C300: Canon at NAB2015 starts to make "headlines"

Policar said:
I didn’t mean to start a s*%tstorm, just saying that the incremental upgrades and slow roll-out of new technologies is what keeps market leaders on top of a mature market, not what brings them down. As excited as shooters might get about 4k XAVC, post houses are groaning and wishing for 1080p prores. :)

I have had near-production-ending nightmares with the F5, less so with the Red but still BAD. Both platforms are a lot more mature now, but by the time they matured something new and immature already came out! These bleeding edge beta products are a lot easier to use on the hobby side when time isn’t money or on the mad scientist side (Fincher, etc.) when you have money to throw at every problem.

Not commenting on which produces a better image… just the mentality you get with each and the associated trade-offs. I do think Red finally got it right with the Dragon. After a few firmware upgrades... a few colorspace upgrades... still needs some ergonomic work... oh, and after the new OLPF... but still... it's a cool camera for sure. The F5 I loved it until I tried it, but the new SLOG 3 matrix with clamped saturation at 30 IRE or whatnot seems nice. Of course Wide DR on the Canon side (and even Canon Log) and Log C got this right long ago....
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All very fair and valid points. I see your point.
 
Sony, in the past few years has given us the F3, FS-100, FS-700, F65, F5, F55, FS7. That's a lot of cameras, codecs, and workflows, with ergonomics all over the map. The F3 had the chip in it to be able to do XDCAM 422, but they chose to handicap it with XDCAM EX instead, just as the F5 could have recorded in 4K from early on, or the undercutting of their own models. Sony has been doing this for decades and some of us got tired of it. I'm so happy that the C300 has been around for three years, not just for ROI, but it gives us a chance to really learn what the camera can do, how to get the most out of it. A C300 Mark II will build upon a solid foundation. We all know what features we'd like to see, so the question is which will go to the C300 II vs. C500 II?
 
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Policar said:
I didn’t mean to start a s*%tstorm, just saying that the incremental upgrades and slow roll-out of new technologies is what keeps market leaders on top of a mature market, not what brings them down. As excited as shooters might get about 4k XAVC, post houses are groaning and wishing for 1080p prores. :)

I have had near-production-ending nightmares with the F5, less so with the Red but still BAD. Both platforms are a lot more mature now, but by the time they matured something new and immature already came out! These bleeding edge beta products are a lot easier to use on the hobby side when time isn’t money or on the mad scientist side (Fincher, etc.) when you have money to throw at every problem.

Not commenting on which produces a better image… just the mentality you get with each and the associated trade-offs. I do think Red finally got it right with the Dragon. After a few firmware upgrades... a few colorspace upgrades... still needs some ergonomic work... oh, and after the new OLPF... but still... it's a cool camera for sure. The F5 I loved it until I tried it, but the new SLOG 3 matrix with clamped saturation at 30 IRE or whatnot seems nice. Of course Wide DR on the Canon side (and even Canon Log) and Log C got this right long ago....
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Well, my theory is it's kind of 'luck of the draw' especially when working with rented cameras.
I've had bad experiences two out of the three times I've worked with C300's. One time,
the top handle (which reminds me of the FS100, horrible design only having one screw to hold it in)
literally broke. The other time, we shot on a mountaintop, and when we got back to production
that night, the DIT told us there was nothing on the card. Now I get it , cards go bad. But it was lame
because looking at the screen, the record light was on and timecode running, but somehow the data was
corrupted and we had nothing. And our shoot schedule was such that we didn't have time to hike back
up and reshoot because our last couple days were packed full. So we had to reshoot in a different location.
So when I hear about how solid C300's are and how bad the Sony F55 and F5 are....I guess I'd just say something
I heard once.....'You feel your own pain much more acutely than you feel other people's.'
If you have bad experiences with something, it tends to make you be a bit cautious....even
if others have had differing experiences.
 
