C200: C200 or C300 II?

C

Crevice

Active member
I was set on the C200, even have it pre-ordered. But, as I sit here and wait, now I am starting to 2nd guess myself and I now wonder if a c300 ii is a better choice.
I shoot weddings and short mini-doc type films for folks that want to show off their business or hobbies. I also want to get into music videos, but I have never done that before. The main reasons I want the c200 over the c300 is because of 4k 60p and the updated ergonomics and new touch screen. RAW is great, but the storage space it takes up might not be feasible for longer shoots. 4k 60p would allow me to get beautiful slow motion 4k shots, something the c300ii won't do.

Thoughts? Also, does the c200 have better autofocusing than the c300ii? Any discussion on this will be helpful. The cost between the 2 is not a factor here, but sticking with one of these choices is. I am not interested in an FS7/Ursa, etc. I like the canon look.
 
Crevice said:
I was set on the C200, even have it pre-ordered. But, as I sit here and wait, now I am starting to 2nd guess myself and I now wonder if a c300 ii is a better choice.
I shoot weddings and short mini-doc type films for folks that want to show off their business or hobbies. I also want to get into music videos, but I have never done that before. The main reasons I want the c200 over the c300 is because of 4k 60p and the updated ergonomics and new touch screen. RAW is great, but the storage space it takes up might not be feasible for longer shoots. 4k 60p would allow me to get beautiful slow motion 4k shots, something the c300ii won't do.

Thoughts? Also, does the c200 have better autofocusing than the c300ii? Any discussion on this will be helpful. The cost between the 2 is not a factor here, but sticking with one of these choices is. I am not interested in an FS7/Ursa, etc. I like the canon look.
Click to expand...

Do you need 10-bit 4:2:2? Timecode? Light weight?

Not needing RAW, you have nixed the C200's most distinctive feature and if I were going to shoot weddings and docs, things that would actually be hurt by a RAW workflow, I'd lean towards the C300 II.
 
Stick with the C200. If you are doing any type of event work, shooting 4K to SD cards is going to be much cheaper than stocking up on CFast 2.0. The primary benefits of the C300 II are what Fahnon mentioned. The C300 II is a better for shooting for clients as it has more recording options, monitor outputs, multi camera and sound sync. The C200 is a better camera otherwise.
 
cpreston said:
Stick with the C200. If you are doing any type of event work, shooting 4K to SD cards is going to be much cheaper than stocking up on CFast 2.0. The primary benefits of the C300 II are what Fahnon mentioned. The C300 II is a better for shooting for clients as it has more recording options, monitor outputs, multi camera and sound sync. The C200 is a better camera otherwise.
Click to expand...

Can you not record lower bitrate MP4 to the SD cards on the C300 II? I've always rented and always had CFast with the kit and so never had to look for the option. Yeah if you have to use CFast all the time on C300 II that changes my answer...
 
C200 hands down. You need the 4k 60p even at 8bit 420... Slow motion and shallow depth of field are the bread and butter of wedding videos and even documentary B-Roll. C300 II if you are doing anything "bigger".
 
You can get C100 level 2K onto the SD card on the C300II. I actually use it as a deliverable, but it is meant to be a proxy. No 4K on the SD.
 
cpreston said:
You can get C100 level 2K onto the SD card on the C300II. I actually use it as a deliverable, but it is meant to be a proxy. No 4K on the SD.
Click to expand...

Huh... Had no idea. Well then yeah unless you need broadcast specs and/or timecode (which can be big deals if you NEED them), I'm not sure what the appeal would be with the C300 II over the C200.
 
Different strokes for different folks. I do mostly short documentary, behind-the-scenes stuff, occasional wedding, etc. and I opted to cancel my #1 spot pre-order for a C200 and snag a C300II.

For me it came down to:

The C200 has raw, 4K 60p, a touch-screen for AF, and a smaller body with the XLRs on-body.

vs.

The C300II has a robust non-raw 4K codec, ability to shoot 1080P at better than 35Mb, dual CFast slots, multiple SDI outs, and is proven and well-respected.

The C200 is a great cam, but I also didn't want a situation where my only choice for better than 8-bit 35Mbps 1080P (I still shoot a bit of stuff in 1080P) was to shoot 1Gbps raw and transcode it down to something to deliver. I also hate that the raw is limited to DCI 4K... I nearly NEVER shoot DCI 4K, almost always UHD and I want to see what I'm shooting in the VF or on the LCD and not have to imagine cropping off 100 pixels on each side.

The C300II also seems less picky about it's CFast cards. I snagged four Transcend CFX600 256GB cards from Amazon UK for $200 each delivered (in 2 days!). That's 5.5 hours of CFast for $800. 4 EgoDisks would have cost me $1200 and given me what? 90 minutes?

