C200: The Canon C200 Petition

DevanAGScott said:
I'd mostly attribute it to the disconnect, in terms of needs and expectations, between folks who work primarily in the videography/broadcast/event world and those who work primarily in cinema (especially narrative cinema). This camera *seems* pretty great for the latter, and is plainly not made with the former in mind as a primary concern.

On another note, anyone think that a CFast --> Breakout --> SSD solution might be at all feasible with this thing?
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I agree to some extent, but I think most will be okay. I've worked in the broadcast/event world and it's not like you're constantly rolling for 10-12 hours straight. Maybe some are, I don't know.

But I feel like there is always time for someone to transfer footage. I guess maybe if you're shooting presentations all day long every second of the day - it might not work - but then the internal 4K .MP4 recording would probably be good enough for that anyway.

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As it stands now, any available breakout boxes will not work because the CFast door needs to be closed for the camera to record.
 
FS-7 Raw recording requires two external units (the extension and the recorder itself) and both cost a bit of dough. For a 3-year old camera, it ain't bad, but C200 does change the game significantly.
 
NorBro said:
I agree to some extent, but I think most will be okay. I've worked in the broadcast/event world and it's not like you're constantly rolling for 10-12 hours straight. Maybe some are, I don't know.

But I feel like there is always time for someone to transfer footage. I guess maybe if you're shooting presentations all day long every second of the day - it might not work - but then the internal 4K .MP4 recording would probably be good enough for that anyway.

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As it stands now, any available breakout boxes will not work because the CFast door needs to be closed for the camera to record.
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I kind of have a foot in both worlds. When I am on the set of a TV show or feature in a foreign country, shooting all day, it's common to roll for four to six hours a day because I am covering the same scenes as the production shoots their coverage, many times, so I can get the same kind of coverage in my footage. But closer to home, one to three 30 minute interviews and an hour of b-roll as a shoot day is much more common.

I am pretty unsure I would trust a third party solution for SSDs and that door rig. Someone could design and 3D print a door that would have the lockout and run the cable through it. It would take someone clever though as far as the firmware, interface witht he CFast slot, power, etc. but even if that comes out, I probably wouldn't use it on a client job, too kludgy. I'd rent more CFast cards if shooting RAW or just shoot .MP4s for them if they weren't too demanding of having the best technical quality. Or possibly record out to a Ninja Assassin or something like that to hand them 4K Prores. Ain't choice a wonderful thing?
 
DLD said:
FS-7 Raw recording requires two external units (the extension and the recorder itself) and both cost a bit of dough. For a 3-year old camera, it ain't bad, but C200 does change the game significantly.
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I'll take "Smaller, Lighter, Faster and Cheaper for ten" Alex ;-)
 
puredrifting said:
I'll take "Smaller, Lighter, Faster and Cheaper for ten" Alex ;-)
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Speaking of cheaper, someone ought to keep a running tab on the CFast 2.0 cards. This was a late March, 2017 review of the EgoDisk 2.0's. Do note, EgoDisk deems them compatible with the high bit rate BMD URSA recordings. EgoDisk sell slightly above $1/GB.

http://www.thebroketographers.com/blog/2017/3/29/egodisk-cfast-20-card-review

This is from an unknown to me retailer (based in Berlin, Germany from the looks of it) that had Transcend 2.0 cards at about a $1/GB.

http://www.grooves-inc.com/transcen...MIk9SWpK-P1QIVi6J-Ch1PoQrPEAQYBSABEgIWUPD_BwE
 
Eric Coughlin said:
I buy a new camera like once every year. Can't wait a year for a camera to become relevant.
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That would be an awful business model for me, I'd only get a few months of profit. Lucky that it works for your business? I guess? So I take it you'll keep using your C300 MKII and possibly Amira and not buy a C200?
 
DLD said:
FS-7 Raw recording requires two external units (the extension and the recorder itself) and both cost a bit of dough. For a 3-year old camera, it ain't bad, but C200 does change the game significantly.
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You can count the number of FS7 owners on your left thumb that bother with the extension and recorder. There's little to nothing to be gained over XAVC-I. XAVC-I will not be as pretty as RAW Light, that's a given, but the real world workflow differences are huge.

I can see the knee jerk reactions to what I've said about RAW Light but I also said in a couple of cycles of Moore's law RAW Light will be the rule rather than the exception. But at he moment the media sizes and associated costs are prohibitive and make the usefulness of the C200 significantly behind the 3 year old FS7.
 
