When it comes to shooting commercials for prestige car manufacturers, anything less than perfection is not good enough. The vehicles have to look flawless and the location awe-inspiring, bathed in incredible light. To generate excitement, a whole range of shots are needed, often in a very short space of time – everything from high-speed vehicle-to-vehicle shots and aerial captures, to panning and long-lens shots of the car in motion.

With no room for error and little time for reshoots, a car commercial is one of the most high-pressure commissions you can take on. So, when filmmaker Brett Danton was asked to shoot an advert for the F-PACE, Jaguar's luxury SUV, he needed a camera he could rely on, and he jumped at the chance to become the first to shoot with the Canon EOS C500 Mark II.

"Car clients are very particular," he says. "You can see anything that goes wrong, any reflections that aren't right. There's always lots of sky in the shots, so you can see any degradation there. It's a whole new level. Jaguar has a very specific list of cameras it will allow its commercials to be shot on, and it doesn't want silver cars to look grey. I had to get everything right first time."

Using the Canon EOS C500 Mark II instead of the larger EOS C700 FF also meant the camera could be rigged up with monitors and follow-focus rigs, or stripped back to make it as light and compact as possible for use on a drone or gimbal. The camera was attached to a Russian Arm mounted on top of another Jaguar F-PACE to film the 'hero' car, as well as being mounted to a versatile Ronin 2 gimbal and then bolted to a drone.

The fast, user-interchangeable lens mount offered the ultimate in flexibility. It was quick and easy to swap between the latest Canon Sumire PL-mount primes, Canon CN-E primes and Canon EF-mount lenses, including super-telephotos that work perfectly with the advanced Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus.

Impressive results

With a quick turnaround required for broadcast just days after filming, Brett did a quick colour grade before showing the client a rough cut for approval. "Shooting in available light is the best test of a camera's performance, but I look for an amazing image that the client is going to look at, say 'wow' and then book me again," he says. "With the Jaguar shoot, we took the footage from the camera and dropped on an LUT to give the client a rough idea of how it was going to look, and I got the reaction I wanted – especially with the silver car, which looks incredible.

"I shot everything in 5.9K as I wanted to see it on a big screen, and taking it down to 4K cleans it all up. The dynamic range is crazy, over 15 stops for sure. Filming in Cinema RAW Light, I shot at the base of ISO800 the entire time and in the edit added no noise reduction, yet I can't see any noise at all. The camera performed and made my life easy."

Brett was impressed with the results and says he'll be using the Canon EOS C500 Mark II in the future. "The EOS C500 Mark II has the same sensor as the EOS C700 FF, so there's consistent quality," he says. "You can build the camera to the shape you need to make it work for that particular environment. I'd use the Canon EOS C500 Mark II for 90% of my work now and go to the EOS C700 FF with its RAW recorder for SFX work when I need to pull out every last bit of data if the post house requests it, or if I need more choices on SDI output to send more signals out on set.

"The Canon EOS C500 Mark II is a camera I would now happily use for everything, either on its own or with the EOS C700 FF – everything matches up beautifully."