Canon EOS C100

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Mike Marriage

The ergonomics appear excellent to me, although I wasn't able to test the optional shoulder mount which should make a big difference. It is a truely modular camera - it can be stripped right back for tight spaces, Steadicam or 3D, or built up into a well balanced shoulder mount including accessories. Important details like the top handle are rock solid unlike the wobbly one on the C300.

IMO the ergonomics are absolutely first rate.

Although I dislike the C300 ergonomics as I find in is simply too heavy once you add good glass and accessories, the C100 may well sneak under that threshold so I would love to try one. It may make an excellent B/C cam or travel camera.

The F5 'brain' alone weighs 2kg which is nearly 50% more than the 1.4kg of the C300 body. I have predominantly been shooting video with DSLRs for well over three years now so the C300 just feels 'right' in my hands. I never have the top handle attached nor do I use a shoulder rig.

[Mike Marriage]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

The F5 'brain' alone weighs 2kg which is nearly 50% more than the 1.4kg of the C300 body. I have predominantly been shooting video with DSLRs for well over three years now so the C300 just feels 'right' in my hands. I never have the top handle attached nor do I use a shoulder rig.

I find the C300 light enough when stripped back but I almost always need monitor and XLR inputs I I find it too top heavy with those attached. The handle, LCD and XLRs seem like a bit of an afterthought but if you don't need them I can see how it would work well.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

The F5 'brain' alone weighs 2kg which is nearly 50% more than the 1.4kg of the C300 body.

But it's not so much the absolute weight that's important as to how it balances - the moment if you want to use physical terms.

I'm used to shouldermount 2/3" cameras which are typically much more than 2kg, even without lenses, batteries etc. But I can handhold such a camera far longer with far less strain than a far lighter camera which has all the weight in front of the body.

With a shouldermount, it's like wearing a rucksack. With the handycam styling, it's like holding a heavy bag in front of you. The weight doesn't just act down - it acts to give a twisting moment to such as the wrist. Not good.

And, like Mike, the ergonomics of these new cameras look first rate to me. That's not something I could say about the F3 when that launched.

[Richard Jacobs]

It has been more than a couple of days. Have you heard anything from canon regarding the issue?
I'm sure I'm not alone in the intrigue as to what this "issue" actually is.

Originally Posted by Philip Lipetz

I have agreed to hold off for a few more days until Canon USA can talk with Canon Japan. Then I will either say what now appears to be a huge mistake on Canon's part, or what was merely a mistake in Canon Tech support's knowledge base,

[Steve Kimmel]

Originally Posted by Richard Jacobs

It has been more than a couple of days. Have you heard anything from canon regarding the issue?
I'm sure I'm not alone in the intrigue as to what this "issue" actually is.

+1 -- same here

[Philip Lipetz]

Here is what happened. Canon support USA told me that the ONLY gamma curve adjustments were very gross adjustments over the high, low, and midtone of the RGB channels. That's all. No knees, nothing. Unacceptably crippled.

I could not believe it. So I phoned another agent and she insisted that she had the specs in front of her, and that was all the adjustments that were possible.

So, I contacted Masaru (Mike) Kuwabara, supervisor of marketing at Canon USA. He agreed to contact Canon Japan, That was last week.

Today, I received the following letter from him.

Regarding the differences of CP profile between C100 and C300 are as follow.

1, Wide Dynamic Range
* C100: Newly added
* C300: N/A

2, White Balance G Gain
* C100: N/A
* C300: Equipped

All the other CP profile settings are identical.

So, the first specifications were either wrong or Canon changed its mind, the release of the C100 has been held up. This G channel cannot be adjusted, and this might, or might not, be a problem since the C300 G channel is too strong for my taste on many gamma profiles. You can adjust for the Balance between G and RB by elevating R and B, but the total strength of the very strong G channel will still be there. No way to tame it. Just adding to the other two channels could possibily take them too high. We will have to see. No way to really know now. I am optimistic,

At least they did not remove all the adjustments, just this one. And they added the gross adjustments that were presented as the only gamma adjustments

It appears to me that Canon has made a delibrate decision to let you achieve good results with the C100, but only with more difficulty than with the C300.

This camera still appears to be a bargain, but the days of cynical crippling of cameras in the name of market segmentation may be fading under the pressure of new manufacturers.

However, Mike gave exceptional service in resolving this question. Canon is positioning the C100 as part of its professional cinema line, albeit a camera labeled as a video camera. In any case, you should feel very very good about the level of support that Canon is offering, a level of support that you can base a business upon.

