Canon C300 MKII Announced

[jaybirch]

DLD..... You are you talking about a guy who shot a DR test between the NX1 and C300 yet set the C300 to Rec709... Possibly by accident, possibly to show the results in a good light for NX1.

Canon will pick and choose their testers very wisely. Proper industry pros.

 

[Samuel H]

It's also possible that they found it easier to implement something like this in an APS-C sized sensor with only 8MP rather than the 20-22 MP that their stills cameras have, less than half the pixels to deal with. I wonder how the Varicam 35 does it to get their 14+ DR at 800 ASA.

The Varicam probably does the same that the Sony and Nikon and Toshiba sensors do: it probably has good on-sensor ADCs.
AFAIK, Canon is the only big player still using analogue sensors and off-die ADCs.

 

[lyrov]

Just remember.....not everyone is shooting what YOU are shooting. Slow motion has a lot of uses for those
of us who are NOT bigshot DP's working in narrative film making (or hobbyists making our own 'Zombie film.')
For corporate and promo videos, (which makes up most of how I buy food for my kids and pay the mortgage),
it is actually very useful. I cannot think of a project in the last year, that I have not used slow motion in.
If that means I'm 'not being creative' so be it. At least I'm getting paid. And no, I don't have the time or
budget to just 'hire in a Phantom'.

Very well said!!!

 

[morgan_moore]

One thing about the camera companies is they seem to work in a bubble with no eye on consumer tech revolution.

The iphone does 240 the C300 (and FS7) dont. These cameras need to do 500 even at crop 720.

Because if a director visualises a shot on his phone and you cant replicate it with your $15g camera - but better- well that is embarrassing.

Cameras should (and may) at least match a gopro for tech
-be controlled by a decent app
-share grabs (aka tweet them e-mail them)
-support loads of luts/luts including 'instagram' luts with burned edges whatever (even just in playback)
-know their postion/acceleration of every frame for stabilisation hyperlapse
-know the time exactly for easy synch

It is not 1995.

 

[harddrive]

One thing about the camera companies is they seem to work in a bubble with no eye on consumer tech revolution.

The iphone does 240 the C300 (and FS7) dont. These cameras need to do 500 even at crop 720.

Because if a director visualises a shot on his phone and you cant replicate it with your $15g camera - but better- well that is embarrassing.

Consumer tech may have facilities such as high frame rates, but I'd be surprised to find such a device that has it at full system quality.

That's one thing for consumer tech - quite another for pro kit, where if it does something, it's supposed to do it well!

There are exceptions - and the FS700 springs to mind. Full 1080 resolution at normal frame rates, and does slo-mo rates up to 960fps. But as the frame rate goes up, the quality comes down. (A lot by 960fps!) If you want full quality at high frame rates, be prepared to pay a lot of money for it.

 

[morgan_moore]

If a phone for $400 can do it badly a $15000 single purpose device should do it well?

Excluding HFR, generally I feel the cameras (and I dont know the full details of the C300ii) fail on conectivity and giving the client a good experience which might for example involve sharing a 'grarded' grab with a line manager who maybe not on location.

S

 

[Aaveum]

. It's great how the 4K environment is providing a ton of camera options, unique colormetrics, each with their own plusses and minuses, but all of them good enough to shoot a feature with.

I think we passed the point of good enough years ago. That "excuse" has ran out.

 

[Samuel H]

Definitely. Pocket, a7S, NX1, D810, 5D3, GH4. That's six cheap cameras from six different manufacturers, and macgregor could shoot an awesome-looking feature film with any of them.

 

[harddrive]

If a phone for $400 can do it badly a $15000 single purpose device should do it well?

Don't underestimate the difficulties in terms of the underlying physics. It's stretching things just fully reading a 4K sensor at normal frame rates, let alone the processing side of it, and the physical difficulties (due to stray capacitance etc) rack up exponentially as the frame rates (and hence frequencies) double, quadruple, whatever.

So it's pretty easy to quadruple the frame rate if you only read one photosite in four - the overall datarates will be the same - but obviously the quality goes down.

 

[morgan_moore]

..that where your $14600 goes

I mean the tech you are getting in a goPro $ fps in something the size of an AA battery (once you remove the goPro batt), for

For $15000 they could actually put a go-pro in the front too

(my FS7 is now basically flying a goPro on all event coverage I do!)

--
Generally Im just saying I feel these cams are a little out of synch with tech/app world and are therefore fairly vulnerable to going out of date fast.

Hyperlapse? Free on Iphone, impossible on Canon Sony or Varicam.


S

 

[steve phillipps]

Today it seems HFR is like the zoom in the 60's, the star filter of the 70's, big hair of the 80's & Justin Beiber in the 00's.

