I've shot with C100 since 2013 and hot swapped my way through all these years. Now with the C200, I hot swap on almost every shoot. Thing is, with IS lenses, its good to turn off IS before hot swapping, because the IS otherwize can be damaged if it doesn't lock back into "safe mode" internally in the lens. My best practice is to turn off IS, remove lens, turn IS back on so next time I attach the lens, IS turns on again.
C200: Changing lens on a C200
- Thread starter guerriglia
- Start date
brettsherman
Well-known member
brettsherman
Well-known member
Tell me where to purchase that 11-200mm f/2.8 lens and I'll gladly oblige.
I've only heard of the one instance, but Canon themselves say to power the camera down. The anecdotal story about the guy blowing the fuse, combined with the manufacturer explicitly telling you not to do this is enough for me to listen. I'm not an engineer so I'm going to listen to engineers.
Well the examples you gave are all risks with a reward. Filming from a kayak allows you to get dynamic footage from a kayak. I personally think that the time it takes to power cycle a C200 is a big enough deal to potentially risk damage.
I also think there's a big difference between babying your gear (I don't) and following best practices, which this seems to be. Look, if I were shooting at the pace you're describing, I'd decide to take the risk if the alternative is missing a shot I'm paid to get; but if I'm not in that specific scenario I'm taking the extra few seconds to power the camera down.
Run&Gun
Veteran
Get a 13x4.5 f/1.8 2/3" ENG lens. Pretty affordable on eBay, relatively speaking. Used mine on my C300 plenty of times. On my F55, too. You're about 11.5-150 before the extender. 2x gets you to at least 300mm. No complaints from network clients. NFL Films shoots with ENG lenses w/adapters on their Amira's all the time.
I'm not stupid or naive, I know the trade-offs(and benefits), there are ALWAYS trade-offs with everything.
Run&Gun
Veteran
How dare you bring logic and facts into this discussion.
His logic works from the standpoint of if the manufacturer was having to cover the cost of a repair for something that has supposedly only happened once out of a theoretical 10,000 units in use. If you short it out, it's gonna cost you the full repair amount. A more correct breakdown would probably be how many times an individual has gotten away with it(or would probably attempt in the lifetime) on their camera and the (probable)repair cost. Then that's a monetary amount you can assign per lens swap.
BUT don't some of the C series have a button(or assignable button) for just such an event, so that you don't have to turn the camera completely off? I guess it basically powers down the lens contacts (and the sensor?).
Alexander.M
Active member
Imagine having to power down a RED One MX every time you wanted to change a lens...
Mark Smith
Veteran
I can’t say for sure because I don’t have a C200 in my hands but the C300 Mk1, MK2 , c500 all have a cap which closes over the sensor when powering down as protection for the sensor. THe Mk1 had if I remember correctly had in later firmware builds a “swap lenses “ function that could be mapped to a button on the body. With this function mapped you could closes the cap over the sensor without turning the camera off, swap the lens and the hit the button again to open the capping shutter.
If the C300 mk2 has the same function I haven’t found it yet so I always turn off the camera on a lens swap. I’m not sure about where the C200 stands in this regard.
brettsherman
Well-known member
No that's not logical. You are assuming every unit will short out once in the life of the camera, which I don't believe even the most rigid of the power off-ers believe. The only thing we can go by from risk/reward calculation is actual reports of this happening. And I think we only know of one case. And to really get the risk part down it's not total number of units sold. It's actually the number of hot lens swaps being done across all sold units. So even the 1 in 10,000 is way too high. Probably more like 1 in a few million.
Eric Coughlin
Veteran
Well I just mentioned I may have heard the manufacturer covered the costs in that particular case. Even if you have to cover the cost, the cost is still minimal in relation to the tiny risk involved. If it was truly a big risk, we'd be hearing about the issue much more commonly than once in the past six or seven years.
