by Steve Mims: Review: Canon Cinema EOS C100 Mark II

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Steve Mims

The Canon C100 Mark II is a remarkable camera. I’ve been very happy with the results from it’s predecessor, but this revision addresses the shortcomings that made the previous version very good but less than perfect. It stands out among other cameras as great engineering in an elegant, ergonomic, low profile design that delivers without complaint. The range of usable ISO settings remains the most radical innovation in the Canon line, and that has changed the way I light and shoot beyond anything else.

Read the full article: Review: Canon Cinema EOS C100 Mark II at DV Info Net

[Gary Huff]

I use 16GB cards costing $17 each that record about 88 minutes of footage and I never wipe them. I file full cards away — the same way I archived the camera negative when I shot motion picture film back in the day.

This is terrible advice. Secure Digital media cards are not meant for long term storage. LTO tape, archival quality optical disks, or multiple drive backups are the ideal solution. At the very bottom is leaving it on a consumer grade $17 SD card.

[Steve Mims]

It's only 'terrible advice' if you don't archive your material in any other way. All my footage lives on multiple drives in addition to the cards I save. I think it's smarter to file away an inexpensive card rather than wipe it and re-use it. The decline in price of storage makes it an easy choice.

If your advice is not to save those original files then that's fair enough.

What is the estimated life span of a single use SDHC card?

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Steve Mims

It's only 'terrible advice' if you don't archive your material in any other way.

True, but your statement doesn't leave room for any of that nuance. "...the same way I archived the camera negative when I shot motion picture film back in the day."

All my footage lives on multiple drives in addition to the cards I save. I think it's smarter to file away an inexpensive card rather than wipe it and re-use it. The decline in price of storage makes it an easy choice.

Except drives aren't that great either. You still would do well to spin them up on a regular basis and prepare to dupe them off every few years. They are really only rated for a 5 year life span, and that's if the mechanical aspect doesn't foul up.

If your advice is not to save those original files then that's fair enough.

Always save your original media. Transcodes aren't always 100%.

What is the estimated life span of a single use SDHC card?

From ApoTelyt

Another aspect of SD card reliability is data retention time, that is the period during which information on a card is maintained. Flash memory is susceptible to a gradual drift of cell voltage, which can result in bit errors. Card manufacturers try to contain this adverse effect through automatic error-code correction and wear levelling, and flash memory found in most SD cards today has a retention time of about 5 years. Hence, there is no need to frequently reshuffle and refresh SD card contents, but SD cards are not intended for long-term storage and it is always advisable to make a backup of important image data.

First, 5 years is probably an average. So you may get 6-8 years, or you may get 2-3 years. To put this in perspective, if you had the first C100 in Austin, then you just passed the 2 year mark with your archived SD cards from any shoots you did. Three years left on average before the data begins to degrade (which could manifest itself in different forms...from corrupted metadata, to pixelation and frame errors all the way up to partition corruption).

[Steve Mims]

Thanks so much, Gary for pulling all that together.

My article was about the camera and I didn't intend it to be about storage. (Other than...since the cards are cheap it's worth saving them rather than reusing them.)

I still think that makes the most sense to do.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Steve Mims

since the cards are cheap it's worth saving them rather than reusing them.

Cheap cards are all the more reason I'd be suspicious of falling prey to data degradation over a time less than average.

[Noa Put]

I think this was a nice review, a bit short but to the point and I particularly like the videosamples you included showing the before and after part on high and clean iso shots which I think is one of the highlights of this camera.

There is one comment however that I see coming from many c100 owners which is about the necessity of 4K, just because the camera is not able to output a 4K image doesn't mean it is a useless feature. Now it may not be something for you and I understand that your general workflow would not benefit from it, and if it would that you might just hire such a camera, but as far as I am concerned 4K has been a Godsend for people like me that shoot weddings solo.

