C300: Canon C300 mkII

Parrot said:
XQD is an open standard supported by the Compact Flash Association just like CFast. XQD is also an upgradeable standard, unlike CFast 2.0, which is the last iteration of that standard. Sony XQD2 is same price & capacity as Arri approved Sandisk CFast2, $6.25/GB. Some (like me) will want their CFast cards to be interchangeable with Amira & Alexa.
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Except in reality XQD is pretty much limited to Sony gear. There are currently FOUR cameras that use XQD. Two Nikons (D4 and D4s) and two Sonys (FS7 and PXW-Z100). Only the Sonys use XQD exclusively.

However, I wonder how this will affect the stickiness to the Canon brand when Canon needs something faster than 500Mbytes/s write and everybody needs to buy another new standard of memory cards all over again. Customers tend to sour on that. With Canon already selling 50+ MPixel cameras that time can't be too far away.
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CFast 2.0 is good for up to 350MB/s real-world write. The theoretical interface limit on CFast 2.0 is 600MB/s. Those are BIG B "bytes" as opposed to little b "bits" that're used when talking about codecs. Until Canon (or anyone else) uses a codec that writes at 2800Mb/s (for current cards) or 4800Mb/s (for the interface limit) CFast 2.0 will be plenty fast.

It's very easy to get confused between MegaBYTES and MegaBITS... to convert between them:

Megabits = Megabytes x 8
Megabytes = Megabits / 8

I also find it a bit funny that people on filmmaker forums think CFast is the best thing since sliced bread, while on techie forums they are scratching their heads wondering why Canon would adapt a technology that Apple abandoned 2 years ago.
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Apple never used CFast to my knowledge.

And I'm buying CFast cards knowing they will probably be completely obsolete by the time C300mk3 comes around.
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I'd be willing to bet they won't. CFast 2.0 has a lot of headroom over the C300's codec.
 
alohype said:
Edit:
I just watched BTS of making that "Trick shot" and some of the raw material inserts in it make me believe that there was some mistake in the export or grading or something else. It looks WAY better that in the final short.
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I just watched this for the first time right now. Makes me want it even more. I wonder if this BTS was shot with it. The raw footage looked better than the grade hah.
 
I have purchased Sony cameras since I got into the video camera ownership business. Before that I owned and worked with film cameras.
When I owned a Beta camera, everyone owned beta cameras and there was absolutely no discussion about which beta camera you owned. You were part of the very large Beta team, so who cared.

When Canon came out with the C300, I started getting calls asking if I had one of those, and often times when I said "sorry, but I own a Sony FS-100," the conversation stopped and they said "sorry, but I need a C300..."

I currently own an FS-700 and although I've done some really lovely work with it, no one has ever called me and asked if I have an FS-700.
I am really tired of that scenario. So I have started paying close attention to the Canon C300 Mark II.


it's an expensive outlay compared to the FS7, which I'm also considering.
There are some really likeable things about the C/Mk2 and some things I think are really utterly ridiculous, like its ergonomics.

I do a great deal of hand held shooting and I have some serious considerations about working with the C300/2 and making that work.
I also know that in the past I have lost work by virtue of not having the C300 and I want that to stop.
Yes, people hire DP's according to their talents, as they logically should, but they also consider their camera as well, for better or worse, and my question to myself is: do I want to continue pushing a rock up a hill?
 
I know that debating the CFast media seems rather nitpicky, here's why I bring it up:

The C300mk2 is very much a Doc camera, just like the C300mk1.
Doc cameras need a lot of media. Therefore price, longevity and used resell price of that media becomes very relevant.
(Unlike f.ex. the Alexa jobs I have done where the price of the media have been mostly irrelevant to the total price of the package.)

Just the job I did yesterday would have needed approx $10K in CFast cards if I had shot on the C300mk2. That's in HD. One camera. We were shooting with 2x C300mk1s.

On other C300mk1 jobs I have been doing I would need approx $40-$50K in CFast cards (today's street price) if I were to upgrade from C300mk1 HD to C300mk2 UHD and get the same record time I had last time we did the job (at 24 or 25fps)

Obviously, I am not going to invest $50K in CFast cards for a single C300mk2!
I want to invest as little as possible because I believe the longevity of the CFast standard is very uncertain at this point in time.

