Helmut Kobler, Los Angeles Cameraman

Thanks to its Super35-sized sensor, it can throw the background out of focus even in close quarters like a small office. It's a great way to make interviews and other footage look cinematic.

Footage looks usable and even respectable at an ISO as high as 20000. You can record in near darkness and still get a decent image, which means you can shoot without lights in some cases, or at least with less lights.

The C300 weighs about 3 pounds. That makes it quick and easy to move the camera from setup to setup, and also shoot in small spaces (a car, etc.) where a bigger camera becomes unwieldy.

The C300's lightweight also makes it easy to use with small-scale camera sliders, jibs and other gear (Steadicam) that add a lot of production value but don't require extra crew to set up and operate.

The camera uses a huge variety of high-quality Canon lenses, including specialty lenses like macro, tilt/shift, extreme telephoto, and fish-eye that add production value.

DSLRs like the Canon 5D/7D can shoot with a shallow depth-of-field and are also small and light, but those cameras compromise image/sound in other ways. Fine patterns appear distorted in your footage (moire), the image can warble and warp during sharp movement (rolling shutter), there's no timecode, no professional audio inputs, very poor internal audio recording, no tools to judge exposure (like zebra patterns or waveform scopes), no neutral density filters to control exposure, etc. The C300 has none of these limitations, making workflow faster and a better-looking picture.

C300 lenses typically have a zoom magnification of 3x or 4x. My P2 Varicam's zoom lens has 13x zoom magnification, and can use a built-in lens doubler to go to 26x without losing too much image quality. That's why I wouldn't use the C300 to cover action that might require quickly going from wide angle to telephoto shots. I would have to constantly stop to change lenses.

The C300's Super35mm-sized sensor means that ultra-wide angle lenses lose a bit of their "wideness" (the same is true for other Super35 cameras like the Red, Sony F3, etc.) That's perfectly fine for the vast majority of projects, but it would be hard to produce the exaggerated wide angle effects that my Varicam does easily.

THe C300 can record two channels from XLR inputs. Two channels is fine for one and two person interviews, but when you need more than two mics— for instance, a three person interview, or a typical reality video scenario — then the C300 falls short. My P2 Varicam does better by recording 4 channels.