New Canon Cinema EOS C200 and 200B

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by John Vincent

Hey Dan, you gotta link? 'Cause the footage w/ Kai makes it pretty clear that even if the screen could flip (which it didn't look like it could do), it'd still be prevented from doing so by that rather stout looking cable attached to the bottom.

If you have to detach that cable to flip the screen, that would get very old very quickly...

Kai's clueless...

[John Vincent]

"Kai's clueless..."

Maybe.... but you gotta admit, he's a spiffy dresser!

Glad to know the screen can flip - it would have been nuts if it didn't.

[Phil Goetz]

If the initial shipments of this camera happen like other Canon cinema product launches every dealer, small to large, will get a couple cameras. Just a couple. PM me if you hear something different or if you want to discuss standing in line.

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by John Vincent

"Kai's clueless..."

Maybe.... but you gotta admit, he's a spiffy dresser!

Glad to know the screen can flip - it would have been nuts if it didn't.

Don't get me wrong, I like Kai and find him immensely entertaining. But he is not as much of an engineer as some others who do YouTube stuff.

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Phil Goetz

...if you want to discuss standing in line.

I'd love to discuss Stand In Line. In my opinion it's one of Midnight Oil's best.

The 1982 performance in the rain at Wanda Beach features Charlie McMahon on didge, but my favorite is still Goat Island in 1985:

YouTube (Short URL)

Oops, did I go off-topic? Oh yeah, the C200.

[Michael Stevenson]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

I'd love to discuss Stand In Line. In my opinion it's one of Midnight Oil's best.

The 1982 performance in the rain at Wanda Beach features Charlie McMahon on didge, but my favorite is still Goat Island in 1985:

Oops, did I go off-topic? Oh yeah, the C200.

Please stay on topic, new guy.

Midnight Oil - Beds are Burning [Unplugged][GhOsT^] - YouTube

[Barry Goyette]

It is a little troubling that Canon has introduced yet another camera in which the discussion has trailed off into debate about 1980's Aussie Enviro Pop. :-)

Just wanted to share my experiences with the C200 at Cinegear, some of which I've mentioned elsewhere.

The footage from "Dock to Dusk", (CH, I'm looking at you) projected on the giant screen at the Paramount theater was stellar in most respects, especially in shots that tested the cameras low light and high dynamic range capabilities. The footage was delicate, detailed and silky clean in the before dawn dock shots, and the underground fish delivery shot (an unplanned shot they grabbed on the spot). The HDR shots of the backlit fishermen as the sun began breaking through the fog were elegantly jaw dropping in their simplicity (the only fish they saw that day were the ones you see in the film, so they had one shot at getting that exposure and the way it rendered on screen was simply beautiful.) I think anyone experienced with the C300markII or C700 would be pleasantly unsurprised at what this camera can do. Seeing this presentation back to back with Varicam footage in the same theatre, I thought the C200 more than held its own. The quality that this camera is capable of, for the price it's being offered, is unprecedented.

Back at the booth, there were few surprises about the camera itself. The touch screen was responsive and you could orient the screen in almost any fashion imaginable--including vertically (as they've wired the monitor externally, most of the "joints" rotate 360º with no stops). You can remove the screen from the mount completely and it has 1/4 mount points on it so you can put it anywhere in your rig--assuming canon makes a longer cable (I think they already do). Otherwise it feels like a slightly smaller, denser C300MarkII, with a handle that now comes off without tools (sort of). The mic/monitor mount regains some of the fiddleyness of the XL series for those of you old enough to remember.

Talked to Tim Smith (Canon's Pro Market Manager) about Cinema Raw Light. He confirmed that they hope FCPx and Resolve will support Cinema Raw Light by the time they are shipping, and that the CRM files will drop "natively" into FCP, with background debayering similar to the current "optimization" process that FCP currently does with XF-AVC (he said they are working with Adobe, but that he was less sure about when they would implement it). Everyone seemed to put emphasis on Canon's raw software, which I've never used before, but seems like a well designed, professional interface. Got a chance to process some files in a prototype version of the new Cinema Raw Development program. Running on an iMac, the files were converting faster than real time. Export options are somewhat limited to ProRes 4444, Open EXR and a few other high end formats. I think Canon opening up that list to a few less data intensive formats would be a nice addition.