I have a GH5 for 4Kp60 (and 1080p180), so the slow motion wasn't a huge deal.

What pushed me over the edge is my dealer giving me a smoking deal that made a brand new C300II only about $1300 more than the C200.

Now that I have the C300II and have shot with it several times, I'll add the rear LCD data screen and the select/assignable dials on the side of the camera as two other big pluses for the C300II. Coming from a C100 Mark II, having that dial on the left side assigned to ISO makes running and gunning a TON easier. The ability to move the shooting data out to the edges on the viewfinder/LCD is huge too. So many nice little refinements in the newer (and higher spec) Cinema EOS stuff.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dpc
So if I shoot something in 4k DCI on the C200 and I want to upload to YouTube, does that mean I need to crop to avoid black bars on the top and bottom?
 
ChromeHeart said:
So if I shoot something in 4k DCI on the C200 and I want to upload to YouTube, does that mean I need to crop to avoid black bars on the top and bottom?
Click to expand...

By matching the ratio of your output file dimension to your footage size, you won't get black bars in the file itself. If you have a frame that is 2.4:1 don't use a HD preset but export to a file that is 1920x800. Same goes for DCI: if you have 4096x2160 footage, don't use a 1920x1080 HD preset – it will encode black bars. Use something like 1920x1012 instead.
 
Matt Turner said:
No, you really don't.
Click to expand...

I have regularly seen comments dismissing a camera because it lacks 60p. Who is requesting or demanding 60p? I am not saying that no one is requesting or demanding it, but I rarely have any client who requests or demands 60p. Most of my clients are either wanting 59.94i or 24p.

I've shot somewhere around 100 days so far this year for dozens of clients and I can't recall having once shot in 60p.
 
I don't get these last three comments. Are you guys saying because you don't or haven't needed to overcrank that it's an objectively unimportant feature?
 
@jbregar --

Thanks for the heads-up on the Transcend CFX600 at Amazon UK. Ordered the 256GB. If anyone else is interested there are only 8 left.
 
Fahnon said:
I don't get these last three comments. Are you guys saying because you don't or haven't needed to overcrank that it's an objectively unimportant feature?
Click to expand...
Yeah. That only makes sense. If you don't need something then it's generally not important.

I shoot for maybe 50 different clients per year. Maybe one sort of wanted 4K 60p on a shoot over a year ago, but they'd already hired me at that point and asked about it mid-shoot, and we just ended up staying at 24p since they wanted to stay in 4K.

I shoot 1080p 60p fairly often. It's 4K that's not that important to me. Could be nice to have, but not super important.

I think a lot of people tend to want 4K 60p because it's a buzzword and not so much because they actually need it. I'm sure some actually do need it, but I'm guessing the majority who act like it's a big deal don't actually need it for the kind of work they do.


Sometimes 4K actually can make a project worse. Here's an example. Two camera interview setup. So, client decides to do one 4K camera instead of two 1080p cameras, and then crop in on the 4K to 200% to simulate a second camera. The 200% magnifies the noise, isn't nearly as sharp as say a C100's 1080p, causes a jump cut since it's the same exact angle and depth of field, and overall just looks rather cruddy.

Client is obsessed with 4K so the idea of using two 1080p cameras to capture the multiple angles is just right out. Yet, the 200% crop is obviously going to be only 1080p at that point. And, the client isn't delivering the project in 4K, they're delivering it in 1080p because it's a simple corporate web video. But they have to have 4K, even if after the 200% crop it's no longer 4K, but it was recorded in 4K, and that's...cool?

So, shooting in 4K becomes more important than delivering a good image. Why? Maybe they upcharged their client to shoot (but not deliver) a 4K video, so they have to meet the specs even if it's at the cost of having lower image quality. Frustrating.
 
Last edited:
FWIW, with C300 MKII being two years old at this time, a replacement is likely to be coming soon. That won't neuter the camera but will cause its value to fall faster than it might have otherwise.

Of course, its pricing over its life span has seen as big a drop - 38% over the first two years - as I can recall in a major release anyway.
 
DLD said:
FWIW, with C300 MKII being two years old at this time, a replacement is likely to be coming soon. That won't neuter the camera but will cause its value to fall faster than it might have otherwise.

Of course, its pricing over its life span has seen as big a drop - 38% over the first two years - as I can recall in a major release anyway.
Click to expand...

That really depends on where the C300 Mark III (or whatever it's called) lands price-wise. If it lands at $16000 like the C300 Mark II did I'd bet it doesn't have too much effect at all on the price of the C300 II once we're past the "I must UPGRADE SELL NOW" flood of C300 IIs onto the used market. The C300 Mark II is $9999 right now and I got mine for significantly less than that brand new... that's a completely different price class than even $12k... much less $15-16k.

I think we're rapidly approaching the point of diminishing returns on camera technology anyway.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top