The Canon EOS C400 in a low-light, virtual production
Experienced filmmaker and director Brett Danton wholeheartedly echoes Sarah's assessment. Brett has worked on global campaigns for major brands including Jaguar Land Rover, Emirates Airlines and Coca-Cola, and has shot with Canon Cinema EOS cameras extensively. Like Sarah, he also used the Canon EOS C400 in a virtual production, filming live action against a bank of LED screens.
In this case, these were displaying 3D background scenes created using generative AI. These were designed to bring to life creative concepts by participants in the WPP Creative Tech Apprenticeship programme, which is designed to equip passionate creatives with next-generation technological skills, preparing them for careers in advertising, marketing and production.
"The scenes were pretty dark," Brett says, "and we had minimal lighting, working with the light coming off the volume stage. In these conditions, I would expect cameras to struggle, but the EOS C400, with its phenomenal 16 stops of latitude, gave us fantastic colour rendition and depth of image. I would normally expect quite a bit of noise, and I didn't see any. The 6K full-frame BSI sensor and built-in Low Pass filter eliminate moire.
"It's the next step up in image quality. Normally we have to go in [in post-production] and push the footage quite a bit harder to get the colours and detail out of it, but here, honestly, other than applying a LUT and a light grade, we haven't really had to do too much work to get out a really, really beautiful image."