I understand that many folks are upset about the lack of standard codecs in the package. I do think canon sees this camera as a bit of a game changer in that they've packaged up RAW in a way that it can be used in a functionally similar way to their existing formats, using off the shelf cards and standard software to prep for editing in a way that doesn't seem foreign to the average user. Certainly the data wrangling requirements are going to be a step up from the existing camera (in 4k -- 410mbps vs 1000mbps), but we get a lot of flexibility in post with that, the ability of choosing gamma, color space, white balance, exposure, and tint after the fact is incredibly attractive.

I think this camera is about attracting that younger user that Red is starting to abandon as its cameras head into the stratosphere. I think it's about Canon grabbing those Ursa Mini customers by the collar and saying...take a look at what a real camera can do. Frankly, as an old guy who doesn't like to work that hard, I find this camera way more compelling than what Mitch and Panasonic showed off in the theatre an hour before Canon debuted the C200 and it's footage on the big screen. This is the first time RAW video has been made to seem less exotic and less painful to me. (I think Cinema Raw Light could be the next DPAF for Canon -- with this technology getting ported to almost any future system including DSLRs as it relies less on processor power and more on bandwidth).

[Danilo Del Tufo]

Shot on C200
4K RAW 50p

C200: Chameleon Creature: Dance film teaser on Vimeo

[Dylan Couper]

Is it me or does all the footage from all the new cameras basically look the same?

[Cliff Totten]

So now I'm hearing that the C200 has crippled it's HDMI to output 8bit only AND they have blocked all LOG output over HDMI???

I cannot and will not believe this. Who does that to a camera? There is no other camera on Planet Earth that shoots LOG and does NOT output that over HDMI and the C200 is NOT the first to do so!!

No way,...can somebody PLEASE confirm that the HDMI out has "NOT" been crippled to 8 bit and that LOG "IS" output over HDMI??

This has to be fake news put out by Canon haters.

CT

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Barry Goyette

It is a little troubling that Canon has introduced yet another camera in which the discussion has trailed off into debate about 1980's Aussie Enviro Pop. :-)

Just wanted to share my experiences with the C200 at Cinegear, some of which I've mentioned elsewhere.

The footage from "Dock to Dusk", (CH, I'm looking at you) projected on the giant screen at the Paramount theater was stellar in most respects, especially in shots that tested the cameras low light and high dynamic range capabilities. The footage was delicate, detailed and silky clean in the before dawn dock shots, and the underground fish delivery shot (an unplanned shot they grabbed on the spot). The HDR shots of the backlit fishermen as the sun began breaking through the fog were elegantly jaw dropping in their simplicity (the only fish they saw that day were the ones you see in the film, so they had one shot at getting that exposure and the way it rendered on screen was simply beautiful.) I think anyone experienced with the C300markII or C700 would be pleasantly unsurprised at what this camera can do. Seeing this presentation back to back with Varicam footage in the same theatre, I thought the C200 more than held its own. The quality that this camera is capable of, for the price it's being offered, is unprecedented.

Back at the booth, there were few surprises about the camera itself. The touch screen was responsive and you could orient the screen in almost any fashion imaginable--including vertically (as they've wired the monitor externally, most of the "joints" rotate 360º with no stops). You can remove the screen from the mount completely and it has 1/4 mount points on it so you can put it anywhere in your rig--assuming canon makes a longer cable (I think they already do). Otherwise it feels like a slightly smaller, denser C300MarkII, with a handle that now comes off without tools (sort of). The mic/monitor mount regains some of the fiddleyness of the XL series for those of you old enough to remember.

Talked to Tim Smith (Canon's Pro Market Manager) about Cinema Raw Light. He confirmed that they hope FCPx and Resolve will support Cinema Raw Light by the time they are shipping, and that the CRM files will drop "natively" into FCP, with background debayering similar to the current "optimization" process that FCP currently does with XF-AVC (he said they are working with Adobe, but that he was less sure about when they would implement it). Everyone seemed to put emphasis on Canon's raw software, which I've never used before, but seems like a well designed, professional interface. Got a chance to process some files in a prototype version of the new Cinema Raw Development program. Running on an iMac, the files were converting faster than real time. Export options are somewhat limited to ProRes 4444, Open EXR and a few other high end formats. I think Canon opening up that list to a few less data intensive formats would be a nice addition.

