Set up time vs a 7D

[Marc Wielage]

But with the 7D I am finding color grading difficult. If I push the footage to far it falls apart. But I really like the fast paced production. I can be set up and rolling in 10 minutes and I normally shoot a restaurant in 2+ hours.

That can be true, unless you expose the 7D very, very carefully. Underexposing slightly and over-filling usually will solve the problem. Choice of output LUTs (or custom curves) can also help in the final, provided you have a decent color-correction program like Resolve, Baselight, Pablo, or any of the other tools in that range. When we push the image into Rec709 color space, we can typically get a reasonable look out of it, but I agree, the image falls apart if you have to push it too far. What I see looks very "steppy" -- not enough bits. (Canon claims 14 bits in RAW, but my gut tells me their JPEG compression is doing a lot of damage to the bits that are there.)

There's no comparison to Red, as far as I'm concerned -- the Red makes far better pictures in the right hands. But I think the 7D can still do an acceptable job for certain kinds of projects, especially when portability and run & gun are mandatory. Not what I would choose if we had a reasonable budget and a great DP.

 

[Paul J Steinberg]

I have looked at the C300 but thought the same thing about price vs. performance compared to the 7D. Then I read about a new camera they were coming out with, I think it was another version of the 1D that used a better codec like MotionJpeg. Their C300 is still based off of the h264 codec. I found that odd and it seemed Canon was doing everything it could to stay on top. So now you have a c300 with built in audio but same codec as my 7D, and a D1 with a better codec that is a digital still camera but not the c300 they built for film making?

The C300 uses Canon's XF Codec, NOT H.264. This is a very similar codec to Sony's XDCam 4:2:2 (you can play C300 clips in Sony's MXF player) and you can select 35Mb/s or 50Mb/s recording. The original post was asking for a camera with additional latitude for post grading and the C300 offers that while maintaining the simple setup and EF lenses. Shoot your own tests and you'll see the difference.