Nirv said:
You can count the number of FS7 owners on your left thumb that bother with the extension and recorder. There's little to nothing to be gained over XAVC-I. XAVC-I will not be as pretty as RAW Light, that's a given, but the real world workflow differences are huge.

I can see the knee jerk reactions to what I've said about RAW Light but I also said in a couple of cycles of Moore's law RAW Light will be the rule rather than the exception. But at he moment the media sizes and associated costs are prohibitive and make the usefulness of the C200 significantly behind the 3 year old FS7.
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I doubt many current FS7 owners/users will be interested in the C200 unless they are in the market for a RED and think of the C200 as a cheaper option but want the raw workflow. If they went for a Red Raven or SW it would be a similar workflow and not a huge jump, I just don't see it being a main workhorse like the C300 MKII or FS7 for that matter.
 
puredrifting said:
That would be an awful business model for me, I'd only get a few months of profit. Lucky that it works for your business? I guess? So I take it you'll keep using your C300 MKII and possibly Amira and not buy a C200?
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Doesn't work for you? Did you not buy a C300 Mark I and a 70D fairly recently, and now are talking about buying a C200 and an AU-EVA1? That's four cameras in less than two years, so it seems you're buying cameras more often than I am, at least lately.

Yeah, I think I'll skip the C200. In terms of image quality and workflow the Amira easily has it beat so the C200 would just provide a smaller form factor which my C300s and C100s have. I'd imagine the C200's image quality would be a bit better than the C300 Mark II, but not by much. The form factor with built in XLR's is nice, but not worth $12,000. I own eight Lexar 256 GB Cfast cards (and I'll probably get four more within the next year) so I've got plenty of storage to shoot RAW, though I prefer not having to spend a lot of money on new hard drives in general as those are reoccurring costs unlike memory cards. But there's still the problem of RAW-lite not being integrated into editing software yet, many clients wanting a baked in look with smaller file sizes, etc.

I was considering getting a third C300 Mark II before the Amira, but I think I've decided to save up for the Amira first and then by the time I'd be ready to buy another C300 Mark II (perhaps in 9-15 months) that a C300 Mark III won't be too far off so perhaps I'd go for that then instead. The C300 Mark III I assume would be better in most ways than the C200, except perhaps a little bit larger and heavier (not much), and more money, which goes back to thinking by the time the C200's RAW becomes practical, there'd be a new camera out that I'd want instead.

I also don't think RAW will be mainstream in a year from now. RAW has been out for awhile but most corporate clients still don't want RAW. RAW is less of a memory hog for still photography, but photo cameras still have the .JPEG option which many people still use, as it's still a simpler workflow. The Amira's built-in LUT that is applied automatically in post with no rendering is an awesome thing; if camera and editing manufacturers implement that into a RAW workflow (don't know if ArriRAW does that) then once memory and hard drive space becomes cheaper I could imagine RAW being more practical for quick turnaround jobs which have no post color grading.

Grading Amira ProRes footage is so easy; no researching what LUT to download, finding where to download it, figuring out how to import .CUBE files, rendering the LUT, etc.; it just looks awesome right away as soon as you bring it into the editing program. Other things I want is for in-camera playback to show the LUTs which most or all cameras do not seem to do; at the end of the day, I don't want my client to ever see the flat image where I have to do that so often heard explanation to the client, "That's the flat footage; it will look a lot better once graded." Or where you shoot flat for them with the understanding they'll add appropriate contrast in the edit, only to later see the final product have an ugly flat look.
 
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Eric Coughlin said:
Doesn't work for you? Did you not buy a C300 Mark I and a 70D fairly recently, and now are talking about buying a C200 and an AU-EVA1? That's four cameras in less than two years, so it seems you're buying cameras more often than I am, at least lately.

Yeah, I think I'll skip the C200. In terms of image quality and workflow the Amira easily has it beat so the C200 would just provide a smaller form factor which my C300s and C100s have. I'd imagine the C200's image quality would be a bit better than the C300 Mark II, but not by much. The form factor with built in XLR's is nice, but not worth $12,000. I own eight Lexar 256 GB Cfast cards (and I'll probably get four more within the next year) so I've got plenty of storage to shoot RAW, though I prefer not having to spend a lot of money on new hard drives in general as those are reoccurring costs unlike memory cards. But there's still the problem of RAW-lite not being integrated into editing software yet, many clients wanting a baked in look with smaller file sizes, etc.

