What happens when you get three working professionals together late at night with the Canon C300 camera and liquor? They shoot camera tests. And that’s exactly what happened when Rodney Charters, Drew Gardner and Lan Bui got together on New Years Eve. To test the C300’s 20,000 ISO capability, they shot a quick low-light test using an iPad for the key light. They also spent quite a bit of time discussing the camera in general; one theme they spent some time on is the effect low-light performance is having on film lighting…
With more sensitive camera sensors, your lights can be lower wattage. Lower wattage means less power, limiting the need for generators. It keeps lighting kits lighter, and sets cooler. One downside they mention is the fact that sometimes it’s hard to visually see the difference a lighting change makes, without looking at the camera monitor. Very interesting roundtable talk. You can watch the test footage and resulting discussion below.
20,000 ISO Low Light Test (using an iPad for light)
Test Technical Notes:
Canon C300
ISO 20,000
Canon 100mm f/2.8 IS L lens
f/2.8 aperture
1/25th shutter (360 degree)
Canon Log Gamma
Discussion Part 1:
In Part 1, DP Rodney Charters talks about loving the fact that you can push these new digital camera sensors beyond 1000 ISO. He mentions pushing the RED (I assume the MX/Epix sensor) to around 2,000 ISO, but stopping there as beyond started to show vertical fixed pattern noise. He says that the Alexa was usable at 2,000 ISO, and pushes up to 3,600 ISO without fixed pattern noise. As to the C300, Charters stated that they didn’t see any fixed pattern noise at 20,000 ISO.
Discussion Part 2:
Discussion Part 3: