Andrew Reid

​Of course Arri are top dog in the professional film industry as in the top end of it... But don't under estimate Cinema EOS's impact in the professional VIDEO and broadcast industry. C300 is one of the most rented cameras by video pros of all time and the BBC use it on a regular basis for run & gun on flagship programs. The C300 is the Shallow DOF ENG king. And to be honest it isn't the right tool for the job. A smaller chip is. I don't like being unable to see the background in a news program or a documentary. You lose the sense of location and all the handheld roll and yaw make me sick when combined with shallow DOF. The BBC should go back to proper ENG cams.

Oh and will have some 1D C sample MOVs to download in next article. It is about how the Samsung NX1's 4K image compares to the 1D C. Was quite an eye opener

C'mon dude...12 out of your 13 points refer to stills!! ​Let's narrow it down to video, because it is obvious which is the better stills camera if you want build quality and AF! 1D C is Canon's stills flagship 1D X in all but the badge. So video... A7S has better internal full frame 1080p resolution, as it isn't binned, comes from a full sensor readout. The APS-C modes (Super 35mm) on both the 1D C and A7S are quite equally matched for resolution BUT I much prefer the colour out of the 1D C in rec.709 and in Canon LOG it is far easier to grade than A7S in Sony LOG. You say battery life is an advantage of the 1D C.... Only for stills. In 4K video mode it chews through batteries like a hungry dog in a sausage factory. And these are massive batteries, 5x larger in physical size than the ones the A7S takes!! It is not an economical cool running camera at all for video. The native EF mount does have its advantages for Canon users. But the metabones errors are mostly fixed now and the A7RII will even sort AF out. I don't class the A7S's size as an advantage for video... prefer the weight of the 1D C... it is tiny compared to an FS7 or C300 and lighter, but it is not too light like the A7S, so you can use it handheld without as much jitter and it just feels more stable in general. Shame no articulated screen though. The ergonomics are very basic for video... but also, I like the simplicity. Stick a loupe on it. Hit record. Very fast and direct access to ISO, shutter, aperture, IS on/off switch, etc. FS7 is much more complex and slower. For low light shooting, the video output of the 1D C in 4K mode is actually slightly better than the A7S in 4K over HDMI. But the A7S's internal 1080p is a bit better once you get past ISO 12.800. It can hold on for a couple of stops longer before falling apart. How much you will need those crazy high ISOs in every day situations though, there is some question. Where the 1D C mainly excels over the A7S for video is purely that organic image. It is less electronic looking, better colour, internal 422 and of course the lovely resolution of 4K without the need to bolt a bulky recorder on. That was my main reason for buying it for video. Other reasons were stills-camera related (I wanted to sell my 5D3 but needed to keep a full frame Canon body for stills & AF). Where the A7S excels over the 1D C for video... quite a few areas really, but not the BIG one of the internal image quality. 4k 422 Canon LOG at 500Mbit/s thrashes 1080p 420 SLOG at 50Mbit/s. But if 1080p is your bag and you can expertly grade, the A7S image can be lovely. The A7S has the advantage of more video suited ergonomics - built in EVF, articulated screen, focus zoom while recording, focus peaking, etc. It has advantage of price. It has advantages of mirrorless lens mount, it's more adaptable. Works with PL lenses with simple adapter. Works with Leica M stuff. We are talking really high end lenses here that 1D C isn't privy to at all. Also the media is cheaper and it needs less of it. Files much more efficiently compressed. It doesn't really have a dynamic range advantage for video though despite the sensor specs showing a 2 stop advantage at DXOMark for raw stills and without SLOG the rec.709 colour is horrible looking compared to the 1D C's 4K shot on Standard or Faithful for example... Canon's colour science for both LOG and Rec.709 is hands-down superior looking, but I have no idea WHY! Don't forget the A7S has that creatively interesting 120fps in 720p so that is another notch for the A7S. Will be VERY interesting to see how the A7R II internal 4K compares to 1D C. It isn't likely to beat it. It is likely to get close. But now with the used price of the 1D C and price of a new A7R II kinda meeting in the middle, Sony can't exactly claim the price advantage any more like they could with an $2000 A7S vs $12,000 1D C. Going to be an interesting few months.

