Ergonomic and Operational Enhancements to C300 Mark II Abstract The original EOS C300 digital cine camcorder made its formal debut in November 2011. It surprised many with its novel ergonomic design – which had been carefully optimized for handheld shooting. While many expressed preference for a more conventional mechanical form factor, the C300 did indeed prove to be particularly popular among the world’s documentary cinematographers whose work generally does entail a great deal of handheld shooting.
2.0 2.1 ERGONOMICS Basic Mechanical Differences between the C300 Mark II and the C300 The original EOS C300 was physically tailored to be very compact and lightweight and has a form factor optimized for handheld shooting Figure 2 Conveying a sense of the size and form factor of the original C300 cine camcorder As can be seen from Figure 3 the new C300 Mark II is slightly longer and higher than the original C300. The basic form factor has been retained.
2.2 Rugged New Mechanical Design of the C300 Mark II The C300 is one of the world’s most popular cameras for documentary shooting. With the large numbers presently in use across the globe – under a vast variety of shooting conditions – it is no surprise that a multiplicity of “war stories” speak to the myriad of adventures and misadventures encountered during those countless productions. Anything that could possibly happen to lenses and cameras under all sorts of grueling conditions did indeed occur.
2.3 Mechanical Protection of the Imaging System Experiences gleaned from the EOS C300 camcorder exposed the hard reality that accidental physical shocks – as incurred when lens-camera systems fall from tripods or are subject to unexpected blows – can incur expensive damage to either the lens or camera imaging system (or both). Innovative mechanical design strategies have been introduced into the EOS C300 Mark II to ameliorate the possibilities of such damage.
2.4 Choice of Lens Mount The EOS C300 Mark II is delivered with a standard Canon EF mount. This mount can be removed (at a Canon service center) and be replaced by a choice of the standard PL mount or an alternative EF mount that has a positive locking system. Figure 7 2.
3.0 OPERATIONAL ENHANCEMENTS 3.1 Operational Enhancements Incorporated into the C300 Mark II An extensive three year sustained dialog with countless end-users of the first generation EOS C300 produced a wide-ranging litany of requests and recommendations for operational enhancements in a second generation cine camcorder system. They centered about increased ruggedness, more flexible configurability, and greater flexibilities to utilize third party accessories.
3.2 Dual Rotary Turret ND Control System The original C300 deployed a four-bayonet system of ND filters as shown in Figure 11 – offering four levels of light control to the image sensor. In general these covered most real world scene illumination situations. However, there were those who produced documentaries in regions of the world where midday sunlight levels were unusually intense and required more than the maximum of 6-stops.
3.3 Dual Pixel Focus Guide The Super 35mm single sensor digital cine camera has brought wonderful creativity to many genres of television program production, television commercial production, and theatrical motion picture production. The cinematographer is an integral part of the creative aspirations of directors and directors of photography in their intimate tactile manual interface with the lens focus control.
The viewfinder guiding indicator is a white colored cursor which can be positioned anywhere within the focusing area that constitutes an 80% horizontal and 80% vertical region of the onscreen image display – as shown in Figure 13. The guide cursor is moved by the cinematographer to overlay the specific subject within the scene that is to be sharply focused.
3.4 Dual Pixel CMOS Auto Focus The Focus Guide system just described is specifically intended to totally support the longestablished craftsmanship of the cinematographer whose manual control of focusing actions is an essential part of the creativity embodied in so many scenes. It is anticipated that the excellent imaging and recording capabilities of the C300 Mark II will see this camera used on many forms of high-end productions in moviemaking and in television.
Figure 15 Face detection in combination with Dual Pixel CMOS AF is a powerful new creative tool for certain forms of digital motion image production 3.5 EF Lens Communication with C300 Mark II The more than one hundred standard Canon EF lenses have a direct electronic communication with the C300 Mark II camera. Figure 16 The standard EF L series lenses (shown mounted on the C300 Mark II) have full electronic communication with the camera.
3.6 Wireless Control of Focusing The addition of wireless file-transmitter (WFT-E6A) enables the EOS C300 Mark II to function in multiple production applications. Utilizing dual 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz frequencies, remote control of the camera via a simple browser window is now possible via a compatible smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
Figure 18 Comparing the salient EVF image specifications of the C300 Mark II with that of the C300 on the left and showing an example of the noise-less OSD perimeter display on the right 3.8 Camera Assist Displays on the 3G SDI and HDMI Outputs Many requested the capability of showing the waveform monitor and principal camera settings (presently shown only on the 4-inch LCD monitor of the C300) on an external on-set reference monitor as well as in the camera monitor.
3.9 On-set Operational Systemization ` It is especially noteworthy that the operational capabilities of the C300 Mark have been further enhanced with an innovative on-set systemization that encompasses the new Canon 4K Reference Display DP V2410. A single 3G SDI interface transfers the 4K RAW output of the C300 Mark II to the display DP V2410 which internally deBayers this to facilitate live-on-set viewing.
REFERENCES [1] Canon White Paper: Image Performance Enhancements in the EOS C300 Mark II [2] Canon White Paper: Extended Recording Capabilities of the EOS C300 Mark II [3] Auto-Focus System for HDTV Field Lenses Laurence J. Thorpe, Yasuyuki Tomita, and Ken Ito SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal March 2008: Pages 22 – 29 [4] Specification S-2013-0 ACESproxy, an Integer Log Encoding of ACES Image Data Science & Technology Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Version 1.