And even if it actually does happen to you, despite the small risk, the cost still seems small to me. I had the sensor replaced in my C100 Mark II a few months ago because of some dead pixels. Cost about $1000. Could hot swapping lenses have caused the issue? Who knows. I doubt it, but if that was the case, then it was worth it, because I likely profited more than $1k over the years of hot swapping by providing better service to my clients instead of wasting time and loosing shots on set waiting for power ups and power downs. All it takes is one client to think, "He was kind of slow on set, so let's go with someone else next time," and that simple thought could lead to loosing thousands of dollars.
I heard the cost of a sensor replacement on the Arri Amira is $15k. That'd be a tougher pill to swallow. Of course I hot swap on the Amira.
Speaking of hot swapping, anyone tried wife swapping? What are the risks?
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Mark Smith
Veteran
Eric Coughlin:
“And even if it actually does happen to you, despite the small risk, the cost still seems small to me. I had the sensor replaced in my C100 Mark II a few months ago because of some dead pixels. Cost about $1000. Could hot swapping lenses have caused the issue? Who knows. “
In 2012 , just after I received my first C300, I boarded a ship in Hawaii for a month long expedition trip with the camera. I was hot swapping lenses all the time for that month. It wasn’t until I got back that I became aware of the danger in hot swapping. I was blissfully unaware of the possible dangers in the practice for a month. Nothing bad came of the hot swapping during that month but if it had my A camera would have been down for the rest of the trip. We were out in remote areas of the Pacific, so no Canon servce oportunities. I had 2 other cameras which I could have used but they were there to fill other roles.
I still power off for lens swaps because I like that the sensor get capped off when powering down which can prevent dust on sensor issues. I think if a client were to make a negative judgement about me being ‘slow’ because I powered the camera down for a lens swap and had t wait a few extra seconds for a restart, that would be a really tough valuation of a minute amount of time. THere are so many ways, so much more time gets wasted on a typical shoot, that the few seconds it takes for the camera to come back up from a restart seems microscopic in comparison.
“And even if it actually does happen to you, despite the small risk, the cost still seems small to me. I had the sensor replaced in my C100 Mark II a few months ago because of some dead pixels. Cost about $1000. Could hot swapping lenses have caused the issue? Who knows. “
In 2012 , just after I received my first C300, I boarded a ship in Hawaii for a month long expedition trip with the camera. I was hot swapping lenses all the time for that month. It wasn’t until I got back that I became aware of the danger in hot swapping. I was blissfully unaware of the possible dangers in the practice for a month. Nothing bad came of the hot swapping during that month but if it had my A camera would have been down for the rest of the trip. We were out in remote areas of the Pacific, so no Canon servce oportunities. I had 2 other cameras which I could have used but they were there to fill other roles.
I still power off for lens swaps because I like that the sensor get capped off when powering down which can prevent dust on sensor issues. I think if a client were to make a negative judgement about me being ‘slow’ because I powered the camera down for a lens swap and had t wait a few extra seconds for a restart, that would be a really tough valuation of a minute amount of time. THere are so many ways, so much more time gets wasted on a typical shoot, that the few seconds it takes for the camera to come back up from a restart seems microscopic in comparison.
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Eric Coughlin
Veteran
Really just depends on your workflow. I bring a backup camera to most of my shoots so not much issue there.
As other have said, if you do fast paced shoots, a few seconds can make a big difference. And it's really more than a few seconds; I just timed it on the C300 Mark II; it took 4 seconds to power down and 10 seconds to power up, so that's 14 seconds, and on the Mark I C-series cameras powering up took considerably longer. That can often be the difference between getting the shot or not getting the shot. I'd hate to tell a bride I missed the closeup of her vows because...*gets all technical with bride who is clueless to tech*...I didn't want to risk "hot swapping" a lens during her vows.
If you don't do fast paced shoots and can afford the extra 14 seconds each time, then sure, avoid unnecessary risks if the benefits aren't worth it.
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Mark Smith
Veteran
I shoot mostly Docs, its not weddings, but we also son't get much in the way of re-do's. I once hot lens swapped in the middle of a scene out of necessity and kept rolling though the swap for audio content which was important. Lens swaps are a somewhat annoying feature of large sensor shooting, but generally 14 seconds doesn't kill me one way or the other.
I get a power off in 2 seconds and a power up in 7-9 seconds with my 300 Mk2....