There's also the 1.3x APS-H mode through HDMI which produces the best 1080p from the 1D C, even better than the internal S35 mode. True the full frame 1080p mode is binned. Looks same as 1D X. A bit better than 5D3 but not by much. The 1080/60p full frame mode is even more heavily binned than the 24p is and is unusable. The 1D C is all about that APS-H mode in 4K internally (422) or via HDMI in 1080p... That image is glorious, an art form in itself. Long after it is out-specced by the A7R II and future pro cams, it will still be competitive in terms of the sheer beauty of how it looks. Incredibly rich colour, filmic texture, stunningly organic and silky smooth in low light. It is the 4K MJPEG version of Digital Bolex And it is a match for 5D3 raw, without the reliability issues and crummy resolution... colour is just as nice... only difference is you can't push it as far off in post, i.e. completely alter white balance, and occasionally you get some banding.

​If I was chasing paper specs I wouldn't be shooting 8bit 1.3x crop on my 1D C with no EVF and not even peaking!! Wouldn't I have got a Sony FS7 instead? After all, same price range. Have fun answering that one...

The other point about product ambassadors is this... If Panasonic can't find big names to shoot for them, it might be because the big names are all using Canon & Nikon. They had a chance due to the sheer quality of the GH4 as a filmmaking tool to get a big filmmaking name to use it... but for some reason it didn't happen. A big failing if you ask me... and not the first time their marketing teams have failed to exploit an interesting situation. They had Upstream Color, the breakout sci-fi smash hit shot on the GH2 in almost all cinemas coast to coast the US. What did they do to highlight that? F**k all! COME ON! get a clue!

Last time I was in Shanghai, Tapei, Tokyo, they had a better prosumer stock range than Manchester, UK. And mirrorless is many many times more popular in Asia than it is the US. Cinema EOS did make good inroads there, you're right. But we're talking DSLRs and plenty of people buy Nikon DSLRs for video instead of superior mirrorless models by Sony - and Nikon don't have a cinema range. So I'm a bit sceptical how much influence 'famous DPs' have on mass market sales. Yeah the mirrorless lenses are too expensive, which hasn't helped their adoption. But the main problem is they are not universally mountable whereas Canon and Nikon glass can be used on all kinds of mounts other than the native ones they were designed for. Olympus 45mm F1.8 and Samsung 30mm F2.0 are great cheap AF mirrorless lenses but there needs to be more variety. Then again... if you look at Canon's pricing of fast primes, they're not exactly cheap either...aside from the 40mm F2.8 pancake, 24mm F2.8 STM and 50mm F1.8 STM what is there? It would help Sony a great deal if they put the damn XAVC MP4 files in the stills folder. The whole PRIVATE/CLIPS thing is terrible for the end user. Also they make such poor use of that folder structure in terms of the reason it exists in the first place... meta data. There's 720p res thumbnails lying around unused by the camera... XML files with barely anything in them, no ISO, no focal length, just very basic clip info. If we are going to go through the whole AVCHD / XAVC hell rather than just H.264 in a Quicktime MOV file along with the JPEGs... at least give us SOME end-user benefit!! YAGH was a good idea badly implemented. You could tell right from the start it was a terrible design. Basically a lump of plastic with some connections. It could have been so much more. It should have been a battery grip with room for 3 or 4 Panasonic batteries in it. Why they decided to make it require external power from a V-lock battery I will never know... maybe they listened to too many Arri users!? Not everyone wants to rig up a GH4 into a monster. So as a useful battery grip that extends the battery life of the already very long-running GH4, they could have then simply added the pro interfaces. XLR, HD-SDI and so on. Also the camera should have communicated with it through the base of the unit and not via a bridge connected to the HDMI port which blocked the screen from rotating. Nick seems like a nice guy, you can't say he hasn't achieved a great scoop in doing the V-log testing and getting the G7 so early. He is clearly very close to the Panasonic guys in the UK. I am not because I am in Berlin so I have to deal with Panasonic through their German team. This team has unfortunately not reached out in recent years. I only had the GH4 early because of my friend Frank Sauer, a filmmaker quite high up the ladder as a pro in Germany. They gave the unit to him instead. Let's be clear even though this might sound like I'm blowing my own trumpet. Nobody has done more to popularise