Leaderboard

In 2011 I wanted to upgrade to a large sensor camera when Canon announced something amazing was going to happen on Nov 5th 2011 that would change everything. So I waited as I knew they were going to transplant a DSLR camera into a video body and would be affordable. After all I large sensor from a DSLR into a video cam WITHOUT a lens couldn't be that hard for Canon.. However up pops a clever marketing strategydisguised as not being a marketing strategy emerges and getting four directors to make cinema like films with the camera they advertised a 4.2.2 8 bit camera for initially what was going to be $20,000. Lots of people were annoyed as they thought they would be owning one and the realisation that this was only for pro's and out of reach for most of us especially the DSLR community who had pushed for this. My heart sank as I realised they promised all and delivered nothing. Yes the camera has good resolution and operates in low light Although in my opinion with low light you get to a point where the night sky looks too bright and would be unusable for real film making. If they had made a camera with 10 bit out 4.2.2 for £5000 ALL perfectly doable then I would respect them. It seems they are doing the same again. It's a shame as I always liked Canon cameras in the past. The BMC shows what can be done. Sony could always have put a large sensor into a camera like the EX1 and sold it for the same price and it would have sold by the bucket load instead of puffing it out into an F3 further dividing their pro stuff from their meat and veg consumer market. The canon puts profit before customers. You need a certain amount of goodwill with a loyal customer base. BMC have earned that. Not Canon in my opinion. Roll on the kinefinity. I had hoped Panasonic would have put a better sensor in the AF100 and 10 bit out But NO they wouldn't do that would they. They all seem to stick together to lock indie film makers out of the professional arena and now another little tempting offer the C100 that in short offers a NEW crippled camera like the children catcher in chitty chitty bang bang that may sway some. They will have to do a lot more to win back by trust in them now.

Good times indeed. Canon are not getting my money. Blackmagic is. But what next from Canon? C200: same electronics again, but 35Mbps for $12,000? C50: same electronics again, but plastic body and no clean HDMI out for $5000?

[quote name='Germy1979' timestamp='1346263607' post='16859'] C300 $16,000 ....... Scarlet X (raw) $16,000 C500 $30,000 ....... Red One MX $25,000 5Dmk3 $3500 ....... Blackmagic Cinema Cam. $3000 C100 $6-8000? .... Kineraw S35 $6300 I guess it's just loyalty at this point. [/quote] Unfortunately the industry isn't price sensitive and there's a lot of inertia. By price sensitive I mean that competition can undercut Canon all they like but for a lot of pros it is a non-issue. By inertia I mean industry can be stubborn. Look at how long it takes a company (even a small one) to update the operating system on office workstations, whilst teenagers seem to have no problem upgrading to Windows 7 for instance, the day it comes out. The C300 is risk free, proven, solid, all the boring things that makes it so wonderful as a filmmaking industry tool. It is also very well marketed, has huge established base of Canon EF lens users and ergonomically it is very well designed. Be glad if you are considering a Blackmagic, because you are thinking differently and when your short feature is shot in glorious 2.5k 12bit, it will look a damn sight better than stuff shot on a 7D for similar money. Jon Connor says it well. Canon have a knack for cynically carving up the market. And it is working for their bottom line. http://twitter.com/jonconnorfilms/status/240874774132318208 Though their risk averse and rather unadventurous business strategy is working, it shouldn't matter to the artist and to those who think outside the box now we have the alternatives for similar money to a DSLR - vote with your feet and forget what the industry chooses to use.

Another good point: the [b]XF100 [/b]camcorder is about 2500 quid and has their MPEG2 [b]50mbps 422[/b]. The use of the lower bitrate codec in this seems like obvious product tiering, if indeed the resulting footage is noticeably poorer, which it may or may not be. Hmmm, we'll have to wait and see I suppose. If it's of equal quality to C300 it'll kill the aforementioned for a lot of users. The Canon MPEG2 is pretty damn good. Not all codec implementations are equal, regardless of MPEG type or bit rate. But yeah, more bits is usually better, so I'm getting pretty sick of 24mbps when the quick SD cards write at 760mbps (96MBps). Canon have, for all their faults, killed higher-end products before though: the 550D made the 7D redundant for many people, unless they wanted to shoot in the rain with L-lenses, or shoot a lot of still frames per second. So it might be that they're doing the same again, and opening up the market a bit. As I said elsewhere, I just finished a long shoot on FS700 and I only really like the slow-motion, the form factor was so hard to deal with compared the the C300, all corners and awkward places for buttons. But I AM IN LOVE :wub: (lol) with the slow motion! It's so good! :) Again though, the low bitrate codec is such a shame, cos the slow motion is tied to that codec as it can only be recorded internally. I wish the whole 24mbps thing would just hurry up and f-ing die! :unsure:

