How good is the Canon C200 EVF ?
Is there no difference between it and say the Zacuto Gratical ?
My impression is that Panasonic skipped providing a cheap, semi-crappy EVF with the EVA1 because they know most shooters want something better.
C200: More specs on Panasonic EVA1 released
- Thread starter fhammond
- Start date
How good is the Canon C200 EVF ?
Is there no difference between it and say the Zacuto Gratical ?
My impression is that Panasonic skipped providing a cheap, semi-crappy EVF with the EVA1 because they know most shooters want something better.
The C300 Mark II EVF is very nice (I use mine all the time) and I believe I heard that the C200 EVF is the same/similar.
The C200 will record about 30 minutes onto a single 256gb CFast card. You can get a name brand 256gb Cfast 2.0 card (not an unproven, budget CFast card) for about $500 if you shop around or buy used. If you are shooting for an entire day, let's say a 12 hour day with 8 hours of continuous shooting (which is rare for anything but events and documentaries really, but let's just consider it) and don't want to deal with offloading and reformatting cards over and over, you'd need about 16 cards (that's 8 hours worth) for a full shoot day. That would cost $8,000 in CFast cards and you would need a 4TB drive to hold all 8 hours of footage. Yeesh.
A more realistic scenario would be 4 hours of continuous shooting for a day, which would then cost $4,000 in CFast cards and a single 2TB drive.
The bottom line is, if you're going to primarily shoot Raw with the C200, unless you've got the cash to buy a lot of CFast cards, you'll be committed to a work flow that requires regular offloading while shooting.
It's pretty much the same workflow as if you were shooting with a Red.
I have always viewed the C200 as a Raw camera that shoots backup MP4s. And I've been heavily leaning towards getting it. But seeing the real media costs written down on paper is sobering. The money spent on CFast could go to some nice new lenses or new LED fixtures. It's hard to think about spending $4000 on just media. Ouch.
A more realistic scenario would be 4 hours of continuous shooting for a day, which would then cost $4,000 in CFast cards and a single 2TB drive.
The bottom line is, if you're going to primarily shoot Raw with the C200, unless you've got the cash to buy a lot of CFast cards, you'll be committed to a work flow that requires regular offloading while shooting.
It's pretty much the same workflow as if you were shooting with a Red.
I have always viewed the C200 as a Raw camera that shoots backup MP4s. And I've been heavily leaning towards getting it. But seeing the real media costs written down on paper is sobering. The money spent on CFast could go to some nice new lenses or new LED fixtures. It's hard to think about spending $4000 on just media. Ouch.
NorBro
Major Contributor
The main difference with the REDs is that you have the option of changing your compression and even dropping your resolution, so you at least have those options and can adjust accordingly based on the project/situation. Like I usually shoot b-roll in the lowest 3:1 ratio available (24p) and would shoot interviews in 10:1 to save some space.
I think the scenario you describe - the need for $4k worth of media - is where it's wise to wait to find our what Canon does with XFAVC next year. If it's like the current C300 Mark II support, it'll be a great alternative to raw. Even if it's not quite as good (perhaps 10 bit but lower bit rate) it'll still be worth considering for a lot of applications. I'm hedging my bets: buying some inexpensive (but VPG-130-supporting CFast cards), hoping for future price reductions, and crossing my fingers (but not relying on) good XFAVC support next year.
I'd rather have internal raw. A decent external raw recorder is around $1,000 + the cost of media. Yes, Cfast is expensive right now - but it won't be in a year. With the EVA-1 you're carrying around that ridiculous extra monitor or using a codec that will likely seem weak in 2 years when the GH6 hits the market.
...Why?
The CFAST 2.0 specification was released in 2012, so these cards have been around for quite a while now. What is suddenly going to make their price drop ?
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You mean a second monitor that records on to SSD drives and enables you to preview your HDR footage ?
Why would it suddenly seem weak ? ...Very likely the GH6 and EVA2 will be using the SAME CODECs as the GH5 and EVA1, but with the option of higher frame-rates and higher bit-rates.
A poster here - from the UK, I believe - had a chat with a few Canon (?) folks and they told him that they expected CFast 2.0 prices to fall drastically over the next 18 months.
Which is not to say that they had not fallen up to this point. The 2013 "first generation: SanDisk CFast 2.0 cards were ~ $7/GB. The current EgoDisk cards are at ~ $1/GB.
I think anyone trying to record continuously without offloading for hours on end would not be best served by a RAW workflow. Similarly if you're balking at having to change cards, you would not be best served by a RAW workflow. This camera does seem to be geared towards narrative filmmaking (hence no need for dual slot recording) where changing film or cards is pretty standard. Get 3-4 cards and you're good. Even if you stick to Sandisk 128GB, which if the egodisk/Komputerbay cards work well I'm not sure why you'd need to, it wouldn't be nearly the expense you're describing.
I said it before and I'll say it again: This thing is more like Blackmagic and RED's offerings than an ENG/doc camera. Trying to make it fit that other paradigm will cause all kinds of headaches like the one you're describing. Media prices for BMD are the same for their 4K+ cameras and RED's are dramatically higher. What you're getting here is a high res, high speed RAW camera with high DR, convenient XLR and ND, great autofocus, color and low light performance for $7,500.
How is that not just flat out awesome?
It is super-awesome. By comparison, a 128 GB Red Mini-Mag works out to be about $6.60 per GB. A SanDisk 128 GB card is $2.70 per GB and an EgoDisk 256 GB card is $1.10 per GB - one sixth the cost of the Red media! I'm sure CFast cards will get cheaper, storage will get cheaper, the processors will get faster; all a great story for raw.
Mitch Gross
Veteran
With those numbers you'd also be up all night downloading CFast cards.
...Mitch brings up a good point. How long would it take to dump a 256 GB CFAST 2.0 card ?
What's a typical transfer rate for a USB 3.0 CFAST 2.0 card reader ?
I was just testing this yesterday. 40 GB in a little less than two minutes. From EgoDisk 256 GB CFast card to SSD via Lexar USB 3.0 reader.
Mitch Gross
Veteran
The fastest offload device in the industry is the Panasonic XPD3. It uses Thunderbolt 3 to offload a 512GB ExpressP2 card in just seven minutes. Two can be daisychained together to saturate Thunderbolt 3, so two 512GB cards (one full TB) can be downloaded in just eight minutes.
But... but why would you shoot that many hours of RAW without offloading or having a DIT? Are there a bunch of people out there that just couldn't wait for a RAW camera so they could shoot 17 hours of talking heads?
Back in the day, I had a Blackmagic Cinema Camera that I loved (still have the pocket). It was only 2.5k, but at launch was only uncompressed DNGs, and recorded about 30 minutes to 240gb SSDs that were pretty expensive at the time (and the camera was "only" $3k). It actually had a Prores recording option built in, but I mostly ignored that and shot almost exclusively RAW. I shot several shorts on it and knew the workflow, which I had to research at the time because I was new to shooting with such massive data rates, was to rotate cards and I'd built it into the schedule so cards were being offloaded while the next setup was happening.
This scenario where someone will be recording 2-4TB worth of data and save the job of wrangling that data until the end of your day is a bit bonkers. Offloading 256GB at a time over USB3 isn't a big deal.
All for the low, low price of only $1800 per 512 GB card! ;-)