Dana Christiaansen Relies on Canon EOS C300 Digital Cinema Cameras for ...

Dana Christiaansen

A vital ad group for a heading automaker recently asked cinematographer Dana Christiaansen if he could fire 3 full commercials in 48 hours on a streets of Atlanta. The spots would embody night car-to-car photography of a relocating vehicle, close-ups of a luminary orator during a circle and scripted vignettes. It was a severe assignment even for a maestro shooter of automobile commercials. For picture capture, Christiaansen incited to Canon’s EOS C300 digital cinema camera.

Christiaansen recently shot an 11-minute film regulating 6 EOS C300 cameras, a far-reaching preference of Canon EF array primary lenses and a Canon CN-E 30-300mm T2.95-3.7 L S cinema wizz lens. The film enclosed night travel scenes of San Francisco, movement shots on house relocating wire cars, POV angles from speeding motorcycles, daytime footage from Yosemite National Park and worldly effects shots prisoner on a greenscreen stage.

To endorse that a Canon EOS C300 camera could yield a opening indispensable for this desirous project, a prolongation routine for a film began with endless testing.

“We shot a array of lighting tests on a tiny greenscreen theatre of a immature lady with sincerely dim skin, a tone draft and a black flag,” Christiaansen said. “We shot a ISO right on adult to 20,000 in these stairs – 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800. The embodiment exam was shot on a backlit embodiment chart. we had 13 shots of detail. We took that EOS C300 camera information back, processed it during a studio and were vacant by how good it looked on their large projection screen.”

Working in a prolongation character Christiaansen called “lean and mean,” he and his executive averaged 50 to 60 set-ups per day (and night) sharpened with C300 cinema cameras in both hand-held and Steadicam configurations.

“The EOS C300 camera is unequivocally light and a ergonomics are good,” he explained. “We shot an whole greenscreen method regulating a studio pre-visualization system, a sincerely radical night stage in unequivocally low-light and afterwards a day extraneous sequence. The camera’s embodiment is glorious and a ability to lift keys on a greenscreen was illusory during all a opposite ISOs.”

Facing a severe contingent of automobile commercials requiring cinematic picture quality, impassioned mobility, lots of night shots and a prolongation report of only 48 hours, Christiaansen relied on 3 C300 cinema cameras and a run-and-gun character of sharpened consisting of him handling a “A” camera, another DP on a “B” camera for additional coverage of master shots and vignettes of a luminary spokesman, and a third user behaving as a “hungry wolf with a good eye,” capturing resourceful wide-angle atmosphere shots and other B-roll. The group used minimal lighting powered by batteries and a tiny generator in a behind of a pickup lorry when additional lighting was needed.

“The EOS C300 camera has such implausible low-light attraction and such good picture peculiarity during 3200 ISO, we were means to fire in roughly any sourroundings as prolonged as there were travel lights or something that gave us some ambient light,” Christiaansen explained. “The some-more lights there are – like storefronts and shops and interior lighting – a improved it looked. We walked around regulating battery-operated LED lighting and dual tiny 125-watt HMI standard lights. We didn’t need a bucket of camera cars following us around with large generators, cabling and a garland of rigging to light adult a streets.”

In multiple with a low-light capabilities, a C300 camera’s light weight was also a vital advantage to a prolongation team’s ability to constraint plenty amounts of severe coverage in a brief space of time.

“The EOS C300 camera is so tiny we were means to be unequivocally flexible,” he noted. “It was easy to get handheld angles inside a automobile for interior-driving discourse scenes of a spokesperson. We used Canon primary lenses in there. The lightweight pattern of a EOS C300 cameras done it easy to supply them to a outward of a cars as well. We hung an EOS C300 camera off a remote conduct on a spring-mount cessation arm bolted to a pickup lorry for relocating car-to-car shots, both heading and chasing a automobile we were photographing, as it gathering by a streets. You can also ‘bungee-cam’ a EOS C300 camera unequivocally simply off of anything.”

Christiaansen reported that he shot all of a footage in Canon Log. “Coming from a film background, we am used to sharpened a good unprotected disastrous and afterwards finishing with a colorist,” he said. “Canon Log is a good approach to fire for removing a best picture peculiarity out of a camera. On-board CF label recording adds so most to a usability of a camera. With Canon Log we can shoot, lift a CF label out of a EOS C300 camera and feast it directly into whatever modifying complement we wish to use. It opens adult natively and we go to work on it right afterwards and there. Editors and producers unequivocally like that. You can also record out of a SDI pier in an even improved format if we wish to.”

Article source: http://www.artlyst.com/articles/london-art-fair-annouces-photo50-line-up

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Dana Christiaansen Relies on Canon EOS C300 Digital Cinema Cameras for ...