I agree with you that 4K delivery is something that will not be in demand from tomorrow, 4K is a hugh new lucrative market but it won't die a slow death like 3D did, by next year every new camera on the market will have 4K capabilities, there will be more 4K tv's sold, there will be many mediapplayers for playback etc and you can't say that about 3D because all that remains is just a logo on some tv's.

I still deliver in 1080p and will as long as I can, but being able to shoot with up to 4 camera's of which 3 run unmanned having the possibility of zooming in on your image in post to reframe without any visual quality loss is like having extra camera's in post. People often say 4K makes you lazy, just point it to "somewhere" and do the work in post but it's not like that when you shoot weddings alone, you often can't reframe camera's during keymoments but now when I see myself appearing in the frame of an unmanned camera, no problem, zoom in a little or a lot and reframe and keep me out and no-one will notice. Want to have more versatility in in the edit, just toggle between wide and medium wide or medium wide and closeup in post so I can make a 3 camera shoot look like a 6 camera shoot. 4K has increased the productionvalue of my work.

Then there is the ability to pull frames from a 4K image for my dvdprints or for images that go to my website, ofcourse you do need to consider your shutter when you plan on doing this so you don't get a blurry image but 4K framegrabs can look exceptionally good for print, much better then a 1080p framegrab. Now I can just focus on capturing a photoshoot on film and worry about taking stills later on in post where I can choose from 25 frames per second.

Then you have the advantage of stabilization in post, when I need to stabilize a 1080p image I do see a resolution hit in some cases but I don't with a 4K image in a 1080p project.

4K downscaled to 1080p has less visible grain because the noise gets smaller as well so especially for camera's that don't perform as well as a c100 can use this to their advantage.

I don't know why but my 4K images seem not to fall apart so quickly during colorgrading as opposed to my 1080p camera's, not sure why that is or if it's just my imagination :)

Also small camera's benefit from 4K, have you seen how the image from a Gopro 4 black looks in 4K after it has been downscaled to 1080p? Ofcourse it won't have the latitude and the low light performance of a c100 but in the right situation this little box puts many 1080p camera's to shame when it comes to pure detail resolving power and it's colors look great right out of the box.

Another benefit is if you would sell stockfootage you can shoot in 4K, keep a 4K master, downsample to 1080p and sell that and when 4K becomes in high demand just re-upload the 4K master you have sleeping on your hard-drive and start making money again without any effort.

And one last thing that many don't seem to get is that you CAN shoot 1080p on a 4K camera and use it like that in your workflow but you can just switch to 4K whenever a certain project or client calls for it.

So you see, there are many advantages 4K can have, no matter how great the c100 is right now, having 4K would even have made it a better camera, no doubt about that.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

There is one comment however that I see coming from many c100 owners which is about the necessity of 4K, just because the camera is not able to output a 4K image doesn't mean it is a useless feature.

No one thinks 4K is a useless feature. Most of the issues with 4K, at this point, come from the processing power and file sizes needed to work with it. My maxed out nMBPr Late 2013 struggles with most effects I use. The file sizes (especially using a Shogun for ProRes HQ) are 400GB/hour. Plus, I prefer to actually archive my data as opposed to throwing it on a cheap portable USB drive and calling it a day. This means that 4K brings with it a lot of added expense in many different areas.

So you see, there are many advantages 4K can have, no matter how great the c100 is right now, having 4K would even have made it a better camera, no doubt about that.

That the C100 Mark II does not have 4K does not make it a useless camera though. Plus, let's be honest here, your "4K camera" is not the FS7, nor will you probably go to the C300 Mark II when it's available. You're shooting on a GH4.

Now, I love my GH4, it's a great little camera, but I'd grab my C100 every single time to shoot events like you do. In fact, for the coverage I'm doing for SXSW this week, I'm using a C100 Mark II and wouldn't even consider a GH4 for this. The light sensitivity, audio options, on-camera tools (peaking is great on the GH4, but it doesn't hold a candle to magnified focus assist with peaking), make it the better choice for me. Client drive is a little WD Passport drive, which will probably get 70-80MBps transfer to it, possibly less. This is okay for ProRes in 1080, but will take a good hour or two with 4K material. The GH4 with a Shogun attached doesn't have quite the same form factor as a C100 Mark II with the Ninja Star.

