Canon C300

I’m willing to put up with a lot for the sake of image quality. Surely this is the only reason why camera operators around the planet were willing to return to the dark ages — saying goodbye to their XLR inputs, timecode and inbuilt ND filters for the sake of a full-frame 35mm sensor in the Canon 5D2. The irony is that while I’ve damned Sony’s Z5 and Canon’s Xf305 for being impractical and frustrating to operate, the camera I work most frequently with is my own Canon 7D. Go figure. I put up with running dual system audio, living in constant fear of moire, restarting my camera every time it overheats, trying to ignore the horrible compression damage, all because the thought of simply shooting on a 1/3″ 3-chip camera makes me shudder.

So in that spirit, looking at the C300’s image quality alone, I must be willing to put up with quite a lot. Extreme low light sensitivity, 4:2:2 chroma without an external recorder, XLR audio, ND filters, clean HDMI output… it’s like Jesus returned to earth as a camera. (excuse my blasphemy)

But I have to say, operating the C300 is not the most intuitive process. Admittedly, I’ve only used the camera twice and I had no time to prepare or pre-set the camera. After half an hour of messing with some settings, I went straight into the field, shot in the dark of a club, and discovered a few quirks and problems as I went. To me they’re certainly not so damning that I’d hate to use the camera, but when you’re covering live events and you need to adapt your settings on the fly, it doesn’t seem as quick and immediate as operating an Ex3 for example. Now everyone who owns or is thinking about owning a C300 will flame me and say that I’m just a Sony fanboy and why don’t I just go and use an Ex3 if it’s so good, blah. But hear me out.

There is no dedicated ISO/gain switch on the C300. There is no dedicated white balance toggle, nor is there a dedicated shutter speed control. To me, this came as a big surprise. To access any of these settings, you need to find an ambiguously labelled “function” button on the rear of the camera, which cycles through each of these settings. So if I want to change the ISO, I hit “function” a few times until the ISO setting is highlighted on the LCD screen — then I can use a rotating wheel on the left side of the camera to increase or decrease ISO. Looking at a picture of the C300, you’ll see that there are two rotating wheels on the left side of the camera. The upper wheel is the one you want to change your ISO. If you accidentally scroll with the lower wheel, the camera will deselect your ISO toggle and instead adjust your aperture (on Canon EF lenses). Then you’ll need to go back and find the “Function” button and cycle through it until you reselect ISO. Does this not seem overly complicated? On an Ex3, you’d slide your hand down to the left side of camera, find the little silver nib and flick it from Low to Medium or High. The ISO values for L, M and H were configurable in a menu, so you could figure out appropriate gain presets before your shoot. Same deal for White Balance presets.

Here’s another problem. It’s hard to find the ND+ and ND – buttons in the dark. Of course, you’ll laugh at me here. ND filters in the dark?? Well I was shooting a burlesque show where the lighting changed all over the place. As a baseline, I had my ISO at 12,500 (fairly incredible), but at times my subject would move right into a spotlight and she’d be in danger of clipping. And as I’ve previously stated, lowering the ISO is not the fastest process. My gut reaction was to flip on an ND filter, but as it was so dark, and because the ND control buttons feel no different to any other buttons on the side of the camera, I had no hope of finding it without losing my shot for a moment.

This really feeds into a larger problem that I have with the camera: the controls are not easily distinguishable by touch. On an Ex3, or even an XF305, you can feel that your hand is touching the ISO toggle, or the ND slider, or the scrolling menu wheel. On the C300, all buttons are round and black and similarly sized — and on average, you need to find more buttons to execute any particular setting adjustment than you would on a traditional camcorder. Having two scroll wheels right next to each other, with one that cancelled the function of the other was also an annoyance — but of course after a day of solid work with a C300, I’m sure muscle memory would take over and it would become more natural.

