Between July 1st and September 30th 2016 Canon is offering several new instant savings including a $4,000 instant rebate on the C300 mkII bringing the price to $11,999. They are also increasing the $1,000 instant savings on the C100 mkII to $1,500 making it $3,999. The Canon 17-120mm Cine-Servo lens is also increasing it’s instant savings to $5,000 and the C300 mkII Zacuto ENG package has a $9,000 instant savings to take advantage of. These are available starting July 1st so give us a call or visit our website to save on these products.

Eric Petrie
epetrie@provideoandtape.com
Finance the Canon C300mkII for $344/month, $0 down
Finance the Sony Fs7 for $245/month, $0 down
http://www.provideoandtape.com/canon-finance.php

Oh dear - how can a company treat its customers with such disdain.

Get all its number one customers to pay full price and then try and pick up the stragglers with a huge price drop presumably because sales a are slowing down a bit.

And that's on top of decimating the price of the C300. Still I imaging a fair few more boxes will be shifted.

I think all companies do this, it's normal business practise and it shouldn't really surprise us. You pay a premium for getting the product early and then you can use that to show clients - and potential clients - that you are at the forefront of technology, or something like that.

And there was a wide feeling that the mk2 was overpriced and probably would have to be lowered at some point.

I've been waiting for this to happen and have been happily using my "old" XF305 but I suppose now is the time to commit. Naturally, the moment I do hand over the dosh the price will drop another thousand or two!

Sony don't tend to do this.

But sure I agree that if you hang around you will probably get a good deal.

I still think it's shoddy professional business practice because it also means that early adopters have had their investment devalued.

the lack of any real competition until recently has enabled Canon to ask these high prices for the c300 but I wouldn't be surprised if the Sony fs7 is the result of Canon's pricecut.

In the UK it's a straight price drop of over £2000 - from £11,994 to £9,594 (inc VAT). No indication this is a temporary offer and no need to claim for cashback etc. Should make the camera a lot more attractive to buyers. Strange time for the price drop when there is no competition - impossible to buy the FS7 at the moment and likely to stay that way for at least another month, and even when the FS7 does become re-available it will be more expensive than when it was initially released over 2 years ago! Strange time for a price drop....

Strange time for the price drop when there is no competition - impossible to buy the FS7 at the moment

Maybe it was done on purpose knowing it's nearest competitor, the fs7, which is a lot cheaper but is hard to get by for a short but unknown time, so now it's the perfect time to give a discount to convince any die hard Sony user :)

A few things from an owner of the C300 Mark II since November:

- Gear is expensive. Running a business demands you make capital expenditures and run the numbers. I ran the numbers and I expected to make money right away using the new camera. I have more than made up for the difference in price. If I waited for a cheaper camera, I may have saved money short term but lost money from new clients, lost productivity, etc.

- The FS7 is not the nearest competitor to the C300 MarkII. The F5 or F55 is. The FS7 is the EX3 of the 4k world. It can do some cool stuff but from an actual user of the cameras, there is only superficial comparison to the better and more expensive cameras like the C300 Mark II, F5/55.

- Of course the new price structure is way more attractive to new purchasers. Canon gave a $1500 rebate right at the New Year and extended that rebate to me, so if someone just bought the camera in the last several weeks, they are most likely going to get the rebate. I would be over the moon if Canon wanted to give me that new rebate, too... but that would be unrealistic since I have been using the camera for over 7 months now.

I agree the Mark II was an expensive piece of kit, and still is, but you have to spend money to make money. Besides a few small bugs with the camera, I could not be happier with the purchase.

Well said.....and this is the perfect time to do this needed price drop....and from my quick survey of some of the rental houses here in LA, the FS7 rentals have been falling compared to 2-4 months ago while the C300 MK II rentals & requests have been trending upward....lots of guys shooting for Netflix with the C300 MK II.

Jim Martin
EVSonline.com

Totally agree with you Scott and I'm also satisfied with the decision I made to buy the C300Mk2.

But it is also a pretty large investment for a smaller business such as ours. We are buying the camera on a lease purchase agreement which runs for 2 years and and the new discount means I've been buying air for the last 4 months.

I bought the camera for what it can do for our business and even though the residual value has been hit by this price reduction I'm still happy that I bough the camera when I did.

I predicted the price cut for NAB but so, it came 2 month later. I am not surprised, Canon has been fighting an uphill battle and kind of blind-sided to a rapidly eroding market and a wind shift. I was and still am a C300 fanboy but had to buy a FS7 because many production outfits have switched from C300 MK1s to FS7s. And for got sake, you can shoot 60P in 4K with the FS7....

- The FS7 is not the nearest competitor to the C300 MarkII. The F5 or F55 is.
Feature and price wise that might be true but why do I very often read about the fs7 being a alternative to the c300? To me it looks like the fs7 is a bigger treat to the c300 because of it's price and featureset which was also my reasoning behind Canon's price drop which could be a reaction to the fs7 taking a part from it's marketshare. I"m no expert though in this matter so most likely I am wrong.

I was and still am a C300 fanboy but had to buy a FS7 because many production outfits have switched from C300 MK1s to FS7s

I was only a tiny bit mad about the price drop...I've had my camera for 7 months and I've certainly put a lot of work through it. But then this morning I noticed that BH photo is bundling the $19k 24in Canon reference monitor together with the C300 II for $22K out the door...So based on last weeks prices thats a $12k discount....or a $6k 4k raw HDR monitor. I'm now more than a little pissed. :-)

Barry-
All of us Cinema EOS dealers have that package available now........

Jim Martin
EVSonline.com

Jim - that's great but the point is you make less money and we have our very new investments devalued within months of purchase.

But great equipment!

Par for the course these days. I bought my C100 MKI in the fall of 2014 when I knew that the C100 MKII was going to hit the market just a few weeks later. But the job was overseas, an instant 14 rental days right out the door, paid off half of the price of the camera in the first two weeks. Was paid off completely two months later.

I agree, the C300 MKII is overpriced, especially at $16k for the body only. $12k is at least closer to where it should be and at $10k, I think it eats the FS7's lunch other than at 4k 60p, which to me, is close to useless for most of my work. But the Sony terrible skin tones and colors and disconcerting motion signature at 24p makes the FS7 not my or my clients favorite camera. But for others, that f4k 60p feature is essential so depends on your needs. Gear costs what it costs, the trick is to only buy what your market will allow you quickly pay off. I have a feeling that some C300 MKII buyers bought one because they wanted one, more than their business model demanded one so they made that stretch to $16k plus adding in batteries and lots of CFast cards brings it up to $20k really quickly. The big difference is these days, you need to recoup the cost of a camera very, very quickly, I would say within two to three months. If you can't do that, you are probably buying too expensive of a camera for your business model.

For my business, at present, I can't justify it and just rent the C300 MKII occasionally but I have a union thing possibly happening. If it happens, I will buy the C300 MKII because the work will pay it off in under 2 months and then it will be a great money maker for me. If not, will continue to rent the C300 MKII for clients who need/want 4k. For those who don't (the majority), I will continue to rent them my C100/Ninja Blade package.