Canon it's Feb. 2014, is the C100 AF upgrade available yet?

[Andy Wilkinson]

My C100 is "getting done" next week. No it's not perfect - but I can see times when it'll be mighty useful in run-n-gun situations so on balance it's worth the cost for me.

[Wayne Avanson]

Mine arrived back this morning and I used it on a shoot at lunchtime which was a bit more run and gun than I was expecting. Pretty impressed with the results.

It left me more time to work on the framing and composition than worry about the focussing, so thumbs up from me.

[Robert Turchick]

Had mine for about 2 weeks with the upgrade and worth every penny!! Steadicam and crane now piece of cake. Center point isn't a problem if you assign a button for toggling AF modes. Not a fast way of working and sure I'd love the joystick to move the AF box but certainly puts this camera in a very different league from others. My first test was chasing my dogs around with a 50mm 1.4 at f1.4. Worked really well!! Next was this video which I didn't have the right lens for so I did some post zooming. Pilot surprised everyone with this impromptu performance. But the AF tracked the plane perfectly. Will be re-shooting soon with a proper lens!

John Klatt at Coolidge 4-5-14 on Vimeo

And here's another video from the same day…(a couple of shots are from my friend's 1D mk4 and are handheld shaky)

Falcon Warbirds and friends at Coolidge 4-5-14 on Vimeo

[Scott Bellefeuille]

I got my upgraded C100 back from Canon about a week ago. Dual Pixel AF is definitely a useful feature if you're doing any kind of shooting in unpredictable circumstances. It's great for quickly grabbing and locking focus, which is where I think I'll get the most use out of it. It's also extremely useful in slider shots or other movement where you'd have a hard time pulling focus as a single operator.

My only complaint is the price. Charging 10% of the camera's price for adding one feature — requiring just labor and no new hardware — seems like they're gouging their customers.

A final note of interest if anyone's holding out for a firmware update that makes the focus area movable: Chuck Westfall of Canon states in a video interview at NAB with Dan Chung that that may be possible on future products, but on this generation and on this particular sensor, Canon uses the center area because they know that's the part of the sensor they can count on to work for the feature. Pretty clear Canon has no plans to make it movable on the current C100.

[Andy Wilkinson]

I picked up that point Chuck made in that video too - watched it last night. I should get out more, especially on Saturday nights!!!

This, to me, looks like a classic case of Canon "managing customer expectations" on the likelyhood of other features being added to the current crop of Cinema cams...in other words this is all we're going to get regarding the Dual Pixel AF. For sure, that centre focus box is not going to be joystick moveable....However, and this is purely conjecture on my part, I suspect that it also means no other "cool new features" are likely to be added to the current crop of Cinema cams via (paid for) firmware - really hope I am wrong :-(

To end on a more positive note, I had confirmation from Canon UK in Elstree on Friday afternoon that my C100 has now had its DPAF upgrade done - so I should have it in my hands again very soon. Wooooee!

[Wayne Avanson]

I agree about the price. I'm running two and can only afford to get one done at the moment. Happy with the one that works though.

If I'd known they were going to change their minds about adding it as an option to new models, I'd have waited a couple of months before buying my second one. Rather cheesed off about that.

[Andy Wilkinson]

Just got my C100 back via UPS about 30 minutes ago

Tried it with the Canon 17-55mm F2.8 IS EF-S first and it seems to work pretty well - and for sure assigning Button 7 (the one on the side grip labelled 'Magn') to 'AF Lock' was the first thing I did after resetting all my menu options back to how I want them.

Then I tried my Canon 70-200mm F4 IS. Bit slower than the 17-55 (but still a bit snappy).

Then I tried my Canon 100mm Macro F2.8 Hybrid IS. Lovely! Really quiet IS on that one and a much slower, more natural refocussing on some medium telephoto shots - some really nice results!

Canon 10-22mm F3.5 works great too.

This is all just shooting close-up to a Cherry blossom tree near my studio and then repositioning the shots and watching how the focus tracks.

This looks like a very usable additional tool.

I've never really used any autofocus systems on my cams before either!