I will plan my shots and make sure that reframing is not an issue. Besides that, these events usually mean I'll be in higher ISOs, say 1600-3200. Now, if I was shooting this in 4K on the GH4, that's going to bring about quite a bit of noise. If I start reframing parts of the image, I'm enlarging said noise. So I don't even get to keep the same video quality really. Yet another reason why the GH4 is not the best tool for this job, 4K or not.

Originally Posted by Noa Put

And one last thing that many don't seem to get is that you CAN shoot 1080p on a 4K camera and use it like that in your workflow but you can just switch to 4K whenever a certain project or client calls for it.

1080p on the GH4 is actually quite lackluster by comparison. Doesn't come across anywhere near as detailed as the 1080p from the Canon, and I've had it moire on me on nothing more extravagant than your typical black suit jacket. I avoid 1080 shooting as much as possible except for the higher frame rates.

[Miklos Nemeth]

Absolutely the best review about the C100 (original or mark two), I ever read. Although, I'd never buy a C100, I'd ve very happy to send my daughter to a class/school where Steve Mims is the instructor/educator. 4K vs 1080p: my daughter goes to a videography/cinematography (crash) course, and she explains that 4K-vs-1080p, 120fps slomo and other oddities are questions only far behind the very last really movie-making-relevant jobs/things to do/decide/learn. They learn and practice story telling, composition, lighting, audio, camera-movements, screen-directions, editing, and so on and forth: these are the ones that are really important. She never got an home-work/exercise to shoot a 4K clip of a landscape/girl's eye/building/old man's hand, for example.
Thank you for the review, Miklos

[Noa Put]

She never got an home-work/exercise to shoot a 4K clip of a landscape/girl's eye/building/old man's hand, for example.

My only reason to say something about 4K was because Steve tried to "put the 4K issue in perspective" which I found very subjective as it is how he sees 4K taken his kind of use for 1080p into consideration.

if I would shoot homemovies in 360p on my smartphone for my youtube channel I could also put 1080p into perspective and explain why I think 360P is more then good enough for general use but that would be my view only, if 360p would work for me that's fine but that doesn't mean there are no more people that can benefit from using 1080p.

I have a totally different look towards 4K and how I benefit from it which I wanted to share. I also found the statement that 4K is only there "to sell new stuff" a narrow minded vision, 4K has for some people a clear purpose and for others not but it certainly is not a gimmick used to sell more gear only.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

I have a totally different look towards 4K and how I benefit from it which I wanted to share.

I don't believe there is anyone who doesn't understand the single benefit of 4K shooting over the C100 (ability to recrop in frame).

[Noa Put]

Well, I named more then a few benefits, but like I said before, if it doesn't work for you that's fine.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Well, I named more then a few benefits, but like I said before, if it doesn't work for you that's fine.

There's really only one you named. The ability to reframe in post.

Frame grabs are something of a misnomer. 24/25p don't do well for photos. 4K 60p would be the minimum I would shoot if I wanted to grab actual stills from video (motion blur from the 1/48 shutter is the big culprit). Your GH4 doesn't shoot 4K 60p. Plus, I have pulled stills from the 720p60 shots from a Canon 60D, so not that impressed. The C100 Mark II can give you 1080p60 and is a better image overall for pulling stills from at a frame rate that makes it workable.

Stabilization in post is directly related to reframing.

4K downscaled to 1080 doesn't eliminate the noise as much as you think it does (trust me, having shot a lot on the GH4), and the C100 (especially the Mark II) already has a killer noise profile. The noise you get at 4K downrezzed to 1080 from your GH4 at 800 or 1600 is similar to the noise pattern you get on the C100 Mark II at 6400 ISO. Plus, I don't have to spend time on my laptop transcoding footage (I don't see that aspect as a "bonus").

