Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

C300 vs. Scarlet-X lowlight

I was being cheeky for sure.

I think it's best for people to shoot with whatever they think is best.

I try not to ram any camera down anyone's throat. Given the choice, I choose RED. Why?

REDCODE RAW
ive tested and I know how the machine performs
i like the flexiblity of the camera setup
i like the flexibility of post
i like to be able to pull stills
I want to support the development of this format.
5k


I respect anyone's reasons for choosing any format. In the end it's the films that are watched, not the low light performance.

A lot of great work will be captured on both systems.

This thread is a tiny bit trolly and is in rEDs kitchen.
 
Love your ballz to post this "test"! U da MAN!!

Seriously, anyone know of a comprehensive test comparing all the current crop of low cost cine cams in low light? Some of my work requires high ISO - beyond my Epic's range.
 
David Battistella said:
Wow. Great thread.

I tend to stay out of any thread with the word VS. in the title.

But I have one question.

So once you shoot 20 000 ISO can you change that around in post?

Id like to see both shots projected in 4k.

:)


David
Click to expand...

Just because it says "vs" does not mean its something to fight over, it's not arm wrestling here it's just discussions on a forum. I thinkt there are benefits of all cameras or they would be out of the market. There are cameras that shoots differently than RED, are built differnetly than red and also many that are priced differently than red and sometimes in some scenarios those will be much more suitable. I find both Canon and Alexa to be better cameras than RED in extreme low light conditions their since I find there grain to look different in the black, But I find the Epic's form factor and performance in better light conditions to be very superior. I love the epic and can hardly keep it in it's case. But it would be nice to have the Canon SLR c300 version as a good 5D kind of camera. Still when doing commercial work I think the Epic is a better choice, it leaves more pixels for post, it sucks more data per second and it (for now) has the largest sensor. The sensor size and data rate is what makes epic most epic for me. Basically it's the shit until we gets dragons. And I doubt that any other manufacturer will have any sort of prime time in between epic and the dragon release. Even though I think Alexa studio will be big among DP's that has a fetich for the Arri stuff. But, again I think the dragon will outperform the Alexa studio even though it has a spinning mirror and a big 4:3 sensor. I think the more "square shaped" sensors will be the way to go (strange enough) but Anamorphic imagery is very appealing to me. Optimum would be to have a huge square sensor and then high-performance / high-speed anamorphic digital glass. For me the sensor can hardly be big enough. The bigger film plane the more I ilke them a camera twice the size of epic holding a sensor of 10x10 cm is probably within reach at this date. If that existed that is what I would buy. So I do not see dragon or c300 or Epic as the final destination at all, it's more of a beginning, the step where we left film behind...

Hope I do not to spray to much gas on this fire, by writing this.
 
C300 is a great camera but 4.2.2 compression really holds it back. ive been keeping my eye on all the footage that is released. it can handle low light but it doesn't mean it looks better. there is serious noise in the mid-tones and it drives me nuts. also i don't think anyone has mastered the c300 it seems really sensitive to light. knowing the proper exposure limits for that sensor and compression is key. from the looks of it id never shoot past 2500 asa on a c300, will have to wait and see.
 
Honestly, I would have opted for a C300 if it were $5-6k. Yeah, it's only 1080p and no RAW, but for 90% of projects it'd work and the entire workflow would be massively faster and cheaper. You could use convert to ProRes in faster-than-realtime, $1/gig CF cards (double up for instant redundancy), batteries that last all day, unmatched low-light performance, and the 50mb 422 codec isn't bad compared to every other camera in the $5-6k region...

..alas it's not $5-6k but $15-20k, which, to me, is far too much for this type of camera (just as I consider the $13-16k of the F3 [sans S-log] to be too much as well.) The C300 is a bit of an F-U to the HDSLR users that helped usher in these big chip cameras from Canon, Sony, and Panny... It'll be interesting to see where the "5Dmk3" and/or that Cinema EOS DLSR that was announced sit in comparison to the price and features of the C300. If it gets announced soon (before Scarlets start shipping in big numbers) and sits around $5k, I would imagine quite a few potential SX owners would jump all over it.