[Philip Lipetz]

If you got my previous post by email mail update you did not get extensive revisions I did to the previous post.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Canon had primarily planned the C100 for the DSLR crowd to use this as a stepping stone into their cinema line. Canon had never expected that there would be so much interest from professionals for the C100. So attributing motives like deliberate clipping of functions is not right.

There would be a firmware update next year and among other things there would be ability to auto focus with the new STM line of lenses. I am sure Canon will be all ears to take up suggestions for improving this camera further.

[Andy Wilkinson]

OK thanks Philip.

Let me add a feature request for any C100 firmware update bundle that comes in 2013.

1080p50/60 AVCHD2 at 28Mbps - as seen an many cams already, even on many sub £1000 camcorders!

I dont care if I have to pay a modest fee to have this feature (as I undestand the codec might be owned by Panasonic and Sony) but it really is unacceptable that a professional cam with a "Cinema badge" lacks some kind of frame rate options for slow motion in the current market. Unacceptable.

No, it won't stop me buying a C100, although I was bitterly disappointed about this when the cam was announced. However, I know MANY others have ruled it out precisely because of this. Choices in frame rates are an essential tool. Even the Canon DSLRs do 720p50/60 frame rates. I imagine the wedding videography crowd (a very large sector that the C100 is targetted at) will shun the C100 as this lack of a slow motion frame rate severely limits its uses.

So, if you're listening Canon....

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

I imagine the wedding videography crowd (a very large sector that the C100 is targetted at) will shun the C100 as this lack of a slow motion frame rate severely limits its uses

We shoot weddings & have never used 50p on any of our cameras. Admittedly it's only 720@50p on 5D3/C300/XF105 but I don't think that even if we had 1080@50p that we would suddenly start shooting everything in 50p just on the off chance that we would want to slow it down in post. Twixtor & similar do a good enough job working with 25p. I have in fact never shot anything at 50p except by way of experiment. I am always a bit bemused as to why it's such an important point to some as it seems rather like clean HDMI that everyone screams for on DSLRs as if everyone is going to bolt a nanoFlash to their DSLR rather than the convenience of cards.

I'm not even certain that the C100 will be taken up by the wedding crowd as it's a bit pricey and while it has some features of a proper camcorder there are others like manual focusing limited zoom range that will certainly put off those who are not already using DSLRs. It's also a hell of a lot more expensive than a DSLR. It's double the price of a 5D3 & nearly three times the price of the soon to be shipping full frame 6D. What the wedding crowd & many other users want is a large sensor camera with a 10x power zoom & auto everything functions but such a camera does not & will never exist.

[Philip Lipetz]

The Sony EA-50 is a large sensor camera that seems to tick the interest off lot of wedding video people at about half the cost of the C100 but the EA-50 also has a power zoom lens thrown in.

When I talked to Mike at the Hollywood Canon C100 presentation he was shocked that I do not shoot on DSLRs, and shocked that we had used C300s on several projects. The reason Canon put out color grading in the promo video that hid the DR of the C100 was that they wanted it to look like it was shot on a DSLR, crushed blacks and blown highlights. When several people in the audience criticized the demo video, saying that if they wanted that look they would just purchase a much cheaper DSLR, the Canon people seemed to be very surprised that the look of the video was a negative thng to people contemplating purchasing the camera, As far as I could tell all of the people at the presentation were reaching down to consider this camera, not moving up as Canon intended.

However, this is part of the market segmentation that the Japanese camera comanies are pushing. DSLRs hurt their business model and they want to push the DSLR crowd into more expensive cameras with video optimization, like the C100. That was the total purpose of this camera, not as an inexpensive C300 as it is becoming.

So, I don't look for new feature upgrades from Canon. At the show they firmly denied that the C100 internals were capable of shooting 50/60p. Interesting since they also admitted that the internals are basically the encoder from the XA10 that does shoot 60p if I remember right. And they said the sensor could not be read fast enough, yet this sensor is the core of the C500., a 4K camera.

The C100 is a bastard child that will never be officially recognized for its true lineage and breeding, and will be officially prevented from its full inheritance. They put it in the Cinema line and called it a video camera. There is no desire to unleash it. At least so far, but then they had no desire to unleash the 5D MKii, yet it happened.

On the good side, they are currently shooting better demo videos but it Is not clear if they will be released much before delivery of the first C100s. Let's hope they shot these demos in ways that show, not hide, the full potential of the C100.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Philip Lipetz

The Sony EA-50 is a large sensor camera that seems to tick the interest off lot of wedding video people at about half the cost of the C100 but the EA-50 also has a power zoom lens thrown in.

