C100: New C100 Coming down the line?
- Thread starter LifeInAction
- Start date
Michael Thames
Carbonite Member
Saw on B&H this morning the C100 mki with the kit lens 24-105 was no longer available. An ominous indication of future offerings? Perhaps soon the MKII will drop down to $3500 and the MKIII will be revealed.
control4userguy
Well-known member
^Why would discontinuation of a "kit" alone constitute "indication"? New-stock C100s are still on shelves... I think it's nature that one can assume "future offerings" whatever they may be up to and including elimination of the 100 entry in the line.
Michael Thames
Carbonite Member
Well, it's the first time I've ever seen a discontinuation of any C100. I think that is significant. The C100 may still be on the selves, but that one isn't, and they might be selling off their stock and unable to get more. Plus, there is the consistent and permanent law of observation that has never failed me. If I buy any camera the price will drop within 3 months of my purchase.
I really wish Canon would pull a Nikon Df, maybe even with a mirrorless camera, and put the 1DX sensor in a smaller body or a 5D.
What they really should have done was to make 5DIV with an oversampled rather than severely cropped 4K - let's say, 15 MPX a la Sony A7RII - and provide it with the decent pro codec from XC-10/15. Alas, their corporate decision makers decided to cripple MKIV's video features while keeping the 5D MKIII pricing.
If one looks at the Amazon sales charts, the camera is suffering as the result.
The problem is that Canon is kinda slow on the SoC development side. Their Digic processors are specialized for their DSLRs, and only have a mediocre h264 component built in. They don't create new chips as often as Sony or Panasonic. The XC-10 has a separate Digic DV processor, from the C line, for its video, but I don't think it made cost sense for Canon to put that into their stills cameras, and they don't really have a suitable hybrid solution. Canon's slow in general, so it'll be a few years before they deliver what we want. At least the lens ecosystem is the best in the business, and their developments in DPAF will end up industry defining if they keep progressing it right.
Canon really shot their whole right foot off with the C300 II, despite how good the image quality is. The lack of 4K 60p will hamper all their lower priced models for years to come, unless they quickly release a C300 III or C500 II (which would piss a lot of people off, but save them marketshare in the end.) 60p is so useful on the non-narrative side of the market, that it makes the FS7 an easier sell. The C100 III having 4K 60p in any capacity would be a really egg on face moment for them.
That's what they say publicly but I think it's all a part of that "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" Japanese cartel system and here's why. Global chip manufacturing is open market. Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 835 chip is made by Samsung and is based on ARM designs. Apple's photo/video sensors are made by either Sony or Samsung. And, if one rips apart any smartphone - and, please, don't do that by yourself - he'll find more brands inside that he's heard off. In other words, Canon can build any product they want ... it's just that they agreed not to build that particular one at this moment in time.
PS. As a sample, here's a tear down of Galaxy 4 - http://www.techinsights.com/teardown.com/samsung-galaxy-s4/
Michael Thames
Carbonite Member
DLD, in other words Canon has stock in Sony, and Sony has stock in Canon?
puredrifting
Major Contributor
No, it's way more involved. It's one company - Sony - manufacturing virtually every MFT C size and larger sensor for every camera/photo manufacturer. Some are Sony's own designs; some are third party and are only contracted to Sony for actual production. But that's where it only starts. On "new" markets, and let's assume the 4K cameras is a new market, the niches are designed not to overlap with others. Under a completely legal in Japan agreement, one manufacturer (let's say Panasonic) will be allotted a monopoly on a certain class of products (MFT ILC's such as GH4, G7, GX8, GX80/85, etc) and the higher end ENG style camcorders (DVX200, X1, etc.) while simultaneously refraining from entering another niche (say, pro tier/PL mount cameras under $15,000 a la FS-7 and C300MKII). The entire market from the entry level to the higher end will have appropriate models but they will be limited to a given manufacturer for a certain period of time (my estimate is two years, give or take delays in deliveries, design changes, etc). That's how Canon, Sony an Panasonic have huge gaps in their lineups, gaps that are filled by - guess who? - Canon, Sony and Panasonic. Except in a "reverse order" - where Sony exists, neither Panasonic nor Canon does. The end result here is that there are far fewer models on store shelves and each manufacturer has a far greater pricing power. The retailers generally don't raise a stink about it because they get their share of the spoils.
