Color balancing Scarlet-X and Canon C300

[Asif Limbada]

Cool stuff, Sanjin. Love what you are doing.

Just wanted to say, don't like the negativity created by taking sides.

My two cents, R3D kicks ass. And when you limit a USD 16K camera to 8bit it is just plain, cheap in a expensive way LOL!

BTW heard C300 works great for low light, less noise at 20K ISO.

But loving where this thread is going. :-)

[Les Dittert]

link to c300 does not work. Spaces in path are not usually a good idea .

[Sanjin Jukic]

Hey Sanjin

Down loaded the red frame grab fine cant get get the other link to work.

It's happening many times with that kind of typo when you have too many computers around.

Now it's corrected!!!

Cool stuff, Sanjin. Love what you are doing.

Just wanted to say, don't like the negativity created by taking sides.

My two cents, R3D kicks ass. And when you limit a USD 16K camera to 8bit it is just plain, cheap in a expensive way LOL!

BTW heard C300 works great for low light, less noise at 20K ISO.

But loving where this thread is going. :-)

Have more from today and also to give all of you a short original video footage (about three seconds) in R3D and MXF!!!

Stay tuned.

[Les Dittert]

That's why this thread is still open.
Try posting about the j v c 4 K five thousand dollar camera, and watch the thread be shut off right away. I posted a link to some stills from it, and that's what happened.
Does that tell you anything ?

"a tiny camera, more consumer like than professional can stand alongside any Red camera"
- António Fagundes

Did you miss the fact that this "consumer" camera costs almost exactly the same as the Red Scarlet-X? It should be able to stand right along side the Scarlet otherwise it would have been laughed out of the market.
Price of Canon C300 from B&H - $15,999
Price of Red Scarlet-X AL Canon Mount Package - $15,965

[Mohamed Younis]

Rodrigo,

yes I owe both cameras.

And naturally have a learning curve with both of them at the beginning.

Also by my own experience with RED ONE M and MX after using ND1.2 you get a serious troubles with IR pollution and color shift even if you use a special IRND filter aka hot mirror from any brand.

At the beginning of this test I'll try with 85N9±CircPola and than later with ND1.2+IR±CircPola.

More or less they are two very different cameras and can perfectly compensate to each other.

It looks very similar if you would be able to shoot with two different film stocks and then your output format is mainly 2K or HD.

I'm interested if you had to sell one and keep the other which would you keep and why?

[Sanjin Jukic]

I'm interested if you had to sell one and keep the other which would you keep and why?

No doubts if ever I have to sell one of them than C300 would be the first candidate.

[Sanjin Jukic]

As I promised before right now I'll give you some of the original files that you can try out to match and see differences between the two cameras for yourself.

But also right away must add one very important fact that both cameras should be color balanced or tweaked in hardware before any shooting start (in camera).

That means my first approach in this tread was not so much scientific and maybe I will do it next time more properly when I have find a time and also some of additional equipment

(two of the same wide gamut color monitors with waveform built-in, some of other colorimetry measure instruments, software, etc,...).

Second phase of the color balancing is a kind of matching grade between the two images shot on those two different cameras.

The starting point is use of specially made 1D LUTs and 3D LUTs.

At the moment this discussion I would leave to some of other experts at the forum and maybe come to that again but later.

Let's go back to the main comparison topic between the two cameras.

How they can compare?

Which camera is better?

Just at one very simple sentence to answer that RED Scarlet-X is in a comparison to Canon C300 much better large format digital cinema camera.

How?

Simply one image from Scarlet-X looks better, stronger and more serious at any terms of IQ (Image Quality).

The only one thing that C300 beats Scarlet-X is in a low light shooting situation when you would need a higher exposure than EI ISO 1280.

But in the case that you can afford to bring more light in a shooting filed than there is no any certain problem to stay with Scarlet at EI ISO 800 and shoot with it very comfortably in those particular conditions.

Also somebody could argue that C300 has more pleasant colors out of the box but that's a really matter of taste and must say that Scarlet-X image has a unique and very beautiful colors.

About other technical comparison between the specs I don't need to talk so much about and anyway you know that maybe even better.

So let's make some of the original files from both cameras to finally talk for itself and those were shot side by side in my comparison tests last week.

Below there are some short video shots at duration between two and four seconds of each in the original RED R3D and Canon MXF files to download at the links you can find it below the images.


Shot on Scarlet-X with Leica R Vario Elmarit 21-35mm f/3.5-4.


Shot on Scarlet-X with Leica R Vario Elmarit 21-35mm f/3.5-4 (detail at 200% zoom from 4K, no any aliasing/moire artifacts).

Download R3D short footage zip 47.6MB >>>




Shot on Canon C300 with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8.


Shot on Canon C300 with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 (detail at 200% zoom from HD 1080p, moire/aliasing artifacts are there).

Download MXF short footage zip compression 15.1MB >>>




Shot on Scarlet-X with Leica R Vario Elmarit 21-35mm f/3.5-4.


Shot on Scarlet-X with Leica R Vario Elmarit 21-35mm f/3.5-4 (detail at 200% zoom from 4K, some of mosquito noise is less visible).

Download R3D short footage zip compression 50.9MB >>>




Shot on Canon C300 with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8.


