Is the C300mkII flopping vs the FS7 at rental? (from EOSHD)

I'll say this about Andrew: he's passionate and he puts in the work. He seems to be experimental in a good way and curious to learn. I think he's got good overall knowledge of how various components of film making fit together and how cameras work.

But I also feel he lacks perspective. Inability to connect dots. Has difficulty separating what he 'wants' from how tings 'are'. Too often a sensationalist. Likes to preach to the choir.

I remember when the 1Dc launched. There was no other camera offering that image quality at the time in such a portable package. Needless to say Andrew was all over Canon as a company and the 1Dc as a camera—calling it 'game over' for Canon. Then, through the magic of time passing, the 1Dc drops to a price he can afford and it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I tried to have a reasonable discussion with him on Twitter, the result being he blocked me—and I'm still blocked from his tweets to this day. I still have the discussion saved, and looking at it now I can honestly say I tried being constructive and to the point, while he was calling me a troll.

General tip to anyone: never, never, ever drag 'camera price' into 'camera specs' when comparing cameras. The price becomes VERY real at the time of purchase but it has NOTHING to do with the product's design or performance. It is a ROOKIE mistake to start getting emotional about cameras you can afford when comparing agains cameras you can't afford.

Feel free to compare FS7 to C300mkII—but leave price out of it. Completely. I know how tempting it is to think "what you get 'for the money'", but that is an illusion. If you truly want to compare cameras, or camera SYSTEMS, it needs to be under the pretence that you rented it or that it was given to you. Once it's in your hands the cameras strengths and weaknesses become very REAL… but price? It could be $100000000 or $3995. Doesn't matter at that point.

I know what you are saying I get it,.....but for some of us price HAS to come into play. For example,
I couldn't buy a Alexa in my little market in small town Alaska. You have to be able to actually make
back the money you spend on a camera within a fairly short amount of time. I know what the market will
bear here, and Alexa budget's aren't it. As for rentals, it's not even a real option for me. Closest rental
house is at least 600 miles away by jet (no driving in or out of my town!) so throw a $500 plane ticket on
top of the rental cost. Sure, I could rent 'through the mail' and hope that I get stuff on time. But when even
Fed Ex won't honor their guarantee's for shipping here, it's kind of a fools game hoping you will actually get
rental gear when you need it. I have several stories about this, but suffice it to say the last time I attempted to
rent gear was about 5 years ago.....the gear didn't get to me in time and I had to shoot the start of the Iditarod
race for my client with an old SD camera (PD-150). And then the rental house charged me for the gear rental
even though I never got to use it. Rental is great if you live in a city, less great in rural areas unless you are a
hobbyist shooting your own 'passion projects' and you don't really have deadlines like you do for client work.
 
I think the C300ii is a bit of a fail.

Simply there is a heap of doco being done on FS7 not by DOPs but by 'shooting APs' or whatever they are called where using the 18-80 zoom lens and AF would be the best solution for aquiring story.

As for cost I dont know the price of the C300ii but the F5 is £10 a day more than the FS7 - Ive suggested using that on jobs that needed timecode but no the FS7 was 'the camera' and we had to add the stoopid rear box.

I get along fine with my FS7 but still struggle with getting the right zoom lens.

I am of course glad that producers are FS7 mad and dont see that it is not the best tool for some jobs :)

Im not familiar with the C300ii so maybe it has some annoying gotchas that one only sees when using the camera in anger.

rentaul prices here..
http://www.promotionhire.com/hire/cameras/large-sensor#results

S
 
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if youre getting a c300 mk ii, for couple more thousand you can get a varicam LT

If that was directed at me, then it goes 100% opposite to what I just tried to explain:

Here's a flow chart to help

Camera-flow-chart.jpg


EDIT: 'Get your act together' isn't meant to sound harsh. Just calibrate expectations and buy a camera that suits your business. If you dream big—go big.
 
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Each camera has a differnent niche..

Varicam is heavy and has no AF - it is not for run Doco.

Varicam can produce cinema, has the solid build for heavy production and lenses

C300ii is light and has AF and a great doco lens - it is for run doco yet people select the Fs7.. that is a fail

FS7 has great HFR and is good for budget camera p0rn shots that work well in advertorial

FS5 is super small and light and with the 18-105 great for packpacking

XC10 is even smaller and better for backpacking
 
I know what you are saying I get it,.....but for some of us price HAS to come into play. For example,
I couldn't buy a Alexa in my little market in small town Alaska.