Cid J Salcido Uyarra said:
from the looks of it id never shoot past 2500 asa on a c300, will have to wait and see.
Click to expand...

Re-read that; I don't know anyone that would say shooting clean ~ISO2500 is anything short of amazing?
 
David Battistella said:
I was being cheeky for sure.

I think it's best for people to shoot with whatever they think is best.

I try not to ram any camera down anyone's throat. Given the choice, I choose RED. Why?

REDCODE RAW
ive tested and I know how the machine performs
i like the flexiblity of the camera setup
i like the flexibility of post
i like to be able to pull stills
I want to support the development of this format.
5k


I respect anyone's reasons for choosing any format. In the end it's the films that are watched, not the low light performance.

A lot of great work will be captured on both systems.

This thread is a tiny bit trolly and is in rEDs kitchen.
Click to expand...

New (affordable) Chinese RAW digital cinema camera like an answer to RED, Alexa, Aaton, A-Cam DII, SI-2K, etc,...

just testing these days in San Francisco, California by Dan Hudgins, see Vimeo test footage >>>>
 
nice tests, antony. you can see (or i can anyways) that the canon is using a combination of noise reduction and sharpening, even in the raw stills, that takes away from it's texture (which arguably could be a good thing). the texture on the epic looks pretty natural for being digital, to me. both cameras perform very well, in my opinion.
 
Sebastian Wöber said:
This has been written by Nino Leitner who had the C300 for a few days and I went to the same spot as he did during the night and took the same shot. He compared the two frames, C300 is clearly superior in terms of lowlight, which is not something that degrades the Scarlet-X for me by the way, it was both technically as also Company wise clear to me that the result would be that way. The Scarlet has a larger sensor which makes lowlight harder, and the Canon has always been the leader in lowlight.

Excerpt:
Despite the fact that those two are very different beasts, we grabbed the chance to put the two cameras in the same extreme low light situation, and look at what we get.
In fact, fellow Vienna-based DP and Cinema5D admin Sebastian Wöber called me and said that he wanted to try out his new Scarlet at the exact same spot as we did for our C300 short “13:59”, which we shot in less than 2 days when we had the camera for only a short while about 3 weeks ago (click here to check it out and read the full review). I’ve had a similar thing in mind already, so I was really looking forward to the results and gave Sebastian exact details of the location. And the results are probably as expected, but I didn’t really think there would be THAT much difference.

To the full article here: http://www.cinema5d.com/news/?p=9371
Click to expand...



This is a wrong place for a C300 puff piece.

You are welcome to get back here when the nights and scene light levels match.
 
I agree things do not match up to each other in this comparison. Yes, the C300 is a bit better in lowlight. No doubt about that. But still I like the frame grab of the Scarlet. I tell you why. We are extremely spoiled these days when it comes to ISO and the ability camera's have when it comes to lowlight. But I think that when you're making a film you have to deal with things and environments that are under exposed. It's part of filmmaking. That's what makes it fun. Think about how you light things up the right way and how to get the best image out of the camera.

Every time I look at David Fincher's lowlight camera test with Leonardo DiCaprio, I'm amazed by what this sensor can do in lowlight. I got so hugely inspired every time I look at it, that I want to do even better than David Fincher. I believe it's an art. That's why I admire the people that can get the best out of cameras without any available light at all.

I hate the fact that 'just turn up the ISO' gives you the option to see everything. That's just with one click of a button. What the **** is special about that?! Anyone can do that. My mother can do it, your mom can do it. I don't want that. I want people around me that are specialized in lightning, set designing, producers etc. And because I'm still a novice when it comes to filmmaking I have to do those things myself. (which i don't mind at all) So I'm learning. By reading books and watching a lot of tutorials on the web. Learn about lightning, learn about lenses etc.