I was considering getting a third C300 Mark II before the Amira, but I think I've decided to save up for the Amira first and then by the time I'd be ready to buy another C300 Mark II (perhaps in 9-15 months) that a C300 Mark III won't be too far off so perhaps I'd go for that then instead. The C300 Mark III I assume would be better in most ways than the C200, except perhaps a little bit larger and heavier (not much), and more money, which goes back to thinking by the time the C200's RAW becomes practical, there'd be a new camera out that I'd want instead.

I also don't think RAW will be mainstream in a year from now. RAW has been out for awhile but most corporate clients still don't want RAW. RAW is less of a memory hog for still photography, but photo cameras still have the .JPEG option which many people still use, as it's still a simpler workflow. The Amira's built-in LUT that is applied automatically in post with no rendering is an awesome thing; if camera and editing manufacturers implement that into a RAW workflow (don't know if ArriRAW does that) then once memory and hard drive space becomes cheaper I could imagine RAW being more practical for quick turnaround jobs which have no post color grading.

Grading Amira ProRes footage is so easy; no researching what LUT to download, finding where to download it, figuring out how to import .CUBE files, rendering the LUT, etc.; it just looks awesome right away as soon as you bring it into the editing program. Other things I want is for in-camera playback to show the LUTs which most or all cameras do not seem to do; at the end of the day, I don't want my client to ever see the flat image where I have to do that so often heard explanation to the client, "That's the flat footage; it will look a lot better once graded." Or where you shoot flat for them with the understanding they'll add appropriate contrast in the edit, only to later see the final product have an ugly flat look.
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I did buy the C300 MKI, bought an 80D but that was for stills as well as gimbal so I don't really count that as an A camera video camera as I use it for more still and family things than for work. Have the C200 on pre-order and I have a specific project in mind that I may buy the EVA 1 for (better suited probably to shoot with the A camera rental Varicam LT) but at the end of that project, I will sell either the EVA 1 or the C200, it will be my multi-month test ;-) Also, keep in mind, how much did you pay for your C300 MKII and will you be paying for the Amira? It's not the number of cameras, it's the cash outlay. Both my C100 MKI and C300 MKI were basically each paid for with single individual projects, although I needed a few more to pay for all of the batteries, cards, lenses, accessories. I got the C300 MKI for a song used, the 80D was $1,000.00. I bet even adding in the C200, I will have paid less for those three cameras than you paid for just your C300 MKII, depending on when you bought it, new versus used, etc. My personal rule is to only buy sub $10k cameras, I gave up on expensive stuff when I sold my F900 back in the day when it was still worth something. Even if I had the money, I wouldn't buy an Amira or Alexa, today's favorite becomes tomorrow's has been too quickly in this business. But if your business model supports it, I am envious, I love the Arri cameras.

I agree about corporate clients and RAW. I don't do too much corporate work anymore, perhaps once or twice a year and I would either be doing the edit so I could shoot RAW if I wanted or if I was handing off footage, I would hand off UHD Prores HQ from an Atomos recorder so I am covered on that front with the C200. I wish they had a 5" screen option on the Shogun Inferno or Ninja Inferno, I feel a 7" kind of sucks for handheld shooting, it's just a little too big, heavy and clunky, but that will only be in play until the XF-AVC update hits, if it's any good?
 
IMO, if C200 gets made "obsolete", it will be by C300 MKIII, whenever it comes out (if at all). Otherwise, 4K in a 5x compressed Raw may be a plateau that may stay around a while. There (are and will be) better cameras around but Raw Light off a good sensor is more than good enough.
 
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It is still the wrong discussion, without a focus to the right point. The point is not that should be a fight of users shooting raw versus users who do not shoot raw. The point is that Canon should give us the choice. To shoot with a 8bit, a 10bit codec or - since available - with raw. That should not be too hard to understand.
 
puredrifting said:
I did buy the C300 MKI, bought an 80D but that was for stills as well as gimbal so I don't really count that as an A camera video camera as I use it for more still and family things than for work. Have the C200 on pre-order and I have a specific project in mind that I may buy the EVA 1 for (better suited probably to shoot with the A camera rental Varicam LT) but at the end of that project, I will sell either the EVA 1 or the C200, it will be my multi-month test ;-) Also, keep in mind, how much did you pay for your C300 MKII and will you be paying for the Amira? It's not the number of cameras, it's the cash outlay. Both my C100 MKI and C300 MKI were basically each paid for with single individual projects, although I needed a few more to pay for all of the batteries, cards, lenses, accessories. I got the C300 MKI for a song used, the 80D was $1,000.00. I bet even adding in the C200, I will have paid less for those three cameras than you paid for just your C300 MKII, depending on when you bought it, new versus used, etc. My personal rule is to only buy sub $10k cameras, I gave up on expensive stuff when I sold my F900 back in the day when it was still worth something. Even if I had the money, I wouldn't buy an Amira or Alexa, today's favorite becomes tomorrow's has been too quickly in this business. But if your business model supports it, I am envious, I love the Arri cameras.

