canon C series dslr's

J Davis

J Davis

Veteran
So during the canon nov 3rd they also revealed the new C series dslr's that will be coming.

Now for quite some time I've been thinking how wonderful it would be to have a canon DSLR with an HDSDI out with no moire/aliasing.
Audio I would handle by plugging directly into the XLR of an external recorder like a PIX220 or Ki Pro Mini. Modular setup.

Do you think this guess might be close to the mark ?

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I have no idea what they're trying to do with this C-DSLR, but my guess would be that it's just image quality that they're after with this one: I wouldn't expect to see SDI or XLR on such a small body, even as external addons; instead, just nice internal video recording without any image quality issues and (hopefully) with a nice codec would be great, but maybe that's 5D3, and C-DSLR is going to be even better; still, the 4K talk is confusing: I don't consider it a priority (all the C300 nay-sayers of late beg to differ), and it makes no sense to me that it would come to this camera before we find it on the followup to the C300 (which I guess shouldn't be very far away: digic DV III is 3 years old, I'd expect to see a C350 in 12 to 18 months, with everything exactly the same as C300 but a better codec, at least 10 bit 422 CLOG with all-intra at a very high bitrate)
 
NormanBates said:
I have no idea what they're trying to do with this C-DSLR, but my guess would be that it's just image quality that they're after with this one: I wouldn't expect to see SDI or XLR on such a small body, even as external addons; instead, just nice internal video recording without any image quality issues and (hopefully) with a nice codec would be great, but maybe that's 5D3, and C-DSLR is going to be even better; still, the 4K talk is confusing: I don't consider it a priority (all the C300 nay-sayers of late beg to differ), and it makes no sense to me that it would come to this camera before we find it on the followup to the C300 (which I guess shouldn't be very far away: digic DV III is 3 years old, I'd expect to see a C350 in 12 to 18 months, with everything exactly the same as C300 but a better codec, at least 10 bit 422 CLOG with all-intra at a very high bitrate)
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Now, THAT would be a camera worth buying into.
 
J Davis said:
Do you think this guess might be close to the mark ?
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Nope.

It'd be nice & probably nearly exactly what Canon should do, but I don't have much hope for Canon at this point for two main reasons:

1. I've read a quote that they made the C300 took Canon two years to make. The DSLR craze hit three years ago. Somewhere there is a missing year in this timeline. Even if the C300 was completed & in testing phase for the last 6 months, then it'd mean that it took Canon 6 months to look out the window & look to see who was buying 5DII cameras. (Must've been embarrassing to show up to NAB 2009 & being the only people there not knowing about this whole HDSLR thing going on.)

2. The C300 was designed by the EOS guys & they borrowed the XF codec from the video guys. That really should be the other way around. The video guys have been making some really competitive cameras for over the last decade & have a very good grasp of a large share of the video market (minus the fact that the XF cameras were a year or two later than they should've been to the party). The C300 should've been designed by Canon's video guys who borrowed from the EOS guys.

all of this imho of course
 
zijital said:
I've read a quote that they made the C300 took Canon two years to make. The DSLR craze hit three years ago. Somewhere there is a missing year in this timeline. Even if the C300 was completed & in testing phase for the last 6 months, then it'd mean that it took Canon 6 months to look out the window & look to see who was buying 5DII cameras. (Must've been embarrassing to show up to NAB 2009 & being the only people there not knowing about this whole HDSLR thing going on.)
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They knew about it by the first half of 2009. They just don't say much. Canon stays quiet most of the time. During that time the 7D was being developed and look at all the new features that were included by the time it was released in Sept 2009. The C300 project required a bigger decision: should we enter the digital cinema market and how much of a commitment should we make? But once they made it, but mid 2009 they were already working on it. By late 2009 they were going out interviewing people and working out button/switch placement and other operability concepts.

zijital said:
The C300 was designed by the EOS guys & they borrowed the XF codec from the video guys. That really should be the other way around.
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Actually, according to Canon's Managing Director Masaya Maeda:

The main portion of the team comes from video, the XF305 designers. But we also had several members from the EOS camera group join this team. And, of course, from the lens group also.
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I think Canon will be very aggressive in motion imaging in the coming years. Their business plan is to obtain 40% market share by 2015.
 