Now, compare this with the external recorder/monitor market, which is not that different in concept from the camera's. An external recorder is missing the sensor, the Bayer filter and the lens but, in case of Raw workflow, it picks up pretty much the rest. The external recorder/monitor business, taking out the seemingly no longer viable AJA models, has four strong competitors in Convergent Design, Sound/Video Devises, Atomos and BMD with tightly spaced options, from Ninjas for a few hundred dollars to CD Apollo for three grand. There are no gaps to speak of with models galore.
I figure I'll make this a separate post, in case someone responds to the one above first.
The "gentleman's agreement" of the Keiretsu is why the independent camera manufacturers such as Red and BMD (technically speaking, ARRI is a similar level independent too) can enter the market because the Japanese leave these gaps in model/pricing ladders for a long time and, whever a new model appears, it will carry premium pricing for even a longer time. Jim Jannard's main selling point for Red One was that he was trying to bring to the market a 3K/4K camera for ~ $17,000 whereas Sony had a 2K cameras for a quarter mil. The problem for Red and BMD is that these pricing ladder gaps sooner or later disappear and, when they do, the Japanese have a huge volume/scale of production advantage (though, this may dwindle down too due to the automated nature of the modern assemblies fully capable of making short production runs).
The "gentleman's agreement" of the Keiretsu is why the independent camera manufacturers such as Red and BMD (technically speaking, ARRI is a similar level independent too) can enter the market because the Japanese leave these gaps in model/pricing ladders for a long time and, whever a new model appears, it will carry premium pricing for even a longer time. Jim Jannard's main selling point for Red One was that he was trying to bring to the market a 3K/4K camera for ~ $17,000 whereas Sony had a 2K cameras for a quarter mil. The problem for Red and BMD is that these pricing ladder gaps sooner or later disappear and, when they do, the Japanese have a huge volume/scale of production advantage (though, this may dwindle down too due to the automated nature of the modern assemblies fully capable of making short production runs).
The difference is that ARM is a chip architecture that's basically used by all phones and tablets, these days. All the OSes are probably compatible with all ARM chips, with a bit of work. The chips inside large sensor cameras are more bespoke, and lower volume. They're specialized for processing parallel processes, like mini GPUs. I'm sure that, because Canon design and manufacture their own sensors their processing chips must be matched to them, hence Canon's slower progress relative to Sony, compared to Nikon for example, who go to Toshiba, Sony, Aptina, ect. Canon only recently added on-chip ADCs to their sensors, which improved the DR quite a bit, but they're still a couple years behind Sony.
I just clicked on a C700 review clip on YouTube. The chap in the video says, ~ "Here's the secret sauce to C700. C300 had one Digic video processor. C300 MKII had two. C700 has three".
So, they have the chips.
And, yes, the operating system has own processor(s) but it's not like the DSP manufacturers are a rare breed. There's probably a dozen big names in that side of the biz - Infineon, Qualcomm, Cirrus Logic, STM, TI, etc.
So, they have the chips.
And, yes, the operating system has own processor(s) but it's not like the DSP manufacturers are a rare breed. There's probably a dozen big names in that side of the biz - Infineon, Qualcomm, Cirrus Logic, STM, TI, etc.
Right .. but ... Digic chips are basically modded Texas Instrument chips and those sell for ~ $15 per piece when bought in modest quantity (or, likely, well under $10 when negotiated by a major manufacturer). So, triple the acquisition cost - adding the second chip is another $30 at the retail level, something that a $3,500 camera model should easily accommodate.
There are three basic reason for 5D MKIV to be as video crippled as it is -
1) Canon wants to protect its Cinema line (and a potential C100 MKIII/C200).
2) It has an agreement to cripple its $3,500 DSLR, not to compete with Sony's FS-5 and FS-7. In exchange Sony hasn't released an updated Alta (F-5/55/65) model in four years to go against C300 MKII and C700.
3) They're trying to :
a) minimize the production costs
and
b) the development time and the related investment.
The last part if a given, so it's hardly a variable but whether it's 1 or 2 or 1 1/2 is only a guess.