I agree about corporate clients and RAW. I don't do too much corporate work anymore, perhaps once or twice a year and I would either be doing the edit so I could shoot RAW if I wanted or if I was handing off footage, I would hand off UHD Prores HQ from an Atomos recorder so I am covered on that front with the C200. I wish they had a 5" screen option on the Shogun Inferno or Ninja Inferno, I feel a 7" kind of sucks for handheld shooting, it's just a little too big, heavy and clunky, but that will only be in play until the XF-AVC update hits, if it's any good?
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Like Run&Gun on here has said, I tend to prefer expensive cameras because you can charge more for it, and thus make more money per day. You probably do more producing and editing than I do where the rental rate of your camera packages is not quite as important. Lately about 90% of my income has come from shooting, and the majority of that is from the rates I charge for renting the gear. So, more expensive camera means higher rental rate and thus more money I can make in a day. I'd rather make $1200 per day from an Amira rental than $500 per day from a C300 Mark II rental, or $200 per day from a C100 rental. I also imagine that Amira clients would be more likely to be willing to pay $800 for the rental of my cinema zoom lenses than C300 clients.

From there it's just a matter of finding enough clients to get enough rentals before the camera becomes obsolete, which I think I can do with the Amira. As I'd mentioned before, right now the plan is to split the Amira with a co-worker of mine, so that also brings the cost down considerably. We're hoping to find one used for around $30k, spend around $7k-$10k on accessories, so $40k out the door, and $20k each (same amount I spent on my first C300 Mark II package). If the camera rents well, then perhaps one of us would buy out the other, and we'd get a second one so we'd each fully own one. It's always good to have at least two matching cameras. Worst case scenario the rentals don't go well, and we then have a really nice camera for our unpaid passion short film projects. :) After-which we could always sell the camera if need be and given it's an Arri the resale value tends to last longer than other manufacturers.

I'm thinking to get the Video Devices Pix-E5 to use with the Amira for a backup 4K ProRes 444 recording. It's just a 5" screen, so perhaps look into that for your needs.
 
wschmid said:
The point is that Canon should give us the choice. To shoot with a 8bit, a 10bit codec or - since available - with raw. That should not be too hard to understand.
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… deleted a longer post, since I realised I was just repeating myself.

You're describing the C300 mkIII, but you want it to be priced like the C200. I'm sure lots of people would like that.

Even more would prefer C100 pricing—no features removed, of course.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
Like Run&Gun on here has said, I tend to prefer expensive cameras because you can charge more for it, and thus make more money per day...
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I'd be careful with Amira, considering that it's not a "real" 4K camera - with 4K seemingly having become the buzzword around 2015 - and ARRI just might come out with a 4.5K-5K camera of its own soon. That, of course, doesn't mean that the camera will cease being in demand but that a high percentage of clients might move on from it.

Of course, I am not your accountant either. I might have been one but I dropped accounting as a major before my senior year ... and that was long, long ago anyway.
 
DLD said:
I'd be careful with Amira, considering that it's not a "real" 4K camera - with 4K seemingly having become the buzzword around 2015 - and ARRI just might come out with a 4.5K-5K camera of its own soon. That, of course, doesn't mean that the camera will cease being in demand but that a high percentage of clients might move on from it.

Of course, I am not your accountant either. I might have been one but I dropped accounting as a major before my senior year ... and that was long, long ago anyway.
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I think you can assume Eric's already done his homework on the camera.

Eric, can you go give a brief explanation of how you see joint ownership panning out?

What if you're both booked on the same day? What if you postpone work because your coworker books a job then his job falls through (annoying, delaying making money)? Split insurance?

No pressure to answer if any of this is too personal.

Thanks!
 
I've been layin low for a few months....and it's the same thing on the blogs..."I want twice as much stuff for half the price". Oh peshaw!....Anyway, as Mitch said and I have repeated a bazillion times, Canon (and other Mfgs) reads the blogs. They know what you want, no need for a petition.
In other news here in LA, I was at the grand opening for the new Canon Burbank Experience Center on Saturday (press day was last Weds.,VIP party Weds. night)....it is awesome and you can read up on it in the various trades. Keslow Camera acquired Clairmont Camera (Denny retired)...and Cineworks (Samy's pro division) should be open soon!

Jim Martin
 
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