With so many fantastical posts about the fantasticalness of CFast being spread around I believe that inserting some healthy skepticism about that standard could help everybody gain some perspective (and keep pricing and investment levels real).
 
Just watched the Trick Shot BTS. The images were so much better than the film itself to my eye. Kind of funny how that worked out .
 
Parrot said:
I know that debating the CFast media seems rather nitpicky, here's why I bring it up:

The C300mk2 is very much a Doc camera, just like the C300mk1.
Doc cameras need a lot of media. Therefore price, longevity and used resell price of that media becomes very relevant.
(Unlike f.ex. the Alexa jobs I have done where the price of the media have been mostly irrelevant to the total price of the package.)

Just the job I did yesterday would have needed approx $10K in CFast cards if I had shot on the C300mk2. That's in HD. One camera. We were shooting with 2x C300mk1s.

On other C300mk1 jobs I have been doing I would need approx $40-$50K in CFast cards (today's street price) if I were to upgrade from C300mk1 HD to C300mk2 UHD and get the same record time I had last time we did the job (at 24 or 25fps)

Obviously, I am not going to invest $50K in CFast cards for a single C300mk2!
I want to invest as little as possible because I believe the longevity of the CFast standard is very uncertain at this point in time.

With so many fantastical posts about the fantasticalness of CFast being spread around I believe that inserting some healthy skepticism about that standard could help everybody gain some perspective (and keep pricing and investment levels real).
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If you need 12,800GB (12.8TB) of capture cards, might I suggest you offload your cards more often?

If I'm doing the math correctly (I'm using base 1000... this is just an estimate)...

CFast 2.0 are about $500/128GB (Sandisk, B&H pricing)... so $50,000 in CFast is 100 128GB cards or 12.8TB of storage.

At 410Mb/s (C300m2's top codec bitrate) that's 51.25MB/s.

12,800GB is 12,800,000MB which at 51.25MB/s gives you 249,756 seconds of record time... which is 4,162 minutes of record time... which is 69 hours of record time.

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69 hours of record time is excessive before dumping out to something. That's three cameras running for 23 hours. If you shoot 8 hours of footage per day on THREE cameras, you'd only need to dump your cards every three days.

I can see some very rare cases where you might need to be able to keep 69 hours of footage around on cards or be recording on so many cameras you need 100 cards, but those cases are going to be exceedingly rare. For every other case, you really should be dumping your cards to something else on a regular basis long before you need 69 hours of footage on the capture cards.
 
Parrot said:
I know that debating the CFast media seems rather nitpicky, here's why I bring it up:

The C300mk2 is very much a Doc camera, just like the C300mk1.
Doc cameras need a lot of media. Therefore price, longevity and used resell price of that media becomes very relevant.
(Unlike f.ex. the Alexa jobs I have done where the price of the media have been mostly irrelevant to the total price of the package.)

Just the job I did yesterday would have needed approx $10K in CFast cards if I had shot on the C300mk2. That's in HD. One camera. We were shooting with 2x C300mk1s.

On other C300mk1 jobs I have been doing I would need approx $40-$50K in CFast cards (today's street price) if I were to upgrade from C300mk1 HD to C300mk2 UHD and get the same record time I had last time we did the job (at 24 or 25fps)

Obviously, I am not going to invest $50K in CFast cards for a single C300mk2!
I want to invest as little as possible because I believe the longevity of the CFast standard is very uncertain at this point in time.

With so many fantastical posts about the fantasticalness of CFast being spread around I believe that inserting some healthy skepticism about that standard could help everybody gain some perspective (and keep pricing and investment levels real).
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Amen to this.

As much as I'd eventually like to move up from a c100i to the c300ii, which is so feature-rich I think, the cost of CFast cards is the thing that puts it out of my budget range. Yes, I realize that the cost of media comes with the (4K) territory and all, but wow. As it is, I have a dozen or more cheap SD cards and have shot long days without ever getting close to exhausting two or three of them -- at about 15 bucks per. Costing out CFast, which I hadn't priced before, my eyes bugged out.

The second bit is the new AF features.

Pardon me if it's crass to say within earshot of some of you purists, but I would love, love, love to have the new AF capabilities on my c100, even when shooting narrative. My guess is that when people start getting their hands on this and maybe giving it a whirl while no one's looking they just might start using it regularly -- especially the gradual focus pull feature. I haven't even gotten the DP upgrade yet, but boy would I like access to that feature.

