliasing or moiré
- increased light sensitivity
- EF lenses on a proper camcorder, without the need of expensive adapters
- 4:2:2 50MBit codec
- proper batteries (they last FOREVER, we got almost 5 hours out of one of the big ones

I have already decided that this will be my future camera … it fits most of the jobs that I do and it ticks more boxes on my list than any other camera before.

I will update this blog continuously with the short film as well as details about colour grading of the footage. Thanks to the great and dedicated cast & crew of this short film … it’s so amazing we could make this happen within no time (and within a very short shooting time!).

Here are Alexander Boboschewski’s (aka Bobo’s) thoughts on the C300 – he was our Steadicam operator and as usual the most experienced guy and good soul on set:

Last weekend we ad the chance to play around with the new Canon C300 pre-production model. It was quite easy to start working with that camera also without having a manual for it. First impression was very good, everything is where you want to find. Surprising we also found some ND filters.

On the downside there is the over cranking limitations to 50 pictures and no 4:4:4 uncompressed signal to external recorders. The HD-SDI port is limited to 1080 4:2:2 8bit.

But I think for 90% of our projects that is not really a limitation.

The camera body itself looks and feels better than I expected from the pictures. The camera is quite good balanced in your hand. The Handgrip is nice and the monitor that you can flip in different angels is brilliant. My Focus puller could use it for his work.

I wasn’t sure if the cables from the monitor to the Body is such a good idea but after this weekend I must say they are right. With the cable connection you can put the monitor also on other places within the reach of the cables – not bad. Professional XLR connectors for sound are also on board. The minimizing of the rolling shutter is nice and the high ISO for shooting video at night is great.

At the bottom is the Battery door, which can be closed when using standard batteries or removed if using Canons larger batteries. So this will be the first part besides the connector covers you will loose.

I also tried the C300 on my Steadicam and of course the camera has too less weight. But with some accessories you can manage it. I had some problems with the HD-SDI output in combination with my down converter but I used the onboard monitor and it worked well the monitor has also a good viewing angle.

In the manual I got today I found out, that for SD Video signal you can use the SYNC OUT Terminal So you have different options to get a Video signal out (HDMI, HD/SD-SDI and SD composite)

I think with the Canon C300 we will get a nice camera for our daily work.

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UPDATE – 1D Mark IV / F3 / C300 side-by-side

Mario did a short video comparing the three cameras side-by-side. It’s very interesting how incredibly soft the image from a DSLR is when compared directly to the image from an F3 or C300!

UPDATE – Colour grading tests

Stu Maschwitz, a true legend in the post production area, developer of Magic Bullet Looks and Colorista, author of “The DV Rebel’s Guide”, VFX supervisor for countless Hollywood films (check out his IMDB page), and author of the excellent prolost.com blog, incredibly wanted to have a go on our Canon C300 footage to do a grading test, and of course we let him!! He’s that kind of person you listen to when they say they know how to do something

Check out what he came up with – I love the grade of that interior tram shot, he managed to pull the face out of the slight underexposure, and managed to get rid of that unhealthy yellow tint in people’s faces (the lighting inside those old trams is horrible):

Now we need to find a way to bribe him into grading the entire film

Micha Schmidt, a professional editor from Germany, also had a look at the MXF files and played with them in post with grading, just to see how far you can push them. That’s what he came up with – I am particularly impressed by the night shots in the end, the coloured look works really, really great and the grain is absolutely acceptable – even without any noise reduction.

Micha writes:

the first scene i protected quite “usual” just a lil push here and there … skin tones, contrast, richer colors… stuff like that… i “protected” highlights in the back window tho’

all the rest – especially in terms of high ISO performance – i did push much more – to see what is possible … and there is a lot of “play-room” for a grade … the grain / noise still looks very organic / filmic (almost like 16mm) even at the limits of what is possible.
even a hard color push / tint is no real issues if you watch your blacks … kinda awesome!

and at no point there was any artifacts you are probably familiar with from DSLR h264 or even XDCamEX or AVCHD stuff … that is really nice!!!

over all … great footage to work on!

UPDATE: Low-light comparison of C300 C-Log and F3 S-Log:

My buddy Sebastian Wiegärtner currently got the C300 loaner from Canon and did a little low light comparison video between the C300 and the F3. It’s interesting to see footage from the two side-by-side for the first time.