Shot on Canon C300 with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 (detail at 200% zoom from HD 1080p, a lot of mosquito noise are obviously visible).

Download MXF short footage zip compression 12.1MB >>>




Shot on Scarlet-X with Leica R Vario Elmarit 21-35mm f/3.5-4.

Download R3D short footage zip compression 161.1MB >>>




Shot on Canon C300 with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8.

Download MXF short footage zip compression 33.9MB >>>




Shot on Scarlet-X with Leica R Vario Elmarit 21-35mm f/3.5-4.

Download R3D short footage zip compression 113.1MB >>>




Shot on Canon C300 with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8.

Download MXF short footage zip compression 24.9MB >>>




Shot on Scarlet-X with Leica R Vario Elmarit 21-35mm f/3.5-4, with Nick Shaw's REDGamma3 1D LUT FCP 7 plug in.

Download R3D short footage zip compression 71.1MB >>>




Shot on Canon C300 with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 with Nick Shaw's c300 1D LUT FCP 7 plug in.

Download MXF short footage zip compression 18.5MB >>>

[Sanjin Jukic]

I guess there is a lot of people that would like to buy that camera. But most people here are on a different mindset. I love the fact that you went out, actually bought the camera and did such extended tests. It's the right thing to do. So keep it up do not believe what you hear, not even what you see, since hands on experience will always be king.

When you got this one sold I would like you to go out and buy the sony F65 I really would love to see some side by side testing. The rumors I heard around that one, (there is one in sweden) is that it looks horrible but, then again, thats just what I heard :)

It's a great camera for documentaries, run and gun work, and when stability issues are a priority. If I only had 15k and I could get only one camera which I plan to work on. The C300 would be a strong contender. Sadly, it's not fitting for my line of work.
I might PM you if a friend is interested.
Cheers

For Low light shooting this camera is leader on its price range. A great companion for a Scarlet for 1080p output.

Guys, please remember that posts in the for-sale section should only be made when you have a concrete inquiry about the object for sale. No discussions please.

Merci.

Thanks Martin,

I moved the discussion here at the tread it should actually belong to.

Guys you force me again to justify and elaborate the main reason for my sale of C300.

Also if I not sell it immediately as wanted than I will not be in any panic or even get crazy about it.

So let me show you the good, the bad and the ugly of C300 in my comparison test with Scarlet-X.

The first good thing is a bit better image of C300 in low light at EI 6400 ISO.


Both cameras shot with Leica R Summilux 50mm f/1.4 @ f2.8, EI 6400 ISO, 1/48, click at the image to enlarge in HD.

The second good thing is no any IR pollution with C300 using the same value @ ND 1.2 plus extra Circ-Pola (value as a 0.3 ND) on both cameras.


The woman's black coat is a really black at C300's part of the image above but IR polluted with Scarlet-X.

The bad thing is the moire as a spatial aliasing artifact at the house facade that shawn up at C300 but no any at Scarlet image below.


Shot on Canon C300 with Canon EF 24-70mm L zoom and on Scarlet-X with Leica R 21-25mm f/3.5, (both details 200% enlarged).

The ugly thing with C300 is the sensor blooming shawn up here at the lake water surface like a green blow outs and on Scarlet-X there was no any similar artifacts found.


Shot on Canon C300 with Canon EF 24-70mm L zoom and on Scarlet-X with Leica R 21-25mm f/3.5-4, click at the image to enlarge in HD.

[Martin Weiss]

That's why this thread is still open.
Try posting about the j v c 4 K five thousand dollar camera, and watch the thread be shut off right away. I posted a link to some stills from it, and that's what happened.
Does that tell you anything ?

Les, I know that conspiratorial theories are fun; but the reason this thread here has not been closed was because it talks about using a RED camera with another camera. Threads that merely discuss other cameras do get shut down, regardless of how much the camera costs. It's all about keeping the focus of reduser centered on well, users of RED cameras. Plenty of other places to discuss non-RED cameras, such as DVXuser (which is owned by the same company that runs reduser.)

[Peter Moretti]

Andrew, this is not a rant from me at all. Its just that I have shot with the C300 on various high contrast scenes and nothing even near as that ever came up, never. I don't want to rant, but I really like the C300 image, more than the MX image from the Scarlet.

Look, I'm sorry, but I've seen the footage of both cameras on huge screens. The Red footage at Red Studios and the Canon footage at Canon's event at Paramount. Both companies had their opportunity to show their very best. There is simply no way, shape, form, chance, possibility, or scenario in which anyone could say that the C300 footage is better. And to think that a 50 Mbs MPEG-2 4:2:2 8-bit image is going to trounce/best/match/approach Redcode is simply delusional. For that to happen would take a technological miracle worthy of submission to peer reviewed scientific journals.

In terms of fast turnaround and light weight workflow requirements, the C300 is a hands down winner. In terms of IQ, the Red dominates by a very significant margin, esp. when you blow the images up. That's just a fact. Unless someone wants to argue that 8-bit color looks better than 16-bit color.

If shooting reality TV, the C300 is a clear WINNER. But if someone shooting a feature chooses a C300 over a Red and they aren't being paid by Canon to do so, they are nuts.