Shooting corporate and commercial video with the Cinema EOS advantage

"Why Canon? Because you just know with Canon equipment you are going to achieve what you set out to achieve." So says Luke Butler, company director and head of production at Nirvana Studios, a busy UK-based video production company with clients including Microsoft, Red Bull, Adidas, Boots, the Natural History Museum and many more. Nirvana uses exclusively Canon kit.

One reason for this is Canon's renowned colour science, particularly the way it handles skin tones. This was key to Nirvana adopting Canon kit in the first place, years ago now. "Our work is mainly corporate and commercial," says Luke, "but a lot of it involves filming people, so skin tones are really important." Canon tech's rendering of skin tones, he says, is "unrivalled in any lighting conditions, and the colour profiles match across all Canon cameras. It all works, and it just looks beautiful."

Boots, the UK's leading health and beauty retailer, is a regular client, with Nirvana producing a variety of content for its skincare and cosmetic range. "The client praises us every time," Luke reports, "saying how warm the skin looks. Our contact is a make-up artist, so she understands the part played by the lighting and make-up, but the Canon cameras we're using enable us to deliver an attractive finish that remains true to source. Our work looks so much better, with no effort really!

"We find ourselves getting quite a few clients in skincare now. I don't think that's a coincidence. A lot of it is simply down to the kit we use."

A recent production for this client was a 90-minute documentary on the science behind the skincare products. Much of it was shot in the summer in natural light, but it included interviews with scientists in their laboratories, as well as scenes in offices and luxury homes. "For some of the more dynamic scenes, where we didn't have much space and were running around, we used a Canon EOS R5 C on a gimbal," Luke says. "But a lot of it was shot with an EOS C300 Mark III on an EasyRig, so it all felt candid and real. We wanted the audience to feel part of it, gaining the knowledge as our presenter gained it.

"Clients these days want that immediacy, like in social videos, so we shot handheld but with the bigger cameras – documentary style but with a high-end look. As a result, it looked great but also felt real."

A key to this approach, and another reason for Nirvana's adoption of Canon tech, is the exceptional dynamic range achieved by the EOS C300 Mark III in particular, thanks to its breakthrough DGO sensor. Also found in the more compact EOS C70, this sensor takes two separate images at different amplifications in real time and then combines them in-camera into a single image, enabling it to deliver a remarkable 16+ stops of dynamic range with low noise.

Dynamic range was a pivotal factor also in another shoot, a product promo for Stone Cookers with celebrity chef Marco Pierre White. This took place in a barn in rural Bedfordshire used as a wedding venue – a perfect setting for the product because of its fashionable rustic ambience, Luke says, but with very low lighting. "Obviously we brought in some lighting, but we were limited in what we could do."

In this case the main camera was an EOS C400, and Luke admits "we pushed the camera to its limits in the lighting conditions, and were very impressed with the results. The Canon tech takes the work out of shooting and lifts it to another level."

In the Stone Cookers shoot, Nirvana's EOS C400 had an RF 35mm F1.4L VCM lens attached, one of Canon's new generation of hybrid RF lenses. "The lens was the hero of the shoot because we wanted that 35mm cinematic look," Luke says. He describes the new-generation lenses as "astonishing. Their optical quality is beautiful, and they are adaptable to any situation in the corporate/commercial world."

Nirvana recently used the RF 35mm F1.4L VCM prime lens and the RF 24-105mm F2.8L IS USM Z and RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM Z zoom lenses to film a promo video on sustainability for a major UK supermarket chain. "We used all three lenses on different cameras in the same scenes," Luke reveals, "and they perfectly complemented each other, with no variance in how the footage looked in post-production.

"You plan the scene according to where subjects are going to be, of course, but with those lenses there are no compromises – you don't have to move the camera with a particular lens to a particular angle. You gain so much flexibility, you can always make it work."

The light weight of the RF lenses was also a major benefit, Luke adds, making it possible to shoot handheld in a nimble, documentary style in the range of environments and conditions required for the video.

One location was a sprawling, covered strawberry farm with 1.5 million strawberry plants. "The farm had UV grow lights with a pink hue in one area, and natural light in another area," Luke reveals. "Then we shot in a transport depot in the rain, then indoors under tungsten lights in a supermarket – and yet all the footage blended seamlessly in grading. You can tell you're in a different environment, of course, but once graded it looks just as good in any environment."

For flexibility in post-production, the Nirvana team shoot in RAW, using Canon Log 2 on the bigger cameras, such as the EOS C300 Mark III or EOS C400, and Canon Log 3 on smaller cameras such as the EOS R5 C. With consistent colour science and a unified file structure across the entire Cinema EOS range, it's easy to match files in post. "Everything takes less time and effort in post-production, and the whole DIT process becomes so much smoother," Luke says.

Poor weather always presents challenges in commercial production, but that wasn't the only problem at the transport depot. One shot needed to be from a high angle without any platforms, cherry pickers or crane arms available – and for safety reasons, surrounded by moving vehicles, the crew couldn't simply shoot on a ladder. They improvised, using a heavy-duty lighting stand with a clamp to position the camera at the required height, running a cable down to the monitor.

"Autofocus was the hero, because we couldn't even touch the camera," Luke declares, "but the footage was perfect. It was 100% as if we were operating it.

"Canon's fast autofocus has been a major factor in helping us to get a lot of footage of things moving in the frame," Luke adds. For a canine health client, for example, the crew had to film dogs running around. "On most cameras we've used in the past, they'd have been completely blurry," Luke says. "Canon's autofocus has been a lifesaver."

Clients increasingly want everything in motion, Luke observes. Not long ago, Nirvana had to shoot fitness videos while running with the camera, where he says Canon's responsive autofocus and image stabilisation technologies helped "dramatically". Luke praises the adaptability of the more nimble Cinema EOS cameras such as the EOS C70, EOS C80 and EOS R5 C: "We can shoot in a more fluid, dynamic way, with the cameras in motion," he says.

In fact, Canon's cameras and lenses rise to any challenge. "What we shoot from one day to the next, week to week, is so different, but they're just so versatile. The ergonomics, the well thought out design, makes it so easy for filmmakers."

This ease of use was proved when Nirvana Studios filmed a session of the Sir David Amess UK Children's Parliament. Nirvana set up the cameras, but the camera crew were some of the children taking part, who were from the inaugural Sir David Amess UK Children's Parliament school, Saint Pierre in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.

"One of the cameras was an EOS C80, and it was so intuitive to use that an 11-year-old could shoot with it after about five minutes," Luke reveals. Many of the settings were configured in advance, but the kids could turn the cameras to follow what was happening and zoom in or out – easy using the touch screen to pull focus.

The session was simultaneously live streamed, all the cameras feeding seamlessly into the mixer, so there was no opportunity to correct mistakes in the edit. Thanks to the cameras' usability, unrivalled quality and dynamic range, however, there were no issues. "The result looked so polished, even though it was children filming it, that you'd assume it was a professional film crew!"

Features such as the motorised ND control are "a game-changer," Luke says. "With all this tech, filming is getting easier and easier, which is no bad thing. I can concentrate on other elements of the creative rather than the tech side."

For Luke, it's about both the quality of the output and the way Canon Cinema EOS cameras and lenses solve problems for him. "It all works together. Everything speaks to everything else, which enhances productivity. It almost takes the effort out of the work. Once you've learned the craft, the Canon cameras and lenses can then add so much more, taking the result to another level."