I have been keeping an eyeball on the new Canon C300 that was announced on November 4th 2011 and after seeing this AWESOME demo video I want one, but man…it’s coming in at $20,000, so that leaves me out for sure. But still, the performance looks incredible! Check it out below and you can see more info on the C300 HERE and HERE. Looks pretty amazing.
Canon EOS C300 = Awesome from Jonathan Yi on Vimeo.
Almost as delicious as RED or ARRI Alexa 4k digital cam but at a third/quarter of the cost! Mm.. A viable alternative for any budding cinematographer than a DSLR pretending to be a movie cam!
Hmzzz,
Went to buy a Metz Mecablitz the other week from a professional video company in Holland. Read some reviews about this and asked what he thought……(the owner that is). He wasn’t to thrilled. Price performance wise he didn’t believe in this camera. Maybe the 5D MK2 image will stop Canon in the more upper end of the video market. Since lets be frank (or lets be Harry) the 5D is an almost perfect video camera on its own. It is used in everything from commercials to whole episodes of House MD (if memory serves since I don’t watch US series). And even the Dutch series “Het Schaap met de vijf poten” was filmed (eh videod) with it, and it sure gives the quality you need. So why bother? Great technological breakthrough though.
Greetings, Ed
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I tried this camera at the beginning of this week. It’s extremely light, and can almost get into any tiny crevice which the 5DMkII can squeeze into: it’s all dismantle-able, meaning that the handles come off, the monitor comes off, etc.. (..except that removing the monitor also dismounts the audio XLR inputs).
The EF-mount version (having a deeper ‘flange-back’ distance between the lens mount and sensor chip) will also also accept a (soon to appear) PL-to-EF adaptor, meaning that it’s the more versatile version of the two, accepting ordinary Canon EF lenses, and also (costlier) cinema-shooting PL-mount lenses.
It’s not a ‘camcorder’, so there’s no zoom-rocker on the camera body to adjust the lens’s zoom setting (if using a zoom). But, of course, with a normal EF mount (also accepting EF-S lenses) you can mount virtually anything which will adapt to EF, e.g; an Olympus f1.2 lens with an Oly-to-EF adaptor. (Obviously, the short flange-back-distance Leica lenses can be fitted, with an adaptor, but won’t focus to infinity: they’ll only give close focus.)
The BIG selling point of the C300 is its wi-fi controllability using an iPad or iPhone(!) ..i.e; remote focus, remote start/stop, remote viewfinder (..though the cheap’n’cheerful Hähnel-brand Bluetooth remote trigger provides remote start/stop & remote ‘finder for the 5DMkII for about $150 all inclusive ..very handy for use on a crane).
The wonderful Canon 85mm f1.2 is great on both cameras ..but on the 5D it’s an 85mm lens, on the C300 it’s a 128mm lens.
It’s a great camera, but I’ll stay with the 5DMkII: full-frame sensor (larger than the C300’s) for shallower d-o-f; full-frame sensor, so wide-angles really give wide angles (no crop factor); more compact body; can also use as an SLR!
The RED Camera announced on the same day stole all of Canon’s thunder.
Sorry to say but if you are excited about this, check out the Scarlet-X
Really, how can there be a mention of this Canon without a mention of the Scarlet-X? It looks like it is better at half the price! (Ok disclosure it will be a bit more than 1/2 price once the additional components are added).
Canon clearly got blindsided by RED this time….
that is actually not true
a *functional* scarlet system will cost more or about the same as the c300
they are also very different cameras with different strengths and weaknesses – they BOTH look like great cameras just for different reasons (scarlet has 4k but under quite restrictive frame-rates, and crops severely at lower resolutions where it can give faster frame rates, the canon is HD only but has apparently very very nice IQ)
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The Canon EOS-C300 is a 4k camera. At present the full 4k resolution doesn’t appear to be accessible, and it delivers 1920×1080 (or optionally lower) resolution, but at full 4:2:2 sampling (unlike ‘semi-pro’ 4:2:0 colour sampling) delivered as normal 8 Bit MPEG-2 Long GOP.
But Canon may subsequently provide firmware updates which enhance the available output.
It’s little different than that… It has the same amount of pixels as a 4k sensor but its not made to our output 4k, It has four layers that are sensitive to each of the color channels (doubled up on green, hence the 4k resolution) While the 4k resolution only outputs 1080p, it doesn’t involve any interpolation or debayering or the like. Each pixel has full red, double green, and full blue information, and lives in a logarithmic color space.
This is why it really is a step ahead in the IQ department, and is not a superspec camera like the RED.
Canon is great in photography and low-end videomaking and all, but we all know big boys in the high-end digital video. Sony, Arri and Red. Launching C300 reminds me of Sony’s A100 really. Up till now Canon can only produce tiny sensor, non-PL, XL-mount, which the naming policy is still one of the wold’s biggest mystery(one conspiracy theory said they want to use XS-L with red ring but decided against it when the news reach western branch).
Of course things can change. Especially when we see how far Sony can go in still imaging now. But, like Sony, Canon have to do something special that no other brands did instead of excluding basic functions like 1080/60p. But, sadly the video above can only compare 20k dedicated video camera with 2k still camera. C300, by all means, is NOT a bad camera, but, from what I see, C300 just can’t do anything more than what other 5-10k cameras did. Heck, it’s not even as mobile as sub-1k GH-2 and 5n.
+1
This looks mad….loving it 🙂
Really incredible performance. I have little knowledge of video stuff – but is this camera directed to professional movie makers or … ? Just curios.
yes. a hobbyist could get by using a 5d mk ii rig.
Trust me, if they targeting professional, they will focus their ads on them too. Right now they seem to target 5Dmk2 owners(generally).
This camera is targeted at pros (and very disillusioned “amateurs”). But even as a pro camera, this camera only makes sense for documentary work. Most of the features of this camera (much like the 5D mark II) encourages some pretty nasty/lazy habits.
sony already released the nex fs100, which has a similar purpose.
canon is still running behind in terms of innovation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aweCWpLIRE <—-footage and explanations
Twice the frame rates with a third of price? What’s not to like?
Oh my God, insane camera! Dynamic range, wow! And the video is funny as hell too 🙂