C300: Canon at NAB2015 starts to make "headlines"

AndreeOnline

AndreeOnline

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Some five hours ago Matthew Allard on Twitter:

"Time for a Sony fire sale"

Two hours ago from Michael N Sutton, also on Twitter:

"Canon NAB2015. Two words 'wow!' and 'yes!!'"

So it begins. Hopefully some type of leak or announcement in the not to far future.
 
I have a feeling I'll be as happy with my FS7 after NAB as before. I think Canon will make a big splash in the higher end market with the Alexa/Red/F55 competitor after the C500 wasn't the success they had hopped.
 
There is nothing in the tweets that suggests price bracket, so it is certainly possible that whatever they "know" or have heard about is in the high end.

That said, both Matthew and Michael are, at least this is my view of them, down to earth guys looking for practical solutions. I also think they both do their fair share of small crew/single operator stuff.

When I read these tweets my thoughts go to the C300 mkII, that is confirmed for NAB2015 already.

Nothing Canon presents will turn your FS7 into something else. If it's a good fit for you today, it will be good after NAB as well.

The ever competitive mindset between camera systems gets tiresome quickly. But naturally, if you are in a camp where rumours suggest tech might make a leap forward (instead of a small step) it's always exciting.
 
With the level of features, performance and price of the FS7 Canon will really have to go all out and do something they never done before. I doubt it. There will be one or two new cameras with great features and performance, but it will cost you.
 
Oh good... I've been waiting for FS7 prices to drop, or used samples to flood the market! Thanks Canon!
 
Osslund said:
With the level of features, performance and price of the FS7 Canon will really have to go all out and do something they never done before. I doubt it.
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The features, performance and price of the FS7 are all known. I would say that is exactly what makes the tweets interesting.

If Canon will do something unheard of or not… well…

I think it's fair to say that my expectation now is for them to deliver something "surprisingly good".
 
Sure it will. There's always a bleb of lightly used bleeding-edge cameras available once something slightly newer arrives.
 
It sounds as if they are under NDA and can't even give a clue, but it does seem like a positive development. Unless Canon has a whole new strategic paradigm, we already know at least some of what will apear at NAB.

1. C100 MKII will stay untouched, it is still very new and barely shipping in quantity
2. C300 MKII will push the "must buy" button of most of us. 4K, some cool new features and possibly codecs, the question will be is it a $10k camera or a $15k camera? I don't think Canon will go head to head with the FS7 as far as price point. That would be unprecedented, but not impossible. If they do, they will own the market with the C300 MKII, it will be the latest DVX100, HVX200, EX1, type of relatively low-cost, "must have" camera that dominates the low end pro market. But that would be unusual for Canon to try to hit the same features set at the same price point as Sony. Canon has traditionally been more conservative and assigns a higher retail for their innovation, even though they are always followers, not innovation leaders.
3. C500 is a wild card. If Canon is serious about digital cinema and playing a significant role in television and feature production, they have to introduce something in the same league as the newest REDs, Amira, F55 in the $30k to $55K range. It has to offer some innovation, a look and or feature set that none of the already impressive competitors have. I can't comprehend many DPs forsaking a high end RED or an Amira for a Canon EOS camera but it could be interesting if they succeeed. The Varicam 35 is impressive as hell too. It will be interesting to see if Canon can pull a rabbit out of it's hat with the new C500 or if it will stay an under featured niche camera like it now is. A few things that I was told by Panasonic was that, "Essentially, all of the new cameras in this space are incredible. The only differentiators are features and workflow". It's true, I would be happy to shoot any high end project these days with the RED, Amira, F55 or Varicam, they are all superb and make beautiful images if the DP is good. Hope to see a Canon added to the list.
4. New camera to fill in gaps? A C200 with 4k at FS7 prices could be a disruptive technology? Make the C300 more fully featured but the C200 would have to have internal 4K with a high quality codec. Perhaps the C200 would max at 60p but the C300 could achieve 4K at double that frame rate and have a few more cool features the 200 wouldn't? Or something along those lines?

I am bookmarking this post to see how off I was or if I was close to the mark next month. Should be interesting.
 
