Which makes it $1,000-$1,500 overpriced in a very crowded video field.
C500: Canon C400 coming?
- Thread starter chris f
- Start date
Which makes it $1,000-$1,500 overpriced in a very crowded video field.
cpreston
Veteran
My guess is that the 1DX III is supersampling to get it's full frame 4K video and Canon didn't put in a processor that can reliably encode the footage and handle DPAF at the same time at 60p. My understanding is that the 1DX II did have UHD 60p and DPAF, but that was a cropped sensor and no Canon Log. Or maybe it can't pull both the the DPAF and the full frame sensor information off the sensor at 60p at the same time. That wouldn't explain the RAW and no DPAF issue. I know most people assume that Canon intentionally cripples their cameras to protect sales, but I think the simpler explanation is that they are overly concerned with keeping their processors and sensors underspeced for heat management and reliability concerns.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
You're lumping in an entire process into one heading, "R&D". I am talking about innovation, not just development time. I don't consider calling your sensor supplier or opening up the new catalog and ordering the latest higher resolution, larger size sensor to be innovation, or at
least it's not innovation from the camera manufacturer, unless they make their own sensors? Sony does, but I know that internally, the pro camera division buys from the sensor division. As far as I know, Sony buys the same sensors that Sony sells to everyone else? Not sure
if Canon is buying sensors from Sony or if they make their own or buy from someone else?
IMHO, the companies aren't spending a lot of effort to "develop" FF cameras, they are spending resources to accomodate the new sensor that could be better spent elsewhere. I'm not naive enough to think they just take, for instance, the C300 MKII body shell and just bolt in
a new FF imager and call it a C500 MKII. That entire body and surrounding electronics had to be engineered to accomdate the larger sensor. That obviously takes a considerable amount of R&D, testing and troubleshooting. And I'm not saying there is no time or R&D
money to develop other improvements, there is based upon all of the nice new none FF imager improvements in the C500 MKII and FX-9. But most of the those innovations are small and incremental. Neither camera has a new form factor, significantly improved audio circuitry or
features, significantly improved or newly innovated high CRI LCD or much improved EVF (although I have not tried out the new attached EVF on the C500 MKII yet, maybe it is improved over the old one?). I see that the screens and EVFs are also still using mostly the same
clunky, large cabling to supply image and communication as we have had for the past thirty years, no Bluetooth or Wi-Fi or new communication protocol that would eliminate all of that messy, in the way cabling. See what I mean? I don't see a lot of outside the box thinking
on new cameras, I see basically the same stuff with more resolution, shooting with a larger sensor.
You're leaving out optical complexity and obtaining the same edge to edge sharpness across the image circle, reduction of chromatic aberration and fringing, increased ghosting and internal reflections, expecially on zooms?
No representative from a lens manufacturer is going to tell us that the new FF lenses technically have reduced performance in these parameters but that has been subtley inferred, at least from what I have been told.
This is really similar to the audio discussion many of us have had for years and years to an extent. Why do all digital cinema and video cameras have crap audio? Simple, allocation of design and engineering resources.
Audio is way down the line for camera engineering teams because the market doesn't demand it, the average camera oriented person has a tin ear and can't discern mediocre audio from good audio and of course, when
you at the high end, nobody is using camera audio. But in the range of the FX-9 and C500 MKII, the majority of users will be using camera audio most of the time.
I'm far from a lens engineer, I am just going off of what the engineers/designers have told me when I bring up the transition from S35 to FF as the industry standard. Not just about size and weight, although as you point out, to obtain the identical S35 FOV and speed,
at least in theory, the FF lens would have to be larger and heavier than it's S35 counterpart, unless there is some magic new formula? It's all about allocation of resources in camera and lens design. Sourcing, grinding and polishing significantly larger lens
elements takes more resources (money from the design budget) so it stands to reason to wonder if the FF lens sells for the same or similar price, what had to be compromised to achieve that price? Of course, that's all moot if the FF lens sells for significantly
more money, but then, as I said, to what end? Paying more for a camera because it's FF and then paying more for the lenses you were going to buy because they are FF is fine, if that's what people want. It just sucks for those of us who know the real
price we are paying for a feature with negligible return that is significantly more expensive.
Eric Coughlin
Veteran
If there's no DPAF in UHD/60p, and they were to price it at the price you're suggesting, I would buy 1000 of them and use them as wallpaper.
All Japanese company do this. Canon has had a horrible center-crop on its full frame 4K models, while Sony offered an option of either an s35 crop or a pixel binning full frame. Canon also offered obsolete codecs, while its competitors in the same price range were up to date with their iterations of H264. Panasonic, Fuji and Nikon are crippling their cameras auto-focus capabilities even with their native glass, though auto focus is the norm on the inexpensive smartphones and, with the AI help, achieves almost a 100% hit rate on the entry level Sony APS-C line (A6100, A6400, A6600). Sony has to, naturally, play the game with their competitors-slash-clients and cripple own codecs to 8-bits, though Panasonic and Fuji have 10-bit H264 on their lesser models.
Now, you can believe these feature crippling practices to be solely designed to protect own lines but it was also happening when there was no higher line to protect, i.e., with Nikon (Sony sensors), Panasonic (Sony sensors), Olympus (Sony sensors, partially owned by Sony until recently) and Fuji (some Sony sensors, some own sensors that are manufactured by Sony).
In civil law, the standard is the preponderance of evidence, aka "more likely than not". To me, the case of collusion by the Japanese cartel is not just "more likely than not" but is a open and shut case.
PS. Of course, in criminal cases, there's always an OJ Simpson jury.
Run&Gun
Veteran
Except that, despite all of the videocentric features, it is still a stills camera aimed primarily at sports photographers and photojournalists and the price is the same or at least in-line with the previous generation 1D’s. Will they sell copies to “video guys”? Yes. But the still guys will outnumber them in purchases by orders of magnitude.
Stills2HDConvert
Well-known member
There are several 50mp stills FF cameras. I don't see the stills people getting all worked up about sharpness edge to edge. There seems to already be glass that keeps up with the high res if need be. Most new video cameras are a fraction of 50mp. If you look at any site that measures lens sharpness you'll see that the resolving power of lens A is often higher with a higher megapixel camera. People laud the new lenses from Canon and Nikon. Unless you have a super crappy lens to start with more mp means more resolution. Period.
True but most of those will probably stick with MKII.
And some may be tempted to switch to A9 II for $4,500.