C300: C300 mkiii?

Barry G said:
New info on CR today. "New" (from scratch) sensor. 4k 120p with DPAF. 2k 150p.
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I'm skeptical on 4K/120 with DPAF.

The C300 has always been the work horse model. Wouldn't it be more likely that the focus will be on XF-AVC codecs in 10 and 12 bit? Rather than raw?

Would it be possibly to see 6K 24p and 4k 60p in XF-AVC? That would be exciting for folks not wanting to deal with the RAW workflow.

It seems like most people complain about RawLite or have some sort of elaborate way to handle it. (re-encoding to ProRes 444 or Proxy Files.)

A 6K 24p interview with baked in color to hand off to a client sounds amazing to me.
 
FWIW, it was posted here several months ago that it's likely to be an s35 6K sensor.

And, as a side note, Sony also has a streaming presser on the 20th, where they might reveal FX-6.
 
Ben_Ericson said:
It seems like most people complain about RawLite or have some sort of elaborate way to handle it. (re-encoding to ProRes 444 or Proxy Files.)
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Having shot an entire multi episode docu series in CRL (about 110TB of it to date), take my word that the majority of people bitching about it have never used it.
People generally are creatures of habit and reject change. CRL, especially with FCP X is really no more difficult to work with than natively shooting 4K Prores, just a bit larger
but not by much and it looks better and is much more pushable than XF-AVC. Compressed RAW like BM RAW, CRL and yes, even R3D are just not very hard to work with anymore.

If you only hand off footage to clients, I agree, RAW takes education. We have two clients who resisted for a while, but when we showed them the difference in how effortlessly
4K DCI 12-bit was to key, they now ONLY will accept CRL from us for most of their shoots. I shot some tabletop for them a few weeks ago, C200 as A camera and Fujifilm X-T3
shooting FLog and the client was disappointed the X-T3 couldn't shoot RAW. And that wasn't even a green screen shoot.

Sure some clients are never going to want RAW, I get that but the advantages of RAW, once you've gone through a grading session with a professional colorist, make NOT shooting
RAW seem antiquated for a lot of programming. Not all. I wouldn't shoot it for social media/YouTube or events, not worth it. But the media is now afforable, hard drives are ridiculously
cheap and RAIDs are really fast and much cheaper too. RAW is a great tool.

It would make little sense to have a $6,500.00 RAW camera and a $16k RAW camera with the camera being between the two not supporting RAW. Not saying I know
anything, I'm not currently under NDA with Canon, but I predict a C300 MKIII would have RAW. The only one I'm not sure would would be a C100 MKIII if that ever
happens.
 
puredrifting said:
...take my word that the majority of people bitching about it have never used it.
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For me, the effortless ability to re-consider white balance in post is worth everything. The 5.9k CRM files are a bit taxing on my mid-spec iMac pro, but my workflow has steered towards WB and transcode to ProRes HQ or XQ in Canon CRD and then those files in 4k or 5.9k into FCPX. Best looking files I've ever had out of my Canons. Period.
 
Barry G said:
For me, the effortless ability to re-consider white balance in post is worth everything. The 5.9k CRM files are a bit taxing on my mid-spec iMac pro, but my workflow has steered towards WB and transcode to ProRes HQ or XQ in Canon CRD and then those files in 4k or 5.9k into FCPX. Best looking files I've ever had out of my Canons. Period.
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Thanks for your input Barry. I concur with my much smaller 4K CRL files, they can look amazingly good, even with outdoor, available light. It sometimes feels that a lot of people who are lusting after a mid range codec would be just as well served by shooting RAW, RAW in 2020 is different than RAW in 2018.
Everything in the chain is cheaper and faster.
 
puredrifting said:
It sometimes feels that a lot of people who are lusting after a mid range codec would be just as well served by shooting RAW, RAW in 2020 is different than RAW in 2018.
Everything in the chain is cheaper and faster.
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Well I probably spend around $1500 per year on hard drives (I typically fill up one 5 TB $120 Seagate drive per month; I'm not including the many 1 TB drives I buy and permanently ship and bill to clients for for footage delivery), shooting 4K 10 bit 4:2:2 at 400 mbps around 75% of the time and 1080p at 50 mbps perhaps 25% of the time. So if I shot say RAW lite at 4k at around 1000 mbps 100% of the time, my needed hard drive space would about triple, so an extra $3000 per year, or at 5.9k RAW at 2k mbps, that's six times the hard drive space, so $9000, $7500 more than my current spending.