I think that the "feel" of the bodys and materials its a selling point of the canon cinema line, buttons, plastics, base camera metal frame, its build to be a war tank.
I just tried the FS700 Vs C100 and the feel of the materials its very different.
Anyone that have in hands a 1D Mark series, understand that its the term "rock solid piece" - You can defend yourself from a thief with that aluminum brick body, hit them in the head and continue to work next :cheesy: !!!
The cinema line, have those pedigree too, not exactly because was make to be more light
sorry my bad english...
Pedro
 
Make what you will of this but spoke with two different sources this week who have seen specs or prototypes of the C300 MKII. Definitely 4k (as if we thought it wouldn't be), supposedly 10 bit and 12 bit codec options, recording to CFAST Cards and the real disappointment to me, $17k introductory price. Both of my sources are pretty connected in the industry, not shooters, people in the manufacturing part of it. Both are pretty trusted sources, not Canon rumor kind of people.
 
puredrifting said:
Make what you will of this but spoke with two different sources this week who have seen specs or prototypes of the C300 MKII. Definitely 4k (as if we thought it wouldn't be), supposedly 10 bit and 12 bit codec options, recording to CFAST Cards and the real disappointment to me, $17k introductory price. Both of my sources are pretty connected in the industry, not shooters, people in the manufacturing part of it. Both are pretty trusted sources, not Canon rumor kind of people.
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Sounds about right. The high introductory price announces it as a "must have" product. Look at the Alexa SXT! It's like ten times that. 4k is the concession Canon is pushing. Price won't be.

Interesting that Canon is going 10/12 bit. They should... but the current chip only produces 12 good stops of DR (whereas the F5/FS7/etc. produce 13.5 at best, with some ugly blacks and bad highlight handling, but still a better spec) and that fits decently into an 8 bit wrapper. Would be wild to see Canon implement a dual gain channel architecture with the same sensor or something. Wishful thinking, of course.
 
puredrifting said:
Make what you will of this but spoke with two different sources this week who have seen specs or prototypes of the C300 MKII. Definitely 4k (as if we thought it wouldn't be), supposedly 10 bit and 12 bit codec options, recording to CFAST Cards and the real disappointment to me, $17k introductory price. Both of my sources are pretty connected in the industry, not shooters, people in the manufacturing part of it. Both are pretty trusted sources, not Canon rumor kind of people.
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Hopefully the $17 is full retail and it will hit the market around $13,500. It would not be the best business play to have such a huge gap between cameras. $5k for the C100 and $17k for the c300...unless they plan on releasing another camera in between.
 
ReelWorksMedia said:
Hopefully the $17 is full retail and it will hit the market around $13,500. It would not be the best business play to have such a huge gap between cameras. $5k for the C100 and $17k for the c300...unless they plan on releasing another camera in between.
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Why? That's what they did with the C300/C100 and the c300 did amazingly well. The c300 was introduced and sold at $16k.

I wonder what codec they'll do for the 4k... ProRes? Certainly if the c300ii is a c500 with 4k internal recording, they'll sell like hotcakes at $17k. Still doesn't do much for me with the fs7 and fs700+7q, flawed as they are, being less than half the price with more DR.
 
nyvz said:
Why? That's what they did with the C300/C100 and the c300 did amazingly well. The c300 was introduced and sold at $16k.

I wonder what codec they'll do for the 4k... ProRes? Certainly if the c300ii is a c500 with 4k internal recording, they'll sell like hotcakes at $17k. Still doesn't do much for me with the fs7 and fs700+7q, flawed as they are, being less than half the price with more DR.
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yep, good point.
 
ReelWorksMedia said:
Hopefully the $17 is full retail and it will hit the market around $13,500. It would not be the best business play to have such a huge gap between cameras. $5k for the C100 and $17k for the c300...unless they plan on releasing another camera in between.
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I'd like to remind everyone that my bid was $10K!

