It was a challenging assignment even for a veteran shooter of car commercials. A major ad agency for a leading automaker asked cinematographer Dana Christiaansen if he could shoot three full commercials in 48 hours on the streets of Atlanta. The spots would include nighttime car-to-car photography of a moving vehicle, close-ups of a celebrity spokesman at the wheel and scripted vignettes. Christiaansen's solution to this challenge was to rely on the exceptional HD image quality and extraordinary low-light performance of the highly mobile EOS C300 digital cinema camera from Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions.
Christiaansen with a Canon EOS C300 cinema camera outfitted with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM standard zoom lens.
Testing the Cinematic Image Quality
Christiaansen learned first-hand of the Canon EOS C300 cinema camera's many advantages when he shot an 11-minute film using six EOS C300 cameras, a wide selection of Canon EF series prime lenses and the Canon CN-E 30-300mm T2.95-3.7 L S cinema zoom lens. The film included nighttime street scenes of San Francisco, action shots on board moving cable cars, POV angles from speeding motorcycles, daytime footage from Yosemite National Park and sophisticated effects shots captured on a green-screen stage.
To confirm that the Canon EOS C300 camera could provide the performance needed for this ambitious project, the production process for the film began with extensive testing.
We shot a series of lighting tests on a little green-screen stage of a young girl with fairly dark skin, a color chart and a black flag, Christiaansen said. We shot the ISO right on up to 20,000 in these steps - 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800. (The full ISO range of the EOS C300 camera is from ISO 320 to 20,000.) The latitude test was shot on a backlit-latitude chart. I had 13 shots of detail. We took that EOS C300 camera data back, processed it at the studio and were amazed by how good it looked on their big projection screen.
Working in a production style Christiaansen called lean and mean, he and his director averaged 50 to 60 set-ups per day (and night) shooting with Canon EOS C300 cinema cameras in both hand-held and Steadicam configurations.
The EOS C300 camera is very light and its ergonomics are good, he related. We shot an entire green-screen sequence using the studio pre-visualization system, a fairly radical night scene in very low-light and then a day-exterior sequence. The camera's latitude is excellent and our ability to pull keys on the green screen was fantastic at all the different ISOs. Every camera has its advantages in different areas; we found the EOS C300 camera is ahead of the curve in terms of low-light capability. We shot the entire night sequence in San Francisco at 3200, which allowed us to usually be around a 2.8 on the lens. The image quality of Canon lenses is crisp and the Canon 30-300mm high-speed zoom was incredible. The combination of Canon optics and the EOS C300 camera's image quality, low-light sensitivity and lack of noise made the film look wonderful on a 42-foot movie theatre screen.
Car Chase
Confident of the capabilities of the Canon EOS C300 cinema camera, Christiaansen knew it would be the perfect solution for his next major assignment - a challenging trio of car commercials requiring cinematic image quality, extreme mobility, lots of night shots and a production schedule of just 48 hours. Christiaansen tackled the job with three EOS C300 cinema cameras and a run and gun style of shooting consisting of him operating the A camera, another DP on the B camera for extra coverage of master shots and vignettes of a celebrity spokesman, and a third operator acting as a hungry wolf with a great eye, capturing inventive wide-angle atmosphere shots and other B-roll. The team used minimal lighting powered by batteries and a small putt-putt generator in the back of a pickup truck when additional lighting was needed.
The EOS C300 camera has such incredible low-light sensitivity and such great image quality at 3200 ISO, we were able to shoot in almost any environment as long as there were street lights or something that gave us some ambient light, Christiaansen explained. The more lights there are - like storefronts and shops and interior lighting - the better it looked. We walked around using battery-operated LED lighting and two small 125-watt HMI par lights. We didn't need a load of camera cars following us around with big generators, cabling and a bunch of gear to light up the streets. Additionally, battery power on the EOS C300 camera was never an issue. We were able to work fast and clean.
In combination with its low-light capabilities, the Canon EOS C300 camera's lightweight, highly mobile camera body (weighing less than four pounds), was also a major benefit to the production team's ability to capture ample amounts of challenging coverage in a short space of time.
The EOS C300 camera is so small we were able to be very flexible, he noted. It was easy to get handheld angles inside the car for interior-driving dialogue scenes of our spokesperson. We used Canon prime lenses in there. The lightweight design of the EOS C300 cameras made it easy to rig them to the outside of the cars as well. We hung an EOS C300 camera off a remote head on a spring-mount suspension arm bolted to our pickup truck for moving car-to-car shots, both leading and chasing the car we were photographing, as it drove through the streets. You can also bungee-cam' the EOS C300 camera very easily off of anything. The camera performed exactly as I expected it would and the spots came out great.
Highly Important Features
Conceived and designed by Canon based on extensive input from the motion-picture production community worldwide, and incorporating advanced technologies der
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It was a challenging assignment even for a veteran shooter of car commercials. A major ad agency for a leading automaker asked cinematographer Dana Christiaansen if he could shoot three full commercials in 48 hours on the streets of Atlanta. The spots would include nighttime car-to-car photography of a moving vehicle, close-ups of a celebrity spokesman at the wheel and scripted vignettes. Christiaansen's solution to this challenge was to rely on the exceptional HD image quality and extraordinary low-light performance of the highly mobile EOS C300 digital cinema camera from Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions.
