To the casual observer, the C300 might seem like just another incremental camera design improvement in the still young large sensor digital cinema timeline.  But really, the camera is just an indicator of a much more important change developing at Canon.  Until just this year, large sensor cameras have been in two basic camps:  1) cheap DSLRs which sacrifice visual quality by skipping lines in their downsample processing (and audio quality right out of the gate with all sorts of limitations) and 2) much more expensive true cinema cameras with more professional components and interfaces.  Then, along came Panasonic's AF100 and Sony's FS100 and F3 camera offerings.  These cameras begin to address the middle ground, where the bulk of the market aspires to be.  But, they also have some serious shortcomings, not the least of which are crop factors that limit the field of view on wide angle lenses, but that's probably best left to another discussion.

This newly burgeoning market, where so many who had adopted Canon DSLRs into their cinema workflow were now migrating, presented a problem for Canon.  Until now, Canon had two main departments building cameras.  The first was the DSLR photography department.  The second was the digital camcorder market building HD camcorders.  Aside from the internal structural issues at Canon, there was the marketing problem - how to develop a new camera in either of these departments without cannibalizing their other pre-existing product lines and confusing customers?

The answer comes in the form of the new Cinema EOS department, taking physical shape in Hollywood, with an actual building set up to cater to the largest production community in the world.  And, although the first camera is still not yet available for purchase, Canon has already announced a new Cinema EOS DSLR model, which will reportedly bring 4k resolution to a DSLR body.  So, the answer for Canon was that this new breed of camera deserved a new brand by them.  As the undisputed market leader in HDSLR cameras, it makes good progressive sense for the business to expand to accommodate the research, engineering, manufacturing and marketing of what will become such a distinct line of products.

So, brass tacks...  How does the new C300 camera fare in real world testing?  Sure, we've seen Laforet's Möbius on the web, and Canon's event had a laundry list of other examples.  But, I wanted something that showed me how the camera worked on the street.  I was happy to find Jonathan Yi's entry on Vimeo, where he says, "Please buy this camera in January and go film some good skin tones in the dark. You'll love it."  That's pretty high praise, but I think the video itself speaks better.  Although I appreciate his sense of humor, I can see why Canon neglected to include this in their official rundown of examples...

Presenting the Kinefinity Kine RAW S35. Proposed market price:  roughly $8,000 USD.  As a true 2K camera shooting DNG or Cineform RAW files to SSD drives, I took note of how the camera looks like nothing short of a mini ATX computer case with a hole drilled in it for where the lens goes. Specs quoted include HDMI and SDI video output, XLR audio inputs, and some undisclosed intervalometer functionality.

It has never been clearer to me that cinematographers in the market for the latest and greatest camera had better plan on getting all of their money's worth in very short order. For me, realistic value-earning ownership works out to about three years per camera. After that point, while cameras may certainly remain serviceable, they are going to be surpassed technologically to the point where they suffer dramatic downturns in worth in the eyes of my clients and colleagues. As filmmakers, we need to remember that this is a business, and as the tools of the trade get ever more commoditized, much of what clearly and immediately separates us from the crowd of wannabes and pretenders is constantly going away.

So, while this model is hardly ready for prime time, I would say this is a harbinger of things to come, and things to come look both exciting and, indeed, dangerous. Long live Dan Chung!

I used the Canon 5D Mark II with the 24-70mm f2.8 L lens at 640 ISO at 24p.  Very few other video cameras would have done as good a job with the blacks and grays and overall definition.  Having the full moon in the shot was a nice bonus, but the south wind was the real blessing, carrying the smoke exactly where I wanted it to be - away from the camera and the river.

Jan Crittenden seemed pretty exhausted in her encyclopedic review of the new Panasonic AG-AF100 camera at IBC in Amsterdam earlier this month.  Maybe that was because it was the longest video review I've ever seen about anything, clocking in at nearly twenty minutes.  Or, maybe it was due to the marauding crowd in Amsterdam, who had her dancing carefully around the ever-shifting spec sheet during the week's typical trade show booth banter.  If you decide to sit through the entire video, might I recommend you first prepare a nice fresh cup of coffee?

Locations can present some interesting problems for the motion artist.  I was asked by the good folks over at Perpombellar Productions to help clean up the opening shot for their recent entry in the Doritos Crash The Super Bowl contest.

As you can see in the original footage, a lot of utility lines against the sky detract from the intended mood of the scene.  Fixing such a problem in a single photograph is a relatively easy task, but with moving HD video footage, the temporal quality of the shot must also be preserved.  Complicating things, the shot consists of a pretty big jib move with all sorts of objects in the foreground crossing over the axis of utility lines at various moments in the scene.  I had just a day to figure out how I was going to remove the unwanted elements and somehow manage to "keep it real."

With just a couple of days to turn the shot around, I employed Adobe After Effects and a third-party plugin from Boris FX, and set about the task of removing each line.  Unfortunately, there was no magic "utility line removal tool" to be found.  So, about 12 hours and over 16,000 keyframes later, the shot was done.

The finished spot is now online at both Perpombellar's and the Doritios sites above.  The top three vote winners in the contest air during the big game.

I love what I do.  No other field of work offers the kinds of opportunities to witness and participate in so many exciting settings.  Sometimes, I find myself shaking hands with greatness as I place a microphone on a world-famous personality.  Other times, I experience rare proximity to raw power, like setting up on the edge of the active runway while business and passenger jets land less than a football field away.  I still find it hard to believe some of the places I've gone to capture "the image."  The access that being a cinematographer and photographer can afford is rarely matched in any other profession.

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The footage I was gathering is in the process of post-production for an airport-speciifc product package by JCB.  As airports have common specific needs in terms of ground care, JCB has recognized that their unique Fastrac tractor product can handle several jobs usually requiring multiple pieces of slower and less flexible equipment.  A new marketing video on the subject will be finished at eThree Media within the next several weeks.

In the meanwhile, I'm giddily scrolling through a short stack of up-close and personal shots gathered at a major airport - the kind of stuff that makes me glad I'm an image maker.