In closing, I have to admit that for most purposes, none of what I’ve mentioned is a serious problem. For short films, music videos and advertisements, anything where you can do multiple takes and you can spare 5 seconds to change camera settings, you’ll be fine. In a controlled environment, the C300’s image quality far outweighs any quirks of its design and button layout. I just wish that for shooting in a completely uncontrolled environment where you’ve only got one take, that Canon had borrowed a little more from standard camcorders and made dedicated buttons for ISO and WB that could be identified by touch.

Canon XF305

Another 1/3″ camera? Seriously?

I realise, I’ve promised a blog about “digital cinematography” and so far I’ve only delivered reviews of two “camcorders” that “digital cinematographers” in 2012 wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. I’ve just been covering events recently — hence i’m briefly back to camcorders and fixed lenses and deep focus with noisier images and all that awful stuff. (And while I’m stuck shooting with an XF305, another guy is shooting on a C300, which I might write a post about if I can get to handle it a little more).

Anyway. The XF305 is quite a nice camera. There’s not an awful lot to complain about, and I much prefer it to Sony’s Z5 (not that this is saying much). It’s a larger, heftier camera than I imagined based on the pictures, at least as large as an Ex1 and I feel like it’s heavier as well. For the most part, if you’ve used an Ex1 or a Z7 or any equivalent camera, you’ll have 90% of this camera figured out before you start (which is to be expected on a “camcorder” really).

Now here’s the problem. Everything that I like about this camera is borrowed from other typical camcorders. The button layout, the design and build quality, etc. It’s all good, but it’s all exactly what you’d expect from any of these sorts of cameras. And while the XF305 borrows a lot, there are a few glaring omissions that I find quite problematic. In short, anything that can be considered “unique” to the design of this camera is something that I don’t like, and that I wish they’d just borrowed from an Ex3. For starters, there’s no nib attached to the zoom ring, so say goodbye to your crash zooms. The zoom ring is also (of course) fully electronic — there’s a significant lag to your zoom movements, and the camera constantly attempts to turn your “quick crash zoom to get focus” into a long, graceful zoom shot. Urge to kill. Rising.

Similarly, the aperture ring is electronic with no hard stops, and again this infuriating “smooth effect” creates a delay when changing exposure. There’s probably a way to configure the responsiveness of the electronic zoom and aperture rings, I’ll be using this damned camera for the next week so I’ll see what’s possible there. But even if I can configure these parameters, nothing compares to the responsiveness of fully mechanical lens controls.

My last lens-related complaint: the zoom ring is too stiff. What this means in practice is that when I want to crash zoom and focus, I’ve got to turn, turn, turn the zoom ring and it’s very easy to accidentally brush against the aperture ring and change your exposure inadvertently at the same time. (as you can see in the picture, the zoom and aperture rings are set closely together)

Ok. That might be enough lamenting about electronic lenses for now. My only other problem with this camera (for now at least) is the design of its menu buttons. After years of using Sony Z and Ex cameras, I’ve become very used to the little scroll wheel that you push in to select different items. I think it’s a great system, very intuitive, and once you’ve found the scroll wheel, there’s no reason to take your hand away from it to find other buttons. I have to confess, I’m fairly new to Canon camcorders, so perhaps the design of the XF305 is nothing new. But I don’t like it. You’ve got your scroll wheel, a separate “select” button to the left of it, and a “cancel” button to the left of that. So what you used to do with one button on a  Z1 now requires 3 separate buttons on the 305. I’m sure you get used to it, but it feels so clumsy. And in the dark, trying to keep track of where your hand is on a camera that’s coated in tiny buttons… it’s a pain.

Oh yea. One more problem. (of course there are more!)  You know the handgrip/zoom rocker thing on the right side of the camera? This one can’t rotate at all. It’s fused in position with its zoom controls facing up towards the ceiling. On an Ex1 or whatever, you could rotate the grip forwards, so that the zoom controls faced straight out in the direction of the lens. I found this really convenient for covering runway shows where you’re constantly panning and zooming backwards with each model. With the zoom rocker pointing up to the ceiling your wrist has to bend so that you can reach your fingers up to the controls. Sucks.

So. Remember what I said at the start? “The XF305 is quite a nice camera. There’s not an awful lot to complain about…” Yea. I take that back.