A lovely C300 Shoot

Wow! I had an absolute blast shooting some interviews for Johnson & Johnson today with two Canon C300s. We set up shop in the lovely Lambertville Station Hotel after moving every piece of furniture around in our suite (the bed weighed as much as a juvenile elephant) and then rolled right into shooting. The interviewees were experts in the rapidly-evolving field of neuroscience. Translation: very, very smart people! Here are some video stills from the uncorrected Canon Log & then a quick & dirty Color pass.

As this was shot on a white cyc, the C300's wave form monitor was such a blessing to have. I could tell precisely how even the background lighting was at any time. I exposed the cyc at right about 85%, wanting to reserve the option to control its precise brightness in post without clipping. We used two 4x4 Kinos to light the cyc, a 400 watt Joker through a chimera for key, a 4x2 Kino for fill, and a 1x1 LitePanel for the kicker.

The interviewees needed to be entirely in focus, and I also wanted to make the most of the camera's dynamic range, so I set my exposure for 800 ISO at f/5.6 at 1/48 sec for the majority of the shoot. For lenses, we had a Canon 70-200 2.8 L series ("A" Cam) and a set of Zeiss ZF primes ("B" Cam). "A" Cam stayed right around 70mm most of the time, while I used the 35mm for "B" Cam.

It was fantastic being able to put this exciting camera to the test. Since we've just begun post, I can't make any definitive statements yet about the footage but I will say that the camera was a joy to operate. It just makes sense!

Thanks to John Draus of Draus Productions for his lighting expertise and the BTS photos, and to Steve Gifford of Pretty Damn Sweet for allowing me to DP!

The two beasties

Hamming it up with Steve