Lastly, I agree with the people above who liked the look of the c300ii short, but not quite as much as the Ursa footage. At first, I thought the c300 was the clear winner in this, and I didn't quite get why they shot all the daytime stuff, which is by its nature not very interesting or atmospheric. Then I went back and had a second look at the Ursa stuff and saw what most of you recognized in it: the creamy film-look of it. Hope they can get it all right.

FWIW, just my 2 cents.
 
I was relatively impressed by the improvement Canon made with the C300, but it was the improved implementation of the duel pixel sensor and the new focus aids that made me lust after the camera. Wow, that would make my shoots so much easier.
 
jbregar said:
CFast 2.0 are about $500/128GB (Sandisk, B&H pricing)... so $50,000 in CFast is 100 128GB cards or 12.8TB of storage.
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Thanks for the clarification about new street price on Sandisk CFast 2.0 128GB. My math needs to be corrected. I assumed $800 for the Sandisk 128GB. Great that they lowered the price!

My hypothetical examples of how much I would have to invest in CFast cards are based on actual jobs that I have already done with C300mk1 and how many memory cards I needed on those jobs. The key word is DOCUMENTARY and being far away from civilization. In those situations the only practical solution for a backup is called Double Record, and the C300mk2 has that functionality! :-)

Obviously that comes at a cost that will probably be prohibitive for some productions (CFast 2.0 cards becoming the single biggest expense item, more than the camera & lenses), so we will have to do things a bit differently with a C300mk2. Whatever that means. There are lots of options! Including keeping my C300mk1, which I plan on doing.

When I'm in town and the C300mk2 is sitting firmly on a tripod I would of course be happy to strap that O7Q onto it for long interviews at 4K60P. Or when I shoot a spot I always have a Downloader on the crew so the need for CFast cards will be an insignificant cost item.
 
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Wouldn't some of you who are interested in the C300 MKII but are concerned about the cost of CFAST cards consider using a Shogun or Odyssey to record with? I love not having to use an external monitor but based upon my experience to date with my Ninja Blade on my C100, if I buy a C300 MKII, I will also budget in an outboard recorder and then buy a few CFAST cards. Short form work, use CFAST and long form, shoot to SSDs. Seems like a no brainer to me.
 
Critical question about this mark II: are we getting improved zebra control? I want to be able to set heavy zebras to anything over 109 and light zebras to anything from 50-100 with +- a little bit. Basically I want zebra control like my old Sony EX1 had.
 
puredrifting said:
Wouldn't some of you who are interested in the C300 MKII but are concerned about the cost of CFAST cards consider using a Shogun or Odyssey to record with? I love not having to use an external monitor but based upon my experience to date with my Ninja Blade on my C100, if I buy a C300 MKII, I will also budget in an outboard recorder and then buy a few CFAST cards. Short form work, use CFAST and long form, shoot to SSDs. Seems like a no brainer to me.
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Good idea! And for me, where I am all about having that flexibility in post (couldn't be bother less with delivering in 4K) media needed is twice as much (not 300%). Why? Because with 4K I need one camera less ;)
 
I have a podcast called "TechMove" - about Cinematography Gear and Techniques, among other things. I am a director and cinematographer, and I actually own a several Canon Cinema EOS products and I interviewed Paul McNiff - a Canon C300 mk2 specialist at the Canon booth at NAB 2015 for the podcast about that at the XC10. Go to http://techmovepodcast.com to see our latest NAB 2015 episode. You can subscribe to the audio version and also go directly to the video version of the interview on the links on the episode's page. Enjoy.

PS- Thanks Paul for the great interview, it was great meeting you and talking about the new Canon EOS Cinema products. -Keith Moreau, host of TechMove Podcast
 
Osslund said:
That video got some bad acting and poor use of visuals sorry to say. Especially if you compare it to Mobius.
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First time I was watching it I've muted sound so I will not be distracted by the story/bad acting/music/sound. Camera shouldn't be judged by the good/bad story, I think companies are making a mistake by doing that sort of stuff. Unless they KNOW that story and actors are strong they should avoid any narrative. Do something like a showreel or just random shots taken here and there. It's quite sad in Canon's case because it looks like they've spent a loads of money on this and a result leaves a lot to be desired (compare that to ZERO budget Ursa mini footage).
 
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