Anyhow, a GH4 "competitor" would be around $2,000 (depending on ... well, everything). 5D MK IV would be around $4,000. If C300 MK IV is ~ $17,000, then it leaves an $8,000 price point vacant. (my doubling-the-price model still works) It could be taken by a camcorder type body like a 4K version of XF 300 or still popular C300 MKI with a new price tag or the still available 1D C, at least, for the time being. Hypothetically, a 4K C100 MKII can then take over that slot after some inventory is cleared.

PS. And the C500 ML II will then be priced at ...?

PPS. I wonder if $17,000 is for the full C300 MKII shoulder kit?
 
17k sounds about right.. If it's a shoulder mount solution out of the box, its extremely competitive against the f5 and only +1k from its predecessor's msrp. If it has a global shutter/dpaf then it would easily become a market leader and creep into f55 territory. Was hoping to have a decent spec sheet this close to NAB but can wait a little longer :)
 
From the little I heard, the C500 replacement will be the shoulder-mount one while the C300 Mkii will retain the same form factor as the original.

Regardless, we will all know soon.
 
Anybody heard if Canon will send RAW out via SDI? And if the Odyssey 7Q Canon RAW license will be relevant for other cameras than C500mk1?
 
Same form factor, 4K internal, 1080 @ 240fps, 14 stops DR, I'll pay $16k for that. Don't care if it shoots raw or not.
 
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Here's a total random thought that occurred to me regarding the "GH4 competitor". What if it's a DSLR that doesn't shoot stills? Or does but in a very compromised way? Like a C100 sensor in a DSLR or EOS-M type of body? The latest 5Ds isn't really geared for video, so it's not out of the question to make a camera not geared for stills.
 
Heard another couple of tidbits from source one, Canon Log 2 and 15 stops DR and more new features...Did not hear anything about C500 or the shoulder mount configuration.
I agree, from a marketing standpoint, this leaves them without a direct competitor to the FS7 and personally I think they are leaving money on the table, jumping from $5k to $17k for the C100 MKII and the C300 MKII, respectively. But we all know that Canon had zero trouble selling the C300 MKI so what do we know?
 
PedroAquiles said:
I think that the "feel" of the bodys and materials its a selling point of the canon cinema line, buttons, plastics, base camera metal frame, its build to be a war tank.
I just tried the FS700 Vs C100 and the feel of the materials its very different.
Anyone that have in hands a 1D Mark series, understand that its the term "rock solid piece" - You can defend yourself from a thief with that aluminum brick body, hit them in the head and continue to work next :cheesy: !!!
The cinema line, have those pedigree too, not exactly because was make to be more light
sorry my bad english...
Pedro
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I've actually always felt like my 7D is better built than my C100. Maybe that's just because it's smaller.
 
Andrius Simutis said:
Here's a total random thought that occurred to me regarding the "GH4 competitor". What if it's a DSLR that doesn't shoot stills? Or does but in a very compromised way? Like a C100 sensor in a DSLR or EOS-M type of body? The latest 5Ds isn't really geared for video, so it's not out of the question to make a camera not geared for stills.
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Rumors (Northlight broke them first) have 5D MK IV geared toward video but with a very competent stills performance - a 28 MPX sensor and 4K recording for around $4,000. Some think it may be announced at the NAB, some at the end of summer with the 2016 arrival date because 5D MK III is still doing very well and there's a lot of inventory to clear.

But, by then, Panasonic might have GH5 out. Who the heck knows.
 
wgtwo said:
I've actually always felt like my 7D is better built than my C100. Maybe that's just because it's smaller.
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Not surprising as still cameras have about 60+ years of engineering, design and feedback behind them. They also require less processing power, cooling and external input/outputs. By comparison, the fs7/fs700's are complete toys when it comes to their bodies/lens mounts.

Andrius Simutis said:
Here's a total random thought that occurred to me regarding the "GH4 competitor". What if it's a DSLR that doesn't shoot stills? Or does but in a very compromised way? Like a C100 sensor in a DSLR or EOS-M type of body? The latest 5Ds isn't really geared for video, so it's not out of the question to make a camera not geared for stills.
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I would certainly take one!
 
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