Its overuse is everywhere making for boring content now even more boring by being longer. Generally it's use is not creative . It also says something about what people are shooting & certainly it isn't actors. Yes it has it's place but it needs to be planned. So, when you need it , go hire a Phantom Flex 4k, at least then it will not be the new boring "120fps".

I probably agree with you to a great extent - for shooting wildlife though it's essential - and the number 1 reason why the original Varicam was the universal tool for high end wildlife production over the last 10 years.
Steve

 

[DLD]

DLD..... You are you talking about a guy who shot a DR test between the NX1 and C300 yet set the C300 to Rec709... Possibly by accident, possibly to show the results in a good light for NX1.

Canon will pick and choose their testers very wisely. Proper industry pros.

I am not highlighting his shooting prowess (or lack thereof), just the fact that his blog is fairly popular for that sort of thing.

Anyhow, this is from Canon Rumors --

We’re told that the upcoming Canon EOS 5D Mark IV sensor will employ the same dual-channel readout as the EOS C300 Mark II.

http://www.canonrumors.com/

 

[Pave1]

I think, that at video about C300 mark II (Canon US) is a bug at the graph of Canon Log2 (at highlights isn't 6.3 stops but 8.3 stops above 18% gray).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8zNtfkLdOQ (7:10)

 

[Samuel H]

He says it's 3 stops more DR, and shows the graph on the left on your post, but then says peak white is 1600%, or twice as high as the C300, which (I could be wrong here) means one stop better, as the graph on your right would imply, not 3, as the graph on the left would imply.

If the curve on the right is the correct one, and IF the C300II actually has more DR than an FS7, then you'll probably want to routinely underexpose the C300II, just as I do with my a7S, to get more highlight headroom (and less shadow headroom) (i.e. against a C300, instead of getting one extra stop in the highlights and two in the shadows, I'd rather get two in the highlights and one in the shadows).

 

[Pave1]

Yes, white peak "double" C300 800pct (100pct is 500:1, 800pct is 4000:1 and 1600pct is 8000:1 contrast, it is about 78dB - one F-stop above C300 at highights).

C300 has (from 18pct gray) 5.3 Stops to whitepeak, C300 mark II has 6.3 Stops (from 18pct gray) to whitepeak, and not 8.3stops as was at the first graph above, and 8.7 Stops to black (from 18pct gray), two Stops better than C300 (6.7 Stops to black).

 

[AndreeOnline]

Just read through the entire thread. Sigh.

As I've written in the Canon part of the forum: the mkII will have 15 stops just like the mkI had 12.

Personal tests and subjective "evaluations" mean little. If you measure the C300 to 7 stops, then the C300 mkII will have 10 stops. It's simply three more. One more above and two more below. As per the documentation.

Canon has several white papers that show their log function (responsible for the distribution of the DR). I'm sure we'll have something better than these slides for the new sensor and Log2 soon enough.

 

[Deanosan75]

Looks like they have definitely made the best camera for now. I wonder why they didn't offer a 720p 240FPS option? Still, not a bad deal at the price point. Though to make it work ergonomically there will be after-market extras...

 

[mik303]

Canon hit a home run a couple of years ago with the C300. This new updated model looks good. I can't wait to see the detailed official specs.

 

[alohype]

If a phone for $400 can do it badly a $15000 single purpose device should do it well?

Excluding HFR, generally I feel the cameras (and I dont know the full details of the C300ii) fail on conectivity and giving the client a good experience which might for example involve sharing a 'grarded' grab with a line manager who maybe not on location.

S

I agree in 100%. With my expensive cameras I still feel like being behind everyone with just a smartphone. Shooting short video, photos... bam! In few seconds it's online or sent to someone. Where I have to offload it, ingest in lightroom/premiere, cut, export, upload. They seriously have to work on that. However ridiculous it sound I'd love to have some simple editing software on a camera, that would let me cut it and upload it straight to the youtube. Or at least some proxies. One way to do it would be to run them on Android or some other flavour of Linux. If main manufacturers won't do that smaller will. I was hoping that C300II will make some revolution but as we can see it will not.

 

[Kenneth Fisher]

I agree in 100%. With my expensive cameras I still feel like being behind everyone with just a smartphone. Shooting short video, photos... bam! In few seconds it's online or sent to someone. Where I have to offload it, ingest in lightroom/premiere, cut, export, upload. They seriously have to work on that. However ridiculous it sound I'd love to have some simple editing software on a camera, that would let me cut it and upload it straight to the youtube. Or at least some proxies. One way to do it would be to run them on Android or some other flavour of Linux. If main manufacturers won't do that smaller will. I was hoping that C300II will make some revolution but as we can see it will not.

I agree.

Also, for $15,999, why can't I make a phone call with the Canon C300 mkII?

Come on Canon!