With all the issues I'd had with the camera tests I found that I really liked the look of Canon footage but I always had the issue of audio recording with the cameras. So I looked into the video cameras which Canon produce as an option. I have been fortunate enough to use the Canon C300 before which is a 4K camera, however Victoria explained that the camera is too expensive for our budget. I then looked into the Canon C100 which is a smaller model and films in Full HD. I was told by a few film students at UCA Film Production that it's a classic documentary camera due to it's size and operating.I rented the camera for a week to test out how it is to operate. The camera is easy to get around as the menu screen is just like the Canon 60D and Canon 5D menu so I was already finding it easy to set up the camera. All the relevant settings (peaking, white balance, ISO, zebra, audio controls) are on the body which makes set up much easier as opposed to the DSLR's where I have to do into the the menu settings and change everything through there.
The lens mount for the Canon C100 is EF Mount so my own lens's, Tamron 24mm-70mm 2.8F EF and Canon 50mm 1.4F EF both work with the camera so not additional lens's need to be rented. The fact the camera can change lens's as well works for me as it allows me to change the look which I want to do with the interviews. The camera can also film both raw footage and raw C-Log footage which allows a large amount of grading to be done to the footage.
Below is the test footage from the Canon C100:
I chose to test the footage with C-Log as it would allow me to really bring out the colours and detail in the footage. The first test was to see what the camera is like in very low light conditions and it wasn't great as you can see both the raw and graded footage doesn't look great. However, this was in very low light conditions (only a small basic house light, energy saver as the source) and I just needed to see how the camera dealt with next to no light.
The next test was outside in natural light and I wanted to see the quality of the C-Log footage both ungraded and graded and this didn't disappoint. Although the ungraded is still milky and not as detailed it has some nice colours and you can even see the colour in the background of the sun set hitting the sky. The graded was much more what I wanted as it allowed me to really bring the colours and the detail in the footage out and this was with basic grading so if I had spent more time on this I could have gotten much more.
With the next test this was more of testing for theatre lighting. The camera without a source light you can't see anything and the footage isn't really good. I added in a tungsten light as that's the closest to theatre lighting I could get. Really, I should have waited till it was dark outside and then brought out 2-3 of these lights to light a subject as the area is more open and it would be a better test for the lighting. However, I feel it worked as the camera holds up nicely with the light.
Finally, the test I did was with the raw footage without C-Log. I simply wanted to see if the detail and colour is retained with the footage without C-Log and it is. Although C-Log is good, it will offer a large amount of work in post-production and it's not really needed for a documentary as the raw footage offers the colours I want and I can bring up the colours slightly in post if need be. The camera has 2 XLR inputs allowing me to either have 1 radio mic and a shotgun mic attached or 2 radio mics so audio works much better for this camera.
I also attached the camera to my rig and it fits perfectly and evenly balances with the shoulder rig and works well with the follow focus so operating the camera handheld will be easier. There's an option to have both the LCD screen and an external monitor attached so Jemma can also watch back the footage while I operate.
I'm confident with this camera and believe it' the right choice for the main camera for the documentary.
Decision: This is the main camera for the project
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