The EA-50 is a shoulder mount version of the VG20 consumer camcorder hat uses the sensor from the NX-5 which deliveres soft video that also suffers from aliasing & moire. It's also yet another camcorder that Sony have shipped without ND filters. As for the power zoom while it's a decent range 18-300mm the aperture range at F3.5-6.3 is terrible. That's the problem as the sensor gets larger you need larger expensive optics for wide aperture. Even if they made an 18-300mm zoom lens with F/2.8 or F/4 constant aperture it would be enormous & unaffordable.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

1080p50/60 AVCHD2 at 28Mbps - as seen an many cams already, even on many sub £1000 camcorders!

I dont care if I have to pay a modest fee to have this feature (as I undestand the codec might be owned by Panasonic and Sony) but it really is unacceptable that a professional cam with a "Cinema badge" lacks some kind of frame rate options for slow motion in the current market. Unacceptable.

Two things are being confused here - slo-mo and a 1080p/50 mode. They are two totally different things.

The point about 1080p/50 and AVC/HD at the 28Mbs mode is that it is intended for shooting at 50 fps *AND* subsequent replay at 50fps. So no slow motion. It's intended to give a highest resolution mode (1080), progressive scan, and 50 fps - so "smooth" motion as opposed to "jerky" or "film-look".

At the risk of stating the obvious, you get a slow motion effect if you shoot at a higher frame rate than the replay frame rate. I'm more familiar with EX codec cameras than AVC-HD, and what happens there (in S&Q mode). The main point is that for replay you always end up with a standard 35Mbs XDCAM EX signal at the set system frame rate. We'll assume that's set to 25fps here.

So if you want 2x slo-mo, the system is 25fps and you select S&Q of 50fps. On recording, the data recorded to card will be high (about 70Mbs), but on replay you get a standard 35Mbs stream - and in this case 2x slo-mo. Point is that you are not tied to 2x - select a record rate of (say) 40fps and a recording rate of 35x 40/25 = 56Mbs will happen. Playback rate will still be 35Mbs.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

As for the power zoom while it's a decent range 18-300mm the aperture range at F3.5-6.3 is terrible.

That may be true, but it will only be a problem if you compare two cameras of the same inherent sensitivity.

In theory, the bigger the sensor, the better the sensitivity of the camera if all else is equal. So if you double the sensitivity (say 500 to 1000 ASA) whilst keeping the signal/noise constant, you will get the same low light performance at f2.8 with the 500ASA camera as f4 with the 1000ASA.

If you really go into it, the main determining fact becomes the diameter of the front element. Assuming other factors remain the same.

In practice, a lot may not stay the same. Single chip versus three chip, and pixel skipping ways of reading the sensor being an obvious two. And the latter will definitely affect any "designed for stills use" sensor, compared to one designed for video.

[Andy Wilkinson]

David, I routinely use 1080p50 from my Panasonic TM900 in a 1080p25 timeline in CS 5.5 and the beauty of it is that it allows me to get high quality, razor sharp slow motion (on applying a 50% speed reduction to that clip of course), if I so wish - since everthing I personally output is currently 25p. Its a lovely, flexible and quick feature when desired/needed. Even my EX3 can't do 50p in 1080, only 720.

Since Canon have "avoided" putting the XF broadcast codec into the C100 and have gone with AVCHD - lets not go down that discussion path again everyone! - all I am saying is that there is an opportunity here in a very competitive segment of the market for Canon to tip the balance more in their favour at very little development cost.

I consider it an important feature even if others like Nigel do not. Should they choose, Canon could enable a firmware update to AVCHD2 in the future that adds something that most of the competition in this price segment are offering, 50/60p framerates (for whatever playback uses the shooter wants them for).

That will only happen if enough people ask for it - and even then is highly unlikely to happen/I am not counting on it - but its the age old saying "if you don't ask you don't get". I want maximum flexibility and functionality from this camera. It would be wonderful to get a pleasant surprise (just like the 5DMkiii owners will be getting next year with the clean HDMI output firmware revision, even if that will do nothing to the actual resolution of course).

But for sure, I heard several people at the CVP/Canon launch event in London recently who told me they will not be buying it because of the lack of 1080p50, and I think they were all wedding shooters. Even if Nigel does not use 50p in his style of filming, there are many out there that would. (for the record, the other main gripe, apart from the high price of course, was the EVF - but that cannot be fixed by a simple firmware update!!!!)

It will be interesting to hear if others share my opinion, or not?