meeting Canon Engineers

[Michael Turano]

Jim, aside from reasonable firmware upgrades, did the issue of color fringing on extreme highlights come up in your discussion? Canon seems pretty rigid on the issue, basically stating that 12 stops is ample dynamic range and that cameramen should simply avoid extreme highlights. I hope they are at least thinking about moving beyond this simplistic solution.

[Jim Martin]

Yes....they know about it and while some of it seems to be people pushing the camera to extremes most would never use, they do understand and from what I could tell, they are trying to address it.

Jim Martin
Filmtools.com

[Mark Dobson]

Jim,

Glad your meeting went well.

and as I said I'm always ready to eat my hat!

You say that Canon are really listening to us, and that's great, but as they say the 'proof of the pudding is in the eating'

People on this thread gave very specific requests for Firmware updates and I'm wondering which of these you had time to discuss.

And being realistic what sort of firmware updates could or might be possible?

Be great to hear more detail from your meeting.

Mark

[Jim Martin]

We discussed everything on the list.....and about 2/3rds of the way through, they informed me they had already seen it as well as the other blogs.....again, they didn't really tell me what they could & couldn't do but , I promise you that every item that has been mentioned in all the blogs out there, has been read by the C300 engineers & tech reps.

Jim Martin
Filmtools.com

[Alister Chapman]

I sold my C300 because it didn't suit me and my style of shooting. I have no issues with the image quality, build quality or workflow. The build quality is good, there are a few bits which I suspect may get broken if roughly treated, but that applies to most camcorders. The image quality is very good, maybe not quite as good as an S-logged F3, but for a 50Mb/s all-in-one with only 8 bits I think Canon have a good balance between dynamic range and bit depth. What frustrated me more than anything else was the monitor assembly. Essentially an external device, attached by cables to the camera. You have to use the external box to get XLR audio and audio level controls (other than menu control). Having to use this external box and it's slightly wonky monitor defeats the object of having 50Mb/s built in to the camera. I may as well stick to the F3's that I already own with an external recorder. I also found the general ergonomics more like a DSLR than a video camera. Maybe I'm an old stick in the mud cameraman that will always want switches for certain functions as opposed to a young gun that want's layers of menu's for the everyday camera operation. But at the end of the day, although I do like the C300, it's just not a camera that I would use over my F3. If it had XLR and audio controls on the main body and a couple of switches for white balance and gain then perhaps it would be a different story.
I do think that those coming from DSLR's will be very happy with the C300 and I did like the pictures it produced. A good DoP would be able to get great images from the C300, of that there is no doubt, but it just not for me.

[Jim Martin]

Last night I was with one of the Canon Tech reps that was in the engineering meeting in Vegas. I pointed out to him that this thread was still going with additional suggestions for upgrades are being posted. He said he'd be on it today.......

Jim Martin
Filmtools.com