I am VERY glad that the EOS guys built the C300. One of the reasons people like the 5D is clearly the size. If the video guys built it, it would be the size of the F3 or AF100 and for me, the size of the C300 is one of the selling points. I would actually say the Epic is the first camera to meld the beauty of DSLR size with motion picture technology with motion picture being the primary usage, however, the Epic is heavy. The C300 seems to deliver on size AND weight and for me, that is significant.

Canon said, hey, if you want a bigger camera, you can make it bigger by adding on whatever you want. You can't say the opposite with the Alexa. You can't make it smaller if you need it that way.

But, like you say, it's opinion. Some people like bigger cameras, some people like smaller cameras. In the high end production world, Canon has filled a niche that nothing else is in right now. No other camera is as small and light as the C300 with the same ratio to picture quality, in my opinion.

Like J Davis, there is a lot of head scratching to me about what this new C camera is going to be. Why does it have 4k whereas the C300 does not? Or, are they just being quiet and there will be a 4k output version of the C300 (C400?) coming as well and is this new C camera designed for 5D users in mind, since it's full frame? And how does that relate to the 1Dx? Is it the same as the 1Dx with a different codec and sensor, but same body? Are they trying to minimize R&D? So many questions!! :)

And of course, all just speculation and opinion at this point.
 
zijital said:
Nope.
1. I've read a quote that they made the C300 took Canon two years to make. The DSLR craze hit three years ago. Somewhere there is a missing year in this timeline.
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There is no one year gap in the timeline. the 5D MKII was released about 3 years ago. The camera did not become a video phenomenon on day 1. Over the next year more and more people started using DSLR's in situations where they might have used a video camera. For there to be a missing year, Canon would have to release the 5D MKII and immediately start on the C300.

***

1) It took time for the idea of using a stills camera as opposed to a traditional video camera to take hold of the community and for Canon to decide that this is a new market to break into.

2) It takes time for a large company like Canon, especially the way they move in general, to plan a project, allocate time and resources to design and build it, get approvals, etc.

I think after a year of the 5D MKII selling like hotcakes to video people, Canon decided that this movement was real enough for them to make the rather significant investment of developing products specifically for it.

Ken
 
Look at it this way, Canon admits the 5D2 usage in cinema usage was a surprise to them, and not why they added the features. When the 5D2 was realeased, I GUARANTEE that they didn't just stop working on cameras. If they are like ANY other tech company, other products (7D, t2i, etc) were already invested in and being worked on in the middle of their design cycle. If anything, the 5D2 put a huge question into their roadmap and required a lot of thinking about where they wanted to go. I am sure they had to get those products out the door while developing their new EOS concept line.

In fact, if you could even see into Canon, I bet you'd see a lot of overworked engineers trying to get the EOS out the door as fast as they can while not disrupting an even bigger portion of Canon's money making machine, their DSLR line.
 
If the C series DSLR's do away with the reflex mirror system in favor a good EVF and record 4k raw or motion JPEG2000 that conforms to the DCI standard I would be interested, especially if the price was around $5-6k or less. Scarlet unfortunately has moved out of my price range, but I do want higher than HD resolution for motion.
 
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Nobody has yet mentioned the fact that this new C-dslr is a 1D-X body with a photoshopped "C". I'd be surprised if this thing was even coming out in the next year, especially since there are no details about it.
 
Rick Burnett said:
...I would actually say the Epic is the first camera to meld the beauty of DSLR size with motion picture technology with motion picture being the primary usage, however, the Epic is heavy. The C300 seems to deliver on size AND weight and for me, that is significant.

Canon said, hey, if you want a bigger camera, you can make it bigger by adding on whatever you want. You can't say the opposite with the Alexa. You can't make it smaller if you need it that way.

...And of course, all just speculation and opinion at this point.
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Sorry, to pull this out, as I agree with your overall point. What keeps the other cameras in a separate class is the codecs and bit rates, frame rates, DR, color reproduction, and in the case of the Epic, Resolution.
 
