View Full Version : C300 Shooting in a Darkroom ... a very Darkroom !


Mark Moreve
April 9th, 2012, 08:40 AM
Shooting a Video for a Hospital recently on 5dmk2, xf305 & C300. We had to go into a Darkroom to do a scene. I thought you may like to see the results. It's very highly compressed but I think you'll get the idea. It sees in the dark !
Canon C300 Dark room on Vimeo

Mark Dobson
April 9th, 2012, 10:14 AM
Thank's for that Mark,

the darkroom shots are both astonishing and usable.

More generally how does the C300 compare to the XF305 and 5dMk11?

Are you able mix and match all the material together?

I've found the XF305 to be a very high definition camera in the right lighting conditions and would be really interested in your observations.

Mark Moreve
April 9th, 2012, 01:44 PM
Thanks Mark,
I agree with you the xf305 is a fantasic HD camera totally underated.
I find the you can match the 305 with the c300 well, but the c300 is a lot sharper than the xf305. I have matched them as well as I can but it's just the overall sharpness of the c300 which gives it away. I think it's the coring I need to play with. We used the 5dmk2 in places we couldn't get the other two cameras but as for matching it I just white balanced it and used the Neutral picture setting This seemed to work ok.
You definitely wouldn't get these results in a Darkroom with either a xf 305 or a 5dmk2.
I'll try to put a less compressed verison of this video up as soon as I have some time.

Sareesh Sudhakaran
April 10th, 2012, 04:39 AM
That's phenomenal. Thanks for sharing. Is most of that noise removable with a filter in post?

Mark Moreve
April 10th, 2012, 02:36 PM
Thanks Sareesh, I do love Mombai fantastic place. Most of the noise in that video is bad compression for Vimeo the rest could be cleared up in post.

Adrian Frearson
April 11th, 2012, 01:48 AM
That's pretty impressive. My question on which camera is the current low light champ seems to be answered! Thanks for posting.

Nigel Barker
May 7th, 2012, 08:20 AM
I'd like to know what it is that you have done right & we have done wrong using the C300 in low light. I have just been reviewing footage from our first wedding last weekend where we used the C300 & while some video is stunning the low light stuff shot at ISO12800 is really noisy & nothing like footage shot at the same time with a Canon 5D3 at ISO12800. The C300 resolves more detail than the 5D3 but the video will not be usable without some heavy application of Neat Video or similar.

The camera was only just delivered so I haven't had much time for testing so all settings are just default out of the box & using no custom picture profile with extra noise reduction or anything. This is actually rather disappointing as I have seen so much about how fantastic the C300 is in low light.

Jon Shohet
May 30th, 2012, 02:25 PM
Hi Mark,
I've been asked to shoot a video in a darkroom :
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/open-dv-discussion/508097-video-darkroom.html#post1735847
The project is not a commercial narrative/documentary, so not sure we will be able to budget the C300, but still...
interested in your advice/experience about working in the darkroom, and if you have any recommendation about where to rent in London.
Thanks.