If you follow me on twitter, you propably noticed that I’m currently spamming your timeline with C300 posts. That’s propably because after working with it the past 4 days, I really got excited about the capabilities of this Camera.
I won’t go into technical details here as Nino Leitner is currently writing an extensive blog post with his thoughts, combined with mine to get you an idea on why we are that impressed with the Canon C300.
I was very lucky to get one of the first pre-production units in Europe (or propably the first) of the Canon C300 for testing and to write Canon Germany my thoughts. In fact, I wrote Canon on tuesday, they called on wednesday and sent the camera on thursday. So I only had about 3 days for planning a narrative short with the C300. I talked to Nino earlier and we said, no matter who gets it first, we will do a short film together with a small team because we didn’t want to shoot another test-video (we all did those videos a lot). I decided to get my team to Vienna/Austria and meet up with Nino’s team after some testing. (interviews, F3-1D-C300 comparisons)
I wrote a small script on thursday called 13:59 (in fact, the name of the short came up as we wrapped the our shoot on Sunday), searched with Nino for actors, searched for locations via Skype and then started our journey to Vienna.
We met up, setup all the gear (Arri Rig on C300, prototype too), talked about the script I finished the day before and started shooting. We didn’t have a manual so we basically started right away. This proofs how intuitive the C300 is to work with. Everything is just familiar and easy to reach. Just turn it on, get used to the preset buttons and start shooting.
Not only I was impressed by the C300, everyone on set (Nino Leiter – DoP, Alexander Boboschewsky – Steadicam Op/camera Operator) didn’t expect that Canon really nailed it this time. We all were shocked by the price and said “1080p at only 30fps, only 8-bit … for 20k? no thanks” but lets just assume they will drop the price…. then this is, hands down, the most logic step up from DSLRs you can think of right now.
Form factor, features, fixed moire, fixed rolling shutter, built in ND etc. this camera makes just so much sense. If only they would have added overkranking at 1080p and a chance to record 10bit. Besides that, this camera has so much in common. People really need to get it in their hands to understand why.
Like I said before, I won’t go into detail as Nino will write up a huge post to get you all the informations everyone asked lately.
At this point, I just want to thank the whole crew for helping out this weekend. We had way too much fun. Even if we would have loved to shoot way more with the C300 do finish the short (we dropped a lot of scenes…), I think it will turn out good. Not great, good.
As soon as it’s finished, we will post it on Vimeo, Youtube, Twitter and so on.
stay tuned!
after all, I’m impressed and convinced to order this camera. Hopefully at around 10.000 Euro. Canon? Your call!