Smaller cameras benefiting from 4K doesn't apply. C100 is not a "small" camera.

Stock footage is very niche and not worth the time and effort for a lot of people. So you deal with transcoding, storage, re-encoding for 4K, etc. for pennies. That doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

So there you go. Only advantage is reframing.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

That the C100 Mark II does not have 4K does not make it a useless camera though

Have I said the c100 is a useless camera without 4K? I said it would be a even better camera if it had 4K.

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

Plus, let's be honest here, your "4K camera" is not the FS7, nor will you probably go to the C300 Mark II when it's available. You're shooting on a GH4.

We are discussing 4K here, not sure what my brand of camera's have to do with it?

Most of the issues with 4K, at this point, come from the processing power and file sizes needed to work with it. My maxed out nMBPr Late 2013 struggles with most effects I use. The file sizes (especially using a Shogun for ProRes HQ) are 400GB/hour. Plus, I prefer to actually archive my data as opposed to throwing it on a cheap portable USB drive and calling it a day. This means that 4K brings with it a lot of added expense in many different areas.

Wel again, not for everyone, the bitrates on 4k camera's can be the same as on 1080p camera's so for me at least there is no filesize issue, I also don't experience any processing power issues and I don't have any added expenses. I can always resort to hqx avi if I have to deal with several 4K files in a mulitcam and once the edit is done replace those avi back with teh raw files, no big deal.

1080p on the GH4 is actually quite lackluster by comparison.

Why do you keep referring or comparing with the GH4? I was talking about 4K in general and I was not even talking about my GH4 but my AX100 when it comes to using 4K but the brand of camera doesn't matter.

I'm using a C100 Mark II and wouldn't even consider a GH4 for this.

Again, not sure what you are trying to say, the "GH4" has nothing to do with me trying to explain the benefits of using 4K. You are just making this into a this camera is better then that camera kind of discussion.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Have I said the c100 is a useless camera without 4K? I said it would be a even better camera if it had 4K.

And it would be even better if it shot 6K and up to 1000fps. There's always a "better", so ultimately it becomes rather pointless, don't you think?

We are discussing 4K here, not sure what my brand of camera's have to do with it?

It's because you wanted to swoop in here and grouse about 4K, when the C100 is not a camera you seem to be familiar with and you are shooting on cameras that the C100 blows out of the water in every other conceivable way. You seem hung up on this 4K thing.

Well again, not for everyone, the bitrates on 4k camera's can be the same as on 1080p camera's so for me at least there is no filesize issue,

But you don't understand this point. The 4K on the GH4 is AVCHD. It's 4 times larger because it's 4K. The C100 Mark II is 4 times smaller because it's AVCHD for 1080. 24Mbps vs 100Mbps. Now I can go to ProRes at the same bitrate, but have 4:2:2 in a 10-bit container for that same bitrate. On the 4K from the Shogun, it now becomes 400GB/hour. Are you ready to deal with 400GB per hour of footage on your end to get away from AVCHD?

I also don't experience any processing power issues and I don't have any added expenses.

Because you are shooting 100Mbps 4K instead of the ProRes 4K. Plus, you don't use secondaries, power windows, motion tracking, and Beauty Box like I do. Basic stuff, sure, but once you get away from basic correction, you're in for a slow down.

I can always resort to hqx avi if I have to deal with several 4K files in a mulitcam and once the edit is done replace those avi back with teh raw files, no big deal.

Sure, no big deal if you're okay with a proxy workflow and spending the time to make those proxies and everything.

Why do you keep referring or comparing with the GH4? I was talking about 4K in general and I was not even talking about my GH4 but my AX100 when it comes to using 4K.

Because your only experience in 4K is with the GH4 and AX100. You don't know where they fall short on this camera that you are discussing based on the specs alone.