GEAR
THE GREEN SCENE
CANON EOS C400
Why rent? New and in very high demand, so hard to get hold of used What else might you need? RF-fit glass Canon’s C400 is the first Cinema EOS to feature the large RF mount. It’s versatile and packed with all Canon’s know-how gleaned from its full-frame mirrorless and high-end cinema ranges and is very competitively priced. At £7799/$7999, it’s about the same as the C300 Mark III and significantly less than the C500 Mark II, which has already been slashed in price from its original £16,999/$15,999. That means the C400 is hard to get hold of, and to get the best out of it you’ll need some RF-fit lenses too. The C400 is capable of up to 2.1Gbps bit rate thanks to its high-quality setting, squeezing all the data from the sensor. In 4K, the C400 can reach 120p – although it uses a Super 35 crop if shooting Raw. Some of the best results are using 4K oversampled from the 6K sensor, which opens up more frame rates. There’s 6K Raw for ultimate image quality or 4K/120p full-frame for super slow-motion.
The C400 will probably go down in history as a landmark camera for Canon, where it put itself back at the top of the pile for many different productions. It
has stunning AF, lots of slow-motion options, great colour science and the controls of a camera designed for shooting professionally, so it’s perfect for rental.
ZEISS NANO PRIMES
Why rent? A superfast set of compact primes with sharp rendering What else might you need? Follow focus, VND or matte box Zeiss has long been the go-to prime lens set for serious filmmakers with the CP.2 range, which was superseded by the more compact and higher-quality CP.3 range. Now the German brand offers the even faster Nano Prime range, the first high- speed T1.5 cine lenses made specifically for mirrorless full-frame cameras. Initially available in Sony E-mount, the Nano lenses are compact and light, available in 18, 24, 35, 50, 75 and 100mm. The optical design delivers an extremely shallow depth-of-field, even in the wide- angle range, with smooth bokeh and focus fall-off aided by a 12-bladed aperture. There’s a consistent positioning of the focus and iris rings across all focal lengths for quick lens changes. The calibrated focus scales are easy to read and a long 280° focus rotation aids more precise focus pulling. The iris ring features 90° rotation and a non-linear scale which can enable fine adjustments. Instead of a separate plug-in unit to record data, the Nanos have an electronic interface in the lens mount, just like most AF lenses. It also means focal length info
can be passed onto any camera that uses it for in-body image stabilisation. The Nano Primes can also have their mounts changed to fit different cameras, but only in other mirrorless mounts.
The lenses can be bought as a complete E-mount set including a lens case at £24,000/$25,950 or individually from £4200/$4490, so make an ideal rental option for many.
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PRO MOVIEMAKER
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