Slow Motion Test 1 on C300 Mark II
Slow Motion Test 1 on C300 Mark II, blog post by Darius Stevens Wilhere
In case you haven't read them, I mentioned back in November 2015 in my 4 part review that I didn't consider the C300 Mark II to be a good slow motion camera and today's tests did nothing to change my mind.
I wanted to shoot a location with lots of reflections and something that had finer particles to also look for moire and aliasing problems that would stand out. Hence Echo Park near Downtown Los Angeles. I only brought the Canon 24-70mm EF lens with me and I shot with it wide open and used the C300 Mark II's ND filters to bring the exposure in range.
The 60 fps (frame per second) option is at 2K and it looks fine.
60 fps at 2K
And there is the 120 fps which has a 1.5x crop and looks like...terrible. The aliasing and hard edges really make it clear that there is a crop happening on this sensor, because essentially it's just scaling up a portion of the sensor. Any time you scale your footage it's going to start having problems the more you scale it. Now I've shot kids jumping and running around at 120 fps on the C300 Mark II and it looks acceptable. But just be aware that if you have high frequency textures in your frame (look at the buildings in the background in the video) that they aren't going to look great.
120 fps at 24 mm with a 1.5 crop.
Here you can see the crop.
I realize I'm being overly critical, because for many users it will look and work fine, but it doesn't hold a candle to high end dedicated slow motion cameras or even the quality of slow motion you get out of cameras like the FS7 or the REDs.
Sony has always done pretty well in the slow motion department, but their color science at the non-CineAlta level has always left a little to be desired.
And while Canon has always held the edge on color science, they've never been particularly strong in the slow motion department. But as I said in my full four part review, this wasn't a deal breaker for me because 99% of the time I'm shooting 23.976/24p.
Have questions? Email me: dare@darecinema.com.
I'm working on a guide for the C300 Mark II which I hope to have done in the next week. So if you've got questions about the camera, hit me with them.
Slow Motion Test 1 on C300 Mark II, blog post by Darius Stevens Wilhere
