Canon C300 vs. RED Scarlet

Well the C300 is out now.  It came down to about 15,000 in the end which is more reasonable.

I find being a industry watcher type kind of exhausting, but this is an interesting move by Canon.  The thing is one of the more bizarre creations around.  It's got a unique sampling method on the sensor (the aliasing tests for it indicate a score of zero.  Better than things twice the price), but it only does 1080p.  This is in a world where everyone is mostly just clamoring for more pixels and higher frame rates. (the c300 sensor is also much larger than necessary, suggesting they could kick out a 4k version rather easily)

The Scarlett is only cheaper until you bolt everything it needs on to it.  The C300 works with your EF lens collection.

The Scarlett and the F3 are relatively large lumpy things, usually with other lumps bolted on to get cleaner sampling and so on (well mainly talking about the F3 there).  The C300 is tiny and self contained.

 

Canon have always been a little weird like that.  I think the XL line came along when everyone knew HD was only a couple of years away.  Yet they forged on with the XL2 even.

It's an odd way to do things since they must know that mostly what you want is to shoot big and scale down, if you aren't cinema projecting.  That always yields the best results, gives you more leeway etc.  Here it's like they're saying "If you're finishing 1080, well why not cut out the middleman and shoot 1080.  Here's the best 1080 you're likely to get straight out of the camera".  Seemingly counter intuitive but probably has a lot of appeal.

Edited by Muzman - 1/29/12 at 10:48pm

Yeah, I guess much depends on the rental price for a lot of that.  It destroys the DSLRs in terms of picture and features.  And so it should, for the money.  So maybe it comes in cheaper and simpler than an F3 or a Red so that a 5D shooter might reach up for that one job.  I don't know though.

Many have pointed out it will slot right in for a lot of TV; location news and interview pre records, current affairs stuff, reality & lifestyle, events and high end weddings too.  That makes sense.  Seems a bit funny for the vanguard of their Cinema line though.

Seems like broadcast and low-light hounds are the target for Canon here. Consensus is pretty much c300 for docs and SCARLET for the pixel-hungry narrative folks, no? I'm excited to play with the C300, but if you're not in the market to outright buy a Scarlet at its price-point and would just rent, would you not just rent an Epic?

 

And really, most indie filmmakers willing to face reality and not feel emasculated by not shooting on the pretty RED toys will probably be better off with the better 1080p video that might save them dough on lighting, since their shit will pretty much be seen online regardless...

 

This is a weird market for me to conceptualize, because to buy and fully outfit the Scarlet you still have enough money that either A) you've just got enough money to go to higher level cameras or B) you don't really need to be buying a camera to make movies (i.e. you're spending enough dough that you should just rent the real stuff). That applies less to documentarians and web-exclusive filmmakers.

The spectrum of costs involved appears larger and more finely grained when you're in it, and perhaps further from Hollywood, I dare say.  Betting the farm on a Red One has hamstrung a few of productions I've heard about.  People have had some practice with 4k in the mean time, I suppose.  Still, I wouldn't be surprised to learn of people quite happy to dump, or never really got into, the raw conversion workflow.  People who have been working mostly on camera footage or intermediate and have a quite a high turn over.

The prospect of less processing and intermediate time is tempting I'm sure (possibly bean counters more than photo nerds).

If you're regularly tossing up between an Epic and an Alexa, yes you probably wouldn't bother.  This was always meant for mere mortals with milder aspirations.  There's no denying it lands somewhere inbetween all the killer features people mostly geek out over though.  There's argument to be made that it introduces a few new ones of its own, but I guess we'll see.

Let me come in here to post a little hearsay.

I've heard Red's 4k boast is bogus and the Scarlet really is only another 1080p camera. I can't find anything to support this, my google fu is weak today, but I tell you guys what I heard.

First though I suggest you read a little about how image sensors work.

In short for the really impatient if your were to zoom in on an image sensor chip you'd see somthing like this:



Each grouping of four squares , two green, one red and one blue are responsible for the full value of one pixel. They record the light intensity and what color that single unit of the image should be.

I've been told that Red's PR has simply decided call what everyone else calls a single pixel four pixels because they are counting each square in that grid as a pixel, and not advertising the fact the when played back four of their so called pixels will only add up to one full color pixel on screen.

But like I said before, I can't find anything to back this up over the internet so it remains a second hand rumor.

I don't know if it's that bad.  There were similar controversies about the Red One which didn't really resolve to 4K and upscaled or something, at least in the initial release.  But it was about "3K" instead.  There's similar talk about the Scarlet.  It uses discarded seconds from the same sensor line as the Epic, so I doubt it's merely 1080.  It gets confusing because the 2K and 4K standards are fairly vague to begin with.  You don't actually need 4000+ lines to call yourself 4K, like you'd think based on previous naming conventions.  I forget why this is.

 

People should be getting Reds because they want to shoot on raw anyway, even though some do it for the name.  Some reviews suggest the Scarlet is a cheap (or the movie making idea of cheap) 'film' camera and not amazingly sensitive.  So you've got to light for it, give it proper post work and it'll sing.  That's where it goes, they tell me.

 

The C300 on the other hand can do this:

http://vimeo.com/36512776

 

Which is headgrabbingly insane.  I remember people wetting themselves at the Viper shooting in candlelight not so long ago....

That is one crazy video.

I tried to do more research on that Red rumor I discussed above, but can't find any more info. It might just be one of the rumors that Red says Arri started in their lawsuit. (The lawsuit doesn't only allege corporate espionage, but also talks of false advertising spread by Arri)

I think it's original.  He said there were pushing it pretty hard and just winging it.  There's a lot of shots that are 20,000 ISO which are a bit much, but some probably at 10,000 look pretty good (although everyone hates noise these days but me, so I dunno).

If you push the 5D up really high like that things become a slew as the noise starts getting compounded by the sampling and compressed.  I was impressed how crisp the C300 still managed to be. (but I guess you'd have to say it had better be better than a DSLR for 15 grand.  At the same time, relatively cheap DSLRs rivaling much more expensive video cameras kinda blew everyone's minds.  Now we're all spoiled by this stuff)

 

But yeah Panansonic can't catch a break.  There was something people didn't like about the AF100, but I can't remember what it is.  The Sony FS100 looks pretty groovy to me too, despite the shape.

Bayer pattern science is a tough one to get your head around, filter it through company-provided specs, and then actually apply it to device comparison.

Here are some other resource:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-sensors.htm

I can't find the really good article I once read on the subject, but the wiki'll take you places.

Pity.  I could use a nice pro-sumerish video camera with all the trimmings for not too much money.  On paper it seems very decent.  In most respects, especially image and price, the big winner is still the hacked GH2 it seems.