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AndreeOnline said:
There is nothing in the tweets that suggests price bracket, so it is certainly possible that whatever they "know" or have heard about is in the high end.

That said, both Matthew and Michael are, at least this is my view of them, down to earth guys looking for practical solutions. I also think they both do their fair share of small crew/single operator stuff.
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I do believe Matt Allard has an F55 package which is why I am thinking high end C500 replacement for that tweet. Also I've heard rumours that Canon is releasing a higher end shoulder mount camera to compete with Amira, F55, RED.

Canon could go small incremental with the C300II and it will still sell very well. There is no pressure to be revolutionary for the C300. Same body style as current model with internal 4K upto 30fps recording and 120fps HD at the $12K price point. It will sell well.

Canon has little presence in the high end camera game and even less that the Alexa Mini will take over a lot of the C500 compact cam duties on larger sets. Red is releasing Weapon in this bracket and Dragon is just a year old. It is in this area of the market that Canon will need to be revolutionary and knock peoples socks off. Here is where they will need to take lower margins in order to get a foot hold.

Either way I'm glad I'm out earning money and should have most of the FS7 paid off by the time C300II hits the market. Its nice to sit back and see what happens. Each move just forces the other brands to get better.
 
A more interesting question for the NAB is - how many new 4K cams will be announced?

I bet on half a dozen - counting the Weapon, XTT, C300, AF-200 - with much improved DR, new/er codecs, lower cost media.
 
Looking forward to finding out! heh On the edge debating between Shogun/7Q+ or selling both my A7s/C100 and getting an FS7 or C300ii or ..something...
My guess is the C300ii is going to have great specs, comparable or marginally better than the FS7, but $10-14k
 
Hard to imagine the C300II will somehow quadruple all its specs and drop the price in half compared to a C300, which is what it would need to do to compete with the FS7. Remember the C300 has 1080p30 and the FS7 has 4k60 and more DR and is still significantly less expensive!

Yes more likely there is a new C500 with 4k internal recording and updated ergonomics and the same old sensor for $20k. It may be worth noting there was a rumor in the past couple weeks that the only new camera at NAB will be the C500II, so this might not be far off.

Knowing Canon the C300II will be a C300 with 1080p60 added for $16k...

Canon has always been more of a rest-on-their-laurels kind of company than a disrupt-the-market one but I'd like to be proven wrong!
 
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As I've stated before, "Canon" (Apple) can "EASILY" enter the market with the C300 MKII at $12K-$15K. If necessary, they can drop price 4-6 months later. ALWAYS REMEMBER; CANON IS APPLE (if you understand what I'm saying)! :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
nyvz said:
Hard to imagine the C300II will somehow quadruple all its specs and drop the price in half compared to a C300, which is what it would need to do to compete with the FS7. Remember the C300 has 1080p30 and the FS7 has 4k60 and more DR and is still significantly less expensive!
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...and how many years ago was the C300 announced? A lot has happened since then so it's very easily possible that the new C300 would have more up to date specs. I think the other thing that Canon does that wows people is the "look" straight out of the camera. That's a workflow saver and thus popular with producers as well as DPs.


nyvz said:
Canon has always been more of a rest-on-their-laurels kind of company than a disrupt-the-market one but I'd like to be proven wrong!
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That's a popular meme, but not entirely fair. Canon is more of a don't release it unless it's rock solid kind of company than a crank out not quite ready beta products long past their promised delivery dates kind of company. That doesn't look as good in the rapid refresh video gear specs blog world, but it's a good way to run a major corporation. Besides that, Canon does quite a bit of innovation as evidenced in the whole DSLR video movement, the C series, and a very very long list of photo innovations.
 
Andrius Simutis said:
...and how many years ago was the C300 announced? A lot has happened since then so it's very easily possible that the new C300 would have more up to date specs. I think the other thing that Canon does that wows people is the "look" straight out of the camera. That's a workflow saver and thus popular with producers as well as DPs.