Leave HD to the broadcast centric, the realists, and the money makers. HD has little added value over SD to the visual experience, except in regards to text on screen, which is extremely important to the information age we live in now.

To my cinematographer sensibilities, ~4k/35mm is a nice middle ground on resolution. There is an added richness, as opposed to HD digital sharpness look. There is much more texture.

I kept a large screen tube tv around, and when I watch a DVD on it vs. a Blue Ray on an HD tv, I actually prefer it. There is a pleasantness to the blurry, yet smooth look. I am specifically referring to the look of DVD on an SD CRT television set. A dvd on an hdtv set is horrid.

All that is to say, a 4kish resolution would be nice on a camera with simple audio input/outputs, and all this with 14stop DR, great skin tone, and codec compression options, and minimum of 48fps top-speed. The "C" dslr may fill this niche, but is probably a ways out.
 
If Canon are making it solely for cinema then yes, do away with the mirror and install a *good* EVF.

I'm thinking that if it uses the guts of the 1Dx, but without the shutter / mirror / pentaprism then I see no engineering reason for it to be more expensive, and several for it to be less.

*** Thinking about codecs ***

We've seen / heard / rumoured three possible codecs for Canon's next generation DLSRs, a 30-35 mbps H264 IBP long GOP jobby, a 100-ish mbps I-frame and a mystery 360-ish mbps thing (Inferred from 6 min to fill 16 gig), and people say the last two can't both be right.

I say they can, what if this 360 mbps codec that Chuck Westfall reportedly inferred is actually a prototype of the 4k MJPEG codec? How would that play? Any opinions?

Just speculating and possibly passing so much hot air,
Dave
 
I don't think your speculation is hot air. In fact the topic of codec brings us back to my original post - why even have a codec? Why bother ?
if you put a clean HD-SDI on the DSLR then the shooter can handle it. Any on board codec can then be h264. A backup. A daily.
 
J Davis said:
I don't think your speculation is hot air. In fact the topic of codec brings us back to my original post - why even have a codec? Why bother ?
if you put a clean HD-SDI on the DSLR then the shooter can handle it. Any on board codec can then be h264. A backup. A daily.
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nice
 
James0b57 said:
Leave HD to the broadcast centric, the realists, and the money makers. HD has little added value over SD to the visual experience, except in regards to text on screen, which is extremely important to the information age we live in now.

To my cinematographer sensibilities, ~4k/35mm is a nice middle ground on resolution. There is an added richness, as opposed to HD digital sharpness look. There is much more texture.

I kept a large screen tube tv around, and when I watch a DVD on it vs. a Blue Ray on an HD tv, I actually prefer it. There is a pleasantness to the blurry, yet smooth look. I am specifically referring to the look of DVD on an SD CRT television set. A dvd on an hdtv set is horrid.

All that is to say, a 4kish resolution would be nice on a camera with simple audio input/outputs, and all this with 14stop DR, great skin tone, and codec compression options, and minimum of 48fps top-speed. The "C" dslr may fill this niche, but is probably a ways out.
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This I feel is an unreasonably arrogant and silly opinion.
 
Well SD doesn't look good at all when you project it to 125" which is what I do :) And that includes SD projectors, which I had before. 1080p works great for me.
 
J Davis said:
I don't think your speculation is hot air. In fact the topic of codec brings us back to my original post - why even have a codec? Why bother ?
if you put a clean HD-SDI on the DSLR then the shooter can handle it. Any on board codec can then be h264. A backup. A daily.
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This is what I always thought ALL camera manufacturers should do (but i would prefer a wavelet codec like JPEG2000).
 
I don't really get why is there no even one camera manufacturer ( lets put the sony f-65 aside ) which look at the 1984 and see Ikegami hl-95 uni cam head camera in front of his eyes , the camera which changed completely the way we work these days .
so 35 mm sensor , super 16 or what ever with ability hook the recorder , any recorder on its back , the aja , sound devices or who ever will make the same recorders they have now comparable , end of story .
the camera like that probably may be at the 5-10 grand range , recorders will be the same price as they now , any one will be able to hook what ever he wants in normal way .
 
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