OK, so you'd like an Alexa. I assume that's the best fit for you if you could choose any camera, based on features, form factor and so on. Cool.

But your region/business won't sustain the purchase? Alright—no biggie! Buy something else.

But when you talk about the Alexa I'd expect you to describe its rich image or great features, or whatever made you want it in the first place. I don't expect you to slander it, just because you couldn't pick it up!

There's a loooooooooooot of justifying cheaper solutions—de facto worse cameras—because their owners "got a lot for the money". I guess it's pretty common knowledge that you pay a huge premium for those last 10% improvement. That goes for a lot of things in life. Kind of exponential.
 
C300ii is light and has AF and a great doco lens - it is for run doco yet people select the Fs7.. that is a fail

I don't the the people who evaluated the FS7 against the C300mkII, and then got the C300mkII, think of it as a fail.

Where does the need to win/lose come from???

It's like arguing about favourite colors. I really don't get it.
 
I'll say this about Andrew: he's passionate and he puts in the work.

Not sure he put the work in here! One person tells him something about one rental store, in one city, in one country and ... rather than doing some research to try and make a reasonable blog article on a potentianlly interesting situation, he just posts his opinion on this tiny bit of info. gotta love the internet!
 
Not sure he put the work in here!

I mean it in a sense that he keeps the posts coming and he does his guides and so on. Well, I wouldn't actually know... I don't visit his site. Just my feeling.

But that's a far cry from doing quality work. That would take the kind of research and verification that you mention.
 
I think this article on EOSHD is not well based.
There was a discussion in an other thread, where someone mentioned that his rental house told him, that nobody wants the C300 II.
Based on this statement and some others, a new Blog article was born. There are no information about how many rental houses were asked. I think this was only third party information, no direct reliable numbers of rentals of Cameras. It is more a limited opinion than journalistic work.
 
Unbookmarked that site long ago.

Besides I just heard, it's mark of man to own 5D mark IV in India. Canon don't have to care about few indiehippies changing camera brand more often than their socks. Sadly.
Someone also metioned that when Canon ME20F-SH came out, it was instantly sold out to some military applications. 30K camera.
 
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For many people the $8,000 price difference (in the US) did not justify the difference in the performance, which wasn't linear anyway. Even as many preferred Canon's color more, a decent LUT off SLog 2/3 can make the "Sony look" disappear.

PLease, please, link to some clips that prove this. No matter the LUT, all I see are crappy, blue-green skin tones from the Sonys. I would seriously switch if I knew I could nail Canon-like skin tones from an FS7, the FS7 would be so much easier for me to afford than the C300 MKII. But my clients are in love with what I give them from the C100 and C300 MKI. I already went down the horrible skin tone route with the GH4, can't afford to alienate any more clients with a "look" that isn't Canon-like because they all love Canon (Netflix, Fox, Sony Studios - ironically). Come to think of it, I have shot and delivered two fairly high profile pieces to Sony for Bluray releases and they love the look I got with the C300, although they didn't ask which camera we used).
 
There are two major ratios in the rental pricing. The first one is obviously the retail price of the gear vs. its rental price. The second is the number of the available units per a given model vs. the rental demand for that given model. The second ratio is prone to variations in short term but is likely to even out in the long term. So, if one eliminates the second from the evaluations, the most important factor is the price vs. the rental fees. A camera with the highest ratio is more likely to be the lest "successful" one. The opposite goes true as well.

So, using rough numbers for hypothetical models, if a $50,000 camera rents for $500 day for a 100/1 price vs rental ratio and a $20,000 camera rents out for $250/day for the 80/1 ratio, then the $20,000 model is a "bigger hit". Likewise, if a $50,000 rents for $1,000/day, then the situation is reversed.

Large rental markets - LA, NYC, London, etc. - will have a lower sampling error compared to, say, Juneau, Alaska.

PLease, please, link to some clips that prove this. No matter the LUT, all I see are crappy, blue-green skin tones from the Sonys. I would seriously switch if I knew I could nail Canon-like skin tones from an FS7, the FS7 would be so much easier for me to afford than the C300 MKII...
If Canon color you want, then you want Canon gear because that will deliver the "out of the box" Canon look. However, it'd be in error to say that Sony's colors can't be "warmed up", if you will. Much like C300MKII can be set up to look like Alexa - or, at least, reasonably close to Alexa - Sony can be made to look less like Sony. There are a lot of LUT's out there.

Edit - the same goes for GH4. If you head out to that particular sub-forum, you'll see people offering/comparing various LUT's that alter Panasonic's preset look.
 