That's a popular meme, but not entirely fair. Canon is more of a don't release it unless it's rock solid kind of company than a crank out not quite ready beta products long past their promised delivery dates kind of company. That doesn't look as good in the rapid refresh video gear specs blog world, but it's a good way to run a major corporation. Besides that, Canon does quite a bit of innovation as evidenced in the whole DSLR video movement, the C series, and a very very long list of photo innovations.
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The C300 came out within 6months of the FS700, with the latter having 8x higher framerates, and more DR for half the cost.

I didnt mean rest-on-their-laurels entirely as an insult to Canon, certainly it goes without saying that they have substantial laurels to rest on. The C300 is an enormously successful camera for many reasons, but specs and performance per dollar compared to the competition is not one of them. Of course many people for good reason go for things that are not in the spec sheet. The C300 certainly has great build quality with professional I/O standard and an easy post workflow, plus a very nice sharp 1080p image with pleasing color out of the box, something many companies who have made cameras for too long fail at because they keep modifying legacy standards and equipment (sony and panasonic for example fail to improve their images because they reuse the same gamma curves and color matrices from 2001 based on standards from decades ago while still cameras surpassed them for a while). However, I don't think it's unfair to say Canon tends to rest on their laurels. Look at the 5D line, look at their C100II, even look at the C300/C500 in the first place, they were successful but hardly pushed any boundaries, all solid cameras but in many ways the minimum Canon needed to be in the game. And Canon has so many followers from their DSLR and lens markets that all they had to do was be in the game with products that make nice images. They didn't really disrupt the market, just reminded us that the market distrupters often fail because they forget about simpler things like usability.

I don't mean to be so hard on Canon, but it's hard to credit Canon for the DSLR video movement which they admitted to stumbling into and havent improved much upon since they "started" it 7 years ago.

If you have any evidence that Canon may be pushed to disrupt the market rather than just put out a camera that is close enough to the competition at a higher price but succeeds because of their brand I'm very interested to hear it. But I think it would be ignoring the way they have worked in the past to expect a new sensor or a price under $12k. They already most likely put the same sensor in their whole line of C cameras and the newer C100II, so it would be out of character to use a new sensor if they are only going to introduce one newer camera to a smaller high-end market.
 
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Canon and Nikon remind me of Paul Sorvino's "Big Pauly Cicero" character in "Goodfellas", about whom Henry Hill says, "Paulie may have moved slow, but it was only because Paulie didn't have to move for anybody."

Canon and Nikon have the "glass thing" going. They're the biggest players in the image acquisition business. I wouldn't be surprised that, once 5D and D810 based 4K cameras are introduced, they become huge hits that NX1, as an example, is not. (NX1 is selling relatively well, btw).

This 2K-to-4K transition cycle has been too fast for many manufacturers. If a normal update in the digital world was expected every three years, then this trend was basically halved in between 1D C and GH4 but neither Canon nor Nikon has been interested in making a GH4 ... yet. Sony's done well with FS700 and FS7 but Canon is willing to live with it in the short run because no one can time the market perfectly with every release.
 
To quote DP Reviews interview with Masaya Maeda: "Personally, I think we’re slow as well. Every day I’m saying ‘speed up, make it faster!’. One of our themes now as a company is upon developing a new technology, to shorten the time between development and when that technology is introduced into a product. We need to shorten that time. That’s our goal."

The C100 Mk II refresh was quicker than the C300 Mk II so maybe they are changing. Having said that apparently one of the rumoured mandates for the C300 Mk II is "future proofing", which doesn't sound like rapid development turnover (like Sony).

I'd much prefer they went down the same route as DPAF, and give a paid hardware or firmware upgrade for certain new high level features, rather than Sonys approach of rapid cycling through new camera bodies.
 
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Matt Turner said:
I'd much prefer they went down the same route as DPAF, and give a paid hardware or firmware upgrade for certain new high level features, rather than Sonys approach of rapid cycling through new camera bodies.
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Ugh, I don't. I owned a RED and much prefer to buy any new camera I want while I still have my old one to continue working with while I test and configure my new one and then sell the old one at my leisure as opposed to paying more to be send away my camera for weeks to follow only one available upgrade path that's likely slow and overpriced since it's a much more complicated process for manufacturers to service/upgrade used cameras than build new ones. Then again it helps if you are in a big city with a great market for used cameras, but ebay is pretty convenient as well.
 
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