Thanks to the 4K you can get so much info and data out of the image, to make things right in post. That's the true reason of filmmaking. The whole process. Again I get inspired by what people can do with RAW images here on this forum. Again, I get hugely inspired by all this. I think it's a privilege that you can order a Scarlet or a C300. I cannot afford it, and when everyone is talking about the lowlight, I get a bit angry because I believe you're not doing this right. It's part of filmmaking. To solve problems, and I don't want to solve any problems just by turning up some ISO.

Grain is also a part of film. I don't understand why people do not like grain anymore. Grain is the key part of making it look like film. It's beautiful, and yes there are limitations when it comes to grain. But do not let it vanish from your production because I believe grain is key to a good video.

:)
 
Sanjin Jukic said:
New (affordable) Chinese RAW digital cinema camera like an answer to RED, Alexa, Aaton, A-Cam DII, SI-2K, etc,...

just testing these days in San Francisco, California by Dan Hudgins, see Vimeo test footage >>>>
Click to expand...

Why are all those shots locked off? Might as well be a still camera here.
 
I had the opportunity to test drive a C300 and the low light really is amazing. 8-bit colour @ 50Mb/s doesn't offer anywhere near the range of post adjustment as R3D but what is interesting is that the S/N : Latitude stays almost the same from 640->3200 ISO (http://usa.canon.com/cusa/professio..._cameras/cinema_eos_cameras/eos_c300#Features). You need to keep a dense LOG image, it's best to increase gain to get more information into the LOG than it is to underexpose and try to bring it up in post.

Two totally different cameras for different applications.

My tests with commentary including a 20,000 ISO shot: http://vimeo.com/33630265
 
4K sounds vastly superior - it’s 4 times the resolution of 1080p. But apart from the computing-heavy post production, there is one other downside to it: light sensitivity. If the pixels sit densely on a chip, they absorb more light, less resolution leaves more light for the individual pixel
Click to expand...

This is incorrect. Both cameras are 4k. Both the C300 and the Scarlet are identical in this regard when down-scaled to 1080p. Any advantage the C300 has in noise/sensitivity is independent of the fact that the Scarlet records 4k.

In fact starting with 4k and down-sampling I would expect to have less noise than simply binning since it'll use all 8 surrounding pixels when down-sampling ideally as opposed to just 4 with binning. Noise reduction will also perform way better in 4k than in 2k since it doesn't have to interpolate sub-pixel detail.

If you had two identical sensors and one shot 4k -> Debayer -> Denoise -> 2k and another shot 4k -> binning -> 2k Denoise I would expect the first to perform notably better.
 
I dont understand why people say things like, "you can stop down to T4 @ 20k ISO at night...." 20,000ISO looks horrid. Just like MAX ISO 12,800 on the F3 (18dB in LOG, which looks about what the C300 would look like at an equal ISO), 12,800 in the Epic etc...

I mean my 5DmkII goes up to 25,600 ISO. IT looks terrible. But yea, i can shoot stills in pitch black, ok i guess for news, or Doc.

But who is shooting Docs on Epic/Scarlet? For most narrative, i think 800 is TOO much! I wish i could make the camera with full D/R @ ISO 250.
 
Not only is it not even a comparison, the person who wrote the article has no idea what they are talking about. Carry on folks.
 
That's a funny article on many levels...

That said (and as I am downloading the r3d), I have no reason to doubt the general assumption that C300 can see more in the dark than the Scarlet/Epic. Many have reported that.
I still haven't been overwhelmed by the images I have seen so far.

Would be fun to do a more or less controllable and repeatable side-by-side.

But what I have seen from the C300 so far, hasn't really convinced me.
 
Gunleik Groven said:
So why publish?
It only makes noise...

Noise because of publishing is ok.
But it should be for a reason... :)
Click to expand...

any footage and tests are always appreciated but yes you're right for constructive criticism if anyone is going to do a test he/she should do a side by side etc. fair comparison. That grain of salt became a seed of apples..... don't ask
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top