I understand that many folks are upset about the lack of standard codecs in the package. I do think canon sees this camera as a bit of a game changer in that they've packaged up RAW in a way that it can be used in a functionally similar way to their existing formats, using off the shelf cards and standard software to prep for editing in a way that doesn't seem foreign to the average user. Certainly the data wrangling requirements are going to be a step up from the existing camera (in 4k -- 410mbps vs 1000mbps), but we get a lot of flexibility in post with that, the ability of choosing gamma, color space, white balance, exposure, and tint after the fact is incredibly attractive.

I think this camera is about attracting that younger user that Red is starting to abandon as its cameras head into the stratosphere. I think it's about Canon grabbing those Ursa Mini customers by the collar and saying...take a look at what a real camera can do. Frankly, as an old guy who doesn't like to work that hard, I find this camera way more compelling than what Mitch and Panasonic showed off in the theatre an hour before Canon debuted the C200 and it's footage on the big screen. This is the first time RAW video has been made to seem less exotic and less painful to me. (I think Cinema Raw Light could be the next DPAF for Canon -- with this technology getting ported to almost any future system including DSLRs as it relies less on processor power and more on bandwidth).

Great write up Barry, thank you!

[Barry Goyette]

Originally Posted by Dylan Couper

Is it me or does all the footage from all the new cameras basically look the same?

Hey D,

I remember seeing the footage from "To the Dog Dish" from the Canon C200, and "FlashDance2017" from the C200, and "Phil's Long Slide into ISO" from the C200. So yeah those three camera's all sort of looked the same. What footage did you see from the other two camera's "announced" at Cinegear?

B

[Barry Goyette]

Originally Posted by Cliff Totten

So now I'm hearing that the C200 has crippled it's HDMI to output 8bit only AND they have blocked all LOG output over HDMI???

I cannot and will not believe this. Who does that to a camera? There is no other camera on Planet Earth that shoots LOG and does NOT output that over HDMI and the C200 is NOT the first to do so!!

No way,...can somebody PLEASE confirm that the HDMI out has "NOT" been crippled to 8 bit and that LOG "IS" output over HDMI??

This has to be fake news put out by Canon haters.

CT

I believe those words were spoken by a Canon person in an interview with Nino Leitner on Cinema 5d.

but did ya notice that canon already has a couple of mini-white papers describing the "camera with an identity crisis"?

Canon DLC: Article: Production Brief with the EOS C200

Canon DLC: Article: Post-Production Brief with the EOS C200

and that the rumor spread by news shooter regarding 8 bit xf-avc is at least temporarily false...(see post production brief above).

This camera doesn't seem interested in external recording, for what that's worth. I'm cool with that.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Barry Goyette

and that the rumor spread by news shooter regarding 8 bit xf-avc is at least temporarily false...(see post production brief above).

Here is what Newsshooter.com said: "Interestingly, Canon also plan to add the XF-AVC codec from the C300 MkII at a later date – currently planned for the first half of 2018. Apparently the delay is due to the complexity of re-engineering a 10bit codec to play nicely in 8bit. So possibly it’s not going to offer a dramatic increase in quality of footage when it arrives. But there is a roadmap, it’s planned as a free update, and once implemented it means footage from the C200 should fit nicely within a C300 Mk II workflow."

And here is what the Post Production brief states: "At the time of publication of this article, the EOS C200 is shipping only with .MP4 and Cinema RAW Light formats. However, with a future firmware update the EOS C200 will gain the ability to record both UltraHD and FullHD to Canon’s purpose built XF-AVC codec inside of an .MXF OP-1A wrapper. This format will allow for an abundance of metadata to be captured to the file, and viewed using the Canon XF Utility software, as employed by cameras like the EOS C300 Mark II and EOS C700."

So what, exactly is temporarily false?

[Barry Goyette]

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

So what, exactly is temporarily false?

The part about the codec being 8 bit. The chart in the article shows both the bit depth and rate as "TBA" .

Temporarily false. Potentially true. Take your pick.