It's just so much bloody money! I love the 550D with Magic Lantern, cheap enough to own and chuck about, great for promo projects that only really have 720p delivery. I love the RX100 as a B-cam: sharp as anything, 50/60p, the same AVCHD rate as this and so well stabilised you can do away with tripod and just screw a handle into it. But the C100 will hire for about 100 quid a day I think, so though I'm sure I'll hire them occasionally (my favorite hire guy pre-ordered one today) I won't buy it myself. The BMD looks great as a buy though because my vanity projects are likely to be films, so I'll want quality rather than turnaround speed. It's nice to see things hotting up so much.

If the price were at $4000 could be a killer cam, but at that price is better to go with the FS700. Is like a FS100 with ND filter, better construction and ergonomics, but for $4000 more, i don't think so.

Sounds good but still very conservative pricing from Canon. This should be priced to compete with the FS100. The FS700 has a bunch of features that make it very special and extremely good value. Obviously Canon is hoping to bank on the reputation the C300 has been making in picture quality.

[quote name='Stephen de Vere' timestamp='1346232798' post='16775'] I can't find any reference on this site to the hope that the banding issue in GH2 will be resolved with the GH3. For me, unless that get's fixed every other improvement is pointless. Am I missing something ? [/quote] Not at all bud:). Most of us are wondering ourselves. I hate the halos that emit from bright lights. I made a 4th of July vid and every firework looked like a nuclear missle launch. It's (gh2) - definitely got its issues regarding how it handles transitioning shades and such, but we never got the freedom to create our own color profiles either. I love cinestyle for my T2i, but i recently started using Visioncolor, and if you're pixel peeping, it Doesn't do the stairstep from one color to another. I'd assume it's the 8 bit space it has to work with. In After Effects, when I A/B 8 bit and 16 bit workspaces, i can see the banding in 8 bit. 16 bit doesn't do it. (granted, i transcode 5d to RGB 4:4:4 as well. You should try it if u don't already... And use Andrews gamma fix technique in Premiere with the Fast Color Corrector plug. full range input, 16-235 output... Double check that last number though.). Your shadows boost cleaner, and your highlights don't look like a supernova. Personally man, Depending on how much they want for the GH3, if you're making movies primarily, i'd just save up a little more and grab the BMC instead? I only say that because you're much less likely to hit your head against the ceiling because of a lame colorspace, or a shitty codec, or whatever DSLR inherent issue you'd run into with a still's camera. I can't believe i'm about to say this, but the Gh3's a "still's" camera first.... (I'm f--king banning myself from this site for that one.lol.). But who the hell takes pictures with a GH2 anyway..? Ha! No doubt, the GH3 will be killer... But being completely redesigned, weathersealed, with an X series kit lens, (12-35 f2.8)... It's not going to be priced like a Gh2. People will easily drop $2000 for it if it's a killer, and it probably will be. If that's the case though, for a thousand more you can have a 12 bit camera with the option to shoot 220mbps pro res... And that's supposed to be the "lesser" codec! It's still 4 times higher than the GH3's. And i could almost guarantee the Gh3 won't be 4:4:4 12 bit raw. But wtf do I know. Panasonic could've gotten wasted last weekend and said, "you know what f--kers?!.. Let's just go all out with this bastard. Yeah why not.. 4:4:4, 14 bit, RAW, clean HDMI out, 13 stops, X- series lens, unlimited lens options, $2000... Watch the world sh-t its pants.". .....Only I would be that cool.

That's just silly. When I asked if he'd ever graded C300 footage, I never implied he needed to own one to do so. And I don't own one either. Even using raw in the BMCC won't give you the same low light performance you can get from a C300. Not even film will! That doesn't mean the BMCC is not a great camera and won't be better than the C300 in many other aspects, but don't be blind. C300 footage has nothing to do with Canon DSLR's badly compressed video, its grading possibilities are way better than that, even if it's not raw. Of course it costs 4x more, and personally I'd go with the BMCC, because it's a better deal for my needs and budget, but I'm not going to ignore all its downsides and pretend it's as good as an Alexa and can beat all the other cameras out there. I know there's no way you'll ever give Canon a compliment again, but there's no need to pull a BMCC version of reduser.net here!