Now, I keep backups for personal use (demo reels) and as a courtesy to clients. I've yet to have a client require a backup, and as such, I can't charge for it. These are freelance clients; they're editing it and they're responsible for backing it up. Which means, that $9000 (or $7500 extra) comes straight out of my pocket. And in 2020, $7500 is a lot of money to write off as a non-profitable business expense.

The only way it could really be profitable is if the quality increase in the footage leads to a $7500 increase in profits, which I'd be skeptical about, but of course depends on what type of work one does. But the point is, for the people (like myself) who still want the mid-range codec, it's because we don't think shooting RAW would lead to a worthwhile (in my case, at least $7500) increase in profit for our client base.


I actually haven't noticed much of a decrease in the cost of hard drives from 2018 to 2020, so I feel like RAW in 2018 is mostly the same as RAW in 2020. The Seagate 5 TB drives maybe went down in price $10-$20 (of the now $120 price) if my memory is serving me right. I guess solid state drives for faster transferring have gone down in price more, but they're still more expensive than non-solid state.
 
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Eric Coughlin said:
Well I probably spend around $1500 per year on hard drives (I typically fill up one 5 TB $120 Seagate drive per month; I'm not including the many 1 TB drives I buy and permanently ship and bill to clients for for footage delivery), shooting 4K 10 bit 4:2:2 at 400 mbps around 75% of the time and 1080p at 50 mbps perhaps 25% of the time. So if I shot say RAW lite at 4k at around 1000 mbps 100% of the time, my needed hard drive space would about triple, so an extra $3000 per year, or at 5.9k RAW at 2k mbps, that's six times the hard drive space, so $9000, $7500 more than my current spending.

Now, I keep backups for personal use (demo reels) and as a courtesy to clients. I've yet to have a client require a backup, and as such, I can't charge for it. These are freelance clients; they're editing it and they're responsible for backing it up. Which means, that $9000 (or $7500 extra) comes straight out of my pocket. And in 2020, $7500 is a lot of money to write off as a non-profitable business expense.

The only way it could really be profitable is if the quality increase in the footage leads to a $7500 increase in profits, which I'd be skeptical about, but of course depends on what type of work one does. But the point is, for the people (like myself) who still want the mid-range codec, it's because we don't think shooting RAW would lead to a worthwhile (in my case, at least $7500) increase in profit for our client base.


I actually haven't noticed much of a decrease in the cost of hard drives from 2018 to 2020, so I feel like RAW in 2018 is mostly the same as RAW in 2020. The Seagate 5 TB drives maybe went down in price $10-$20 (of the now $120 price) if my memory is serving me right. I guess solid state drives for faster transferring have gone down in price more, but they're still more expensive than non-solid state.
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Well, as you said, you are choosing to maintain copies of those files, they're not necessary to do the actual job you are getting paid for. But if you're getting other jobs, because of the reels you make out of the footage you keep, you could factor part of that income to the drive costs/advertising. You could also transcode the RAW to a "mid-range codec" for your personal use, so your personal storage costs shouldn't increase from what they are currently, if you went that route.

But this seems like a completely academic conversation, anyway. Or as my buddies wife says, "Jus' sayin'... ".
 
Damn if all of that is true that's gonna be a banger of a B-Cam to the C500, let alone a top-tier A-Cam. Really interested to see how the new sensor performs in comparison! I wonder what they've learned.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
Well I probably spend around $1500 per year on hard drives (I typically fill up one 5 TB $120 Seagate drive per month; I'm not including the many 1 TB drives I buy and permanently ship and bill to clients for for footage delivery), shooting 4K 10 bit 4:2:2 at 400 mbps around 75% of the time and 1080p at 50 mbps perhaps 25% of the time. So if I shot say RAW lite at 4k at around 1000 mbps 100% of the time, my needed hard drive space would about triple, so an extra $3000 per year, or at 5.9k RAW at 2k mbps, that's six times the hard drive space, so $9000, $7500 more than my current spending.