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I'll say this about Andrew: he's passionate and he puts in the work. He seems to be experimental in a good way and curious to learn. I think he's got good overall knowledge of how various components of film making fit together and how cameras work.

But I also feel he lacks perspective. Inability to connect dots. Has difficulty separating what he 'wants' from how tings 'are'. Too often a sensationalist. Likes to preach to the choir.

I remember when the 1Dc launched. There was no other camera offering that image quality at the time in such a portable package. Needless to say Andrew was all over Canon as a company and the 1Dc as a camera—calling it 'game over' for Canon. Then, through the magic of time passing, the 1Dc drops to a price he can afford and it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I tried to have a reasonable discussion with him on Twitter, the result being he blocked me—and I'm still blocked from his tweets to this day. I still have the discussion saved, and looking at it now I can honestly say I tried being constructive and to the point, while he was calling me a troll.

General tip to anyone: never, never, ever drag 'camera price' into 'camera specs' when comparing cameras. The price becomes VERY real at the time of purchase but it has NOTHING to do with the product's design or performance. It is a ROOKIE mistake to start getting emotional about cameras you can afford when comparing agains cameras you can't afford.

Feel free to compare FS7 to C300mkII—but leave price out of it. Completely. I know how tempting it is to think "what you get 'for the money'", but that is an illusion. If you truly want to compare cameras, or camera SYSTEMS, it needs to be under the pretence that you rented it or that it was given to you. Once it's in your hands the cameras strengths and weaknesses become very REAL… but price? It could be $100000000 or $3995. Doesn't matter at that point.
Andree....always on point 100%...and yes, Andrew does tend to talk with a few in his area, then go and make a click baiting title on an article he writes. The C300 MK II is being used (and sold) on an increasing basis here in LA and shows shooting from here to Alaska.....

Jim Martin
EVSonline.com

BTW, Andree, going to make it to IBC? I think there is going to be some really cool stuff there!
 
Each camera has a differnent niche..

Varicam is heavy and has no AF - it is not for run Doco.

Varicam can produce cinema, has the solid build for heavy production and lenses

C300ii is light and has AF and a great doco lens - it is for run doco yet people select the Fs7.. that is a fail

FS7 has great HFR and is good for budget camera p0rn shots that work well in advertorial

FS5 is super small and light and with the 18-105 great for packpacking

XC10 is even smaller and better for backpacking
You are pigeon holing these cameras.....for example, the C300 MK II is only good for run-n-gun docs?....it is being used here in town for shows (reality AND narrative) with Netflix requesting the camera a lot. It is being used on indie features and b/c cam on larger features.

Jim MArtin
EVSonline.com
 
You are pigeon holing these cameras.....for example, the C300 MK II is only good for run-n-gun docs?....it is being used here in town for shows (reality AND narrative) with Netflix requesting the camera a lot. It is being used on indie features and b/c cam on larger features.

Jim MArtin
EVSonline.com

Of course they fit in other holes..

Im just saying (from some experience) what I think is best for what and what they are hired for (afaik)

For example Id prefer a varicam with PL zoom lenses to a C300 on a narative.

Id prefer a C300 and the af 18-80 lens on a doc compared to the Sony Fs7 with a manual or in some other way compromised lens.

IMO the C300ii has a natural place, 'cinematic, small crew doco' especially where the shooter may come from a non camera department background and needs AF.

Here I feel the C300ii is losing out illogically to the wunderkind FS7

S
 
If that was directed at me, then it goes 100% opposite to what I just tried to explain:

Here's a flow chart to help



EDIT: 'Get your act together' isn't meant to sound harsh. Just calibrate expectations and buy a camera that suits your business. If you dream big—go big.

hahaha thats a hilarious chart.
im just talking in general not directly to you. im actually tired of buying cameras. sold all my cameras but the a7s2. if i have a big production, i just rent a big cam
 
Of course they fit in other holes..

Im just saying (from some experience) what I think is best for what and what they are hired for (afaik)

For example Id prefer a varicam with PL zoom lenses to a C300 on a narative.


Id prefer a C300 and the af 18-80 lens on a doc compared to the Sony Fs7 with a manual or in some other way compromised lens.

IMO the C300ii has a natural place, 'cinematic, small crew doco' especially where the shooter may come from a non camera department background and needs AF.

Here I feel the C300ii is losing out illogically to the wunderkind FS7

S
From the old Highway Patrol series with Broderick Crawford as Dan Matthews...."10-4"
 
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