The F3 footage looks brighter at the same ISO values, but that is certainly simply because of the fact that S-Log is “flatter” than C-Log – also, he used an external recorder (KiPro Mini). Don’t forget if you add the extra price for S-Log ($3.200) and an external SDI recorder to the equation, the F3 costs you considerably more than the C300 – so differences in quality are to be expected! Nevertheless, still a little of a downer that the C300 doesn’t output 10Bit over SDI …

UPDATE: “When you find me” – Ron Howard-produced short film now on YouTube

Canon hired Ron Howard to produce a short film with a prototype of the Canon C300, and it turned out quite lovely – beautifully executed by his daughter, director Bryce Dallas Howard (who you should also as actress in the quite brilliant “The Help“, a tale of courage during the times of the Civil Rights Movement in the States).

Be sure to watch it in HD:

Of all the Canon-commissioned C300 shorts, for me this is the best one, really nailing it with its story and production value. And of course – the C300 performed beautifully, and proves that it truly is capable of cinema quality images with hardly any compromises.

Canon C300 on set of WHEN YOU FIND ME - with a Zacuto EVF! And the new Canon Cinema Lenses - was not yet available to test for us, unfortunately

You have to check out the Behind-the-scenes video as well – they don’t talk about the camera until the 7 minute mark or so, but it’s well worth the watch. Be sure not to watch it until after you have seen the short. Interesting is also that a 5D Mark II was used for a helicopter drone shot (of the white tree – the final shot I believe).

It’s also interesting to see that they used the camera with the Zacuto EVF (and a Redrock cage). The internal EVF of the C300 is great and very sharp, I loved it when we shot with it two weeks ago – but I will be using it with the Zacuto EVF as well simply due to ergonomics when going handheld. When you build up a shoulder rig you don’t want to have the entire camera in front of your face, rather just the EVF on the side – that’s where the Zacuto EVF comes in handy again (check out my full review of it right here).

I will likely be shooting a narrative short film of about the same length in February 2012, and currently I think I will shoot it on the C300 which I should get by the end of January. More details on that a bit later.

And in case you are interested in the C300, drop me an email, I know a reseller in Europe who is taking preorders and offers a significant discount with a discount code (extended until January 31st, 2012) – I only can’t share it publicly.

B&H Photo also started taking orders for the C300. I know for a fact that Canon won’t be able to satisfy demand, because these resellers already know they will receive significantly less units than they ordered. So if you want one soon, I would get in line now!

Over the past months, I have been given the chance to so something quite ordinary with extraordinary people: shooting interviews for TV and other media outlets – interviews with famous film stars and film directors. As you can imagine, there is hardly any room for screwing up something like this, so the preparation needs to be meticulous.

Still frame from my interview shoot with David Cronenberg for the Austrian premiere of "A Dangerous Method" at the Viennale International Film Festival - parts of the film were shot in Vienna, where Sigmund Freud used to live

Behind the camera on set of the Jason Bateman interview - photo by Markus Harthum

Time is of the essence

These interviews are shot with correspondents from national and international TV channels and other media outlets, to be used as PR for new movies when these TV channels are broadcasting programs about them. Usually, these TV channels of course come with their own teams for interviews – but when you have half a dozen or more channels lined up to do interviews, setting up and breaking down interview situations with different camera crews would just need too much time – because usually A-listers like these have a strict schedule and have no more than half an hour or hour for all of the interviews.

Consequently, a separate camera crew – in this case, my production company – is hired to do a general interview setup. The crew remains the same for all TV channels, just the interviewer is of course different for each interview. This allows for a very quick turn-around.

The camera of choice: The Sony PDW-700, recording on "Professional Disks"

Choosing a format & the disadvantages of solid state media

Working with that many TV channels at once, you end up with two fundamental problems: First and foremost, you need to find a format that fits all of them. Not an easy task, with many broadcasters locked into different file or tape formats. Secondly, you need to find a way to give them the footage right after the interview.

The first problem is the crucial one … at first we had Universal Pictures asked all of the channels to provide the formats and standards they can work with. As expected, it was like Babylon – nothing matched except for the European frame rates. In the end, I decided to go with the highest-end standard as requested by one TV channel – XDCAM HD 422. We verified that most of the channels could work with that as it’s a widely accepted broadcast standard – the few that didn’t (mainly web outlets) got a converted version supplied as a server download.

The second problem – getting them the footage immediately – was easy to solve once we had found the solution for the first one. The correspondents needed to be able to get their footage right away to take with them back to the edit bays of their TV channel, sometimes to finalize edits to be aired on the same day.

Most modern camcorders work with solid state media – SD cards, Compact Flash cards, hard drives, proprietary standards like SxS, P2, you name it. The great advantage of those is that you can shoot relatively inexpensively, and you can use them over and over again. One disadvantage of solid state is that you need to archive your footage in some way, which is a problem that simply wasn’t there before – with inexpensive tapes, we simply kept them just the way they were shot, they were their own archival medium. Nice and clean, safe and sound. Not any more. What we need now are HDDs, backups and more backups of these HDDs. However, the real downside of solid state media in this case was the fact that I couldn’t hand out memory cards to all these TV channels – for one, they don’t have a generally accepted standard of these cards, for another, I would probably never have gotten them back – which can be quite expensive considering the price of SxS cards.

The solution? Sony’s Professional Disk format. Essentially a BluRay in a cartridge, Sony introduced that format years ago and established it with their line of broadcast camcorders, the PDW-700 and the PDW-800. It combines the advantages of a file-based workflow (because these are re-writeable disks) with the archival qualities of good old tapes, because they are inexpensive. I decided to rent a PDW-700 for the interview shoots. Also, owning a Sony EX3 meant that if anything would fail, I would have a solid-state backup camera handy that actually features a similar look to the PDW-700′s XDCAM HD.

The decision turned out to be a very good one as all the broadcasters were very pleased with the workflow and the results.

The setup for the David Cronenberg interview

The look & lighting

Style-wise what we can do is rather limited as the movie poster always needs to be in-frame during the interview. You are certainly familiar with these kinds of interviews from TV – this is exactly how they are usually executed, with one crew catering to a number of broadcasters.

I always book great gaffers and sound people – all of whom I have worked with before and who I trust – for my assignments, and for these ones especially I had to make sure everything worked perfectly and without delay or hick-ups. Together with the gaffers – in one case, Markus Harthum (who I regularly work with) and in another, Alex Haspel, we looked for a nice interview corner in the hotel suites that were booked for that purpose. Not always easy as many luxury hotels tend to be stuffed with furniture, and some of them are not as big as you would imagine – a challenge to position the lights and still have enough space for the interviewer, the star’s entourage and other people that are sometimes crowding the room once the interviews start. We even scouted the rooms with the sound recordists (e.g. Konstantin Drossos), to be make sure there are no disturbances and to get rid of those in case there were any.

In order not to grill the talent on camera when sitting there for an hour or so, we decided to go with Kinoflos (120 cm, Fourbank) – a nice, soft and cold key light. As a filler, we used a short Kinoflo (60 cm), with small HMI’s as kickers (hard light for contrast). We tried to accentuate the little background we had in frame as good as we could, in a subtly way – after all, it’s all about the movie and the star!

That's why I love my lighting rental place Ernst Dangl in Vienna: lots of choice and helpful staff!

Watch two of the interviews that I shot right here:

Click on the picture to see the report, including one of the interviews that I shot with Jason Bateman

Red Giant software was busy developing a version of their very popular Magic Bullet Looks suite for Apple’s controversial and not-yet-quite production-ready Final Cut Pro X.

They have released a video preview now which shows that the version is virtually finished – it looks just like we are used to Magic Bullet and seems to work like a treat – except for an annoying bug from Final Cut Pro X about which they can’t do a thing. Turns out, Final Cut Pro X hands over image data in a wrong way to the plug-in (but heck, what do you expect from a 1.1 release of an editing program?). All they can do is wait for Apple to release a bug fix, and Red Giant says the Apple guys are well aware of it and working on it.

Anyway, watch the little preview video for yourself – it’s great to see that one truly invaluable tool in the filmmaking toolset is soon to be released for Final Cut Pro X.

Talking about Final Cut Pro X, I still use Final Cut Pro 7 for 95% of my professional jobs, simply because I know it inside and out and I don’t have the time to spend a lot of time fiddling with new applications right now. However, I used Final Cut Pro X already on some tiny projects just to get a grasp of the software, and I have to say, it’s starting to grow on me.

See, I am a notoriously perfectionist and shoot often too much stuff, even for short clips. It’s something in me that prevents me to cut a shoot short, I always want to get the best images and performances out of people. But when I edit my stuff myself, which is happening a lot, I keep hating myself for the massive amounts of material to choose from. And that’s exactly where Final Cut Pro X’s incredible media management / tagging and scrubbing capabilities come in. Looking for footage has gotten so much more efficient with the tagging tools and the video scrubbing in the preview (and on the timeline), it works like a breeze as soon as you get used to it. Also, the application is freakin’ fast and therefore the workflow is not as easily interrupted as with Final Cut Pro 7 (when you have to render).

I know it’s far from perfect still, but I am absolutely positive now that it will become a major player in the editing world with the next major release in 2012.

Check out literally the first little thing I edited with Final Cut Pro X right after I shot it … it was indeed an event, so that tied in with the “Event” analogy in FCPX perfectly – and especially for cases like this, the media management part of FCPX is saving me so much time!