Now, I keep backups for personal use (demo reels) and as a courtesy to clients. I've yet to have a client require a backup, and as such, I can't charge for it. These are freelance clients; they're editing it and they're responsible for backing it up. Which means, that $9000 (or $7500 extra) comes straight out of my pocket. And in 2020, $7500 is a lot of money to write off as a non-profitable business expense.

The only way it could really be profitable is if the quality increase in the footage leads to a $7500 increase in profits, which I'd be skeptical about, but of course depends on what type of work one does. But the point is, for the people (like myself) who still want the mid-range codec, it's because we don't think shooting RAW would lead to a worthwhile (in my case, at least $7500) increase in profit for our client base.


I actually haven't noticed much of a decrease in the cost of hard drives from 2018 to 2020, so I feel like RAW in 2018 is mostly the same as RAW in 2020. The Seagate 5 TB drives maybe went down in price $10-$20 (of the now $120 price) if my memory is serving me right. I guess solid state drives for faster transferring have gone down in price more, but they're still more expensive than non-solid state.
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You sound as if you shoot a LOT more footage than most and fair enough, it wouldn't probably yield good dividends for you. For those of us who don't shoot so much quantity of footage though, RAW is noticeably better quality, more "pusahable" in post. The differences in costs I was mentioning were in the media (CFast 2.0 cards are MUCH cheaper not than when we bought the C200, a bit different for CFExpress I am sure if you have a C500 MKII or probably the new C300 MKIII) and storage drives are much cheaper now, I've paid as little as $119.00 for 10TB Seagates on sale and Costco constantly has the 8TB versions for $119.00 or $129.00. That's definitely cheaper than they were when we bought the C200.

For shooters who don't ever edit their stuff or have specific clients who will work with RAW, obviously 400Mbps is better. But for those of us who edit at least some of their clients work and don't shoot metric tons of footage, I like it.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
...
The only way it could really be profitable is if the quality increase in the footage leads to a $7500 increase in profits, which I'd be skeptical about, but of course depends on what type of work one does. But the point is, for the people (like myself) who still want the mid-range codec, it's because we don't think shooting RAW would lead to a worthwhile (in my case, at least $7500) increase in profit for our client base...
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If you increase in visible quality the profit should be more than just covering the extra cost for storage.

I decided against the C200 not only because of storage in the office but also for the time I would need for daily backup in hotels when travelling. I already see the huge difference from 4K XAVC to 5.7K ProResRAW (1.2GBit/s) of the Inspire2. I really would love RAW lite as an option but not like in the C200 as only alternative to 8bit 420

Have you considered the new 12TB LTO drives for backup?
The drive is quite expensive but the media is cheaper.
They also should be more long-term solid than hard drives.
 
Anyone recording Prores from the Canon RAWlite signal- BM 12G video assist, Atomos, Odyssey 7Q+?
 
I've done some basic tests of both ProRes RAW and ProRes off of Canon RAW. There are pluses and minuses. I almost always stick with internal.
 
The day has finally come!

I gotta say, I'm pretty shocked that Canon looks to have finally done "the right thing" here with this camera. Non-crippled feature set, no concern of cannibalizing its existing cameras.

Getting ready to watch some of the videos, but on paper this seems like its the camera I was dreaming about in post #1, but with even better features.

 
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Also makes me really glad that I didn't pull the trigger on the C500 a few months ago - cause zero jobs now & this looks to be the camera I was after.

And I'm in no hurry to spend any money so I can research the camera until I'm stuffed to the gills before making a purchase decision - so there is a bit of silver lining here...
 
chris f said:
Also makes me really glad that I didn't pull the trigger on the C500 a few months ago - cause zero jobs now & this looks to be the camera I was after.
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I've been glad that Canon has been flexible on Lease payments during the lockdown, and so I'm glad I did pull the trigger. Other than that impressive shadow noise on the new C300II, I think the R5 will suffice if I need the 120/4k with DPAF....and will finally let me buy some of that new sexy glass. That would be if I had any money..:-)
 
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