BRAW recording on the Canon c300 Mkii, Autofocus Bcam to Ursa Mini Pro G2?

We test to see if 2015’s Canon c300 mkii with it’s still very solid autofocus can easily match in with the Ursa G2. We tried out the BRAW recording on the blackmagic video assist to see how it could help us bring these cameras together.

I love the Ursa G2, and let me say I love manual focus. I don’t need or want autofocus MOST of the time. But SOMETIMES I do. If I’m shooting an interview on my own I want to be able to sit next to the camera and give the interviewee my full attention without being worried that they’ve lent forward or backward out of focus. For fast paced events or corporate gimbal work having decent face tracking autofocus can save you a lot of time and enable to nail shots you might otherwise miss or require a larger crew (that the client doesn’t want to pay for).

We’ve had our eyes on the recent roll out of cameras including the Sony FX9, the Ursa 12k and the Canon c300mkiii. All look like superb cameras and we’d be happy owners of any of them I’m sure. But with 4.6k 120fps and that beautiful image from the Ursa Mini Pro G2 there is very little reason to upgrade right now.

However we have been thinking that having a solid auto-focus video camera would be a handy addition. Shane recently (a year or two ago) shot an Aussie Indie feature almost entirely on the Canon c300mkii. He had little to no camera department most of the time and one of the reasons they chose that camera was to make use of the auto-focus for some sequences. Not to mention a very solid 10-bit internal codec that kept the file sizes reasonable.

The big weakness of that camera upon release was the fact that it had no 60fps 4k, just 30. But we don’t need another 120 fps camera… we have one. What we are contemplating is purchasing a camera with decent face tracking autofocus for gimbal and interview shoots that ideally has internal ND’s, 10bit, 4k, decent onboard audio and nice color + respectable dynamic range.

The C300mkii (now much cheaper than when it first released) may very well be that camera. Now with BRAW support for this camera on the Blackmagic Design Video assist monitors I decided to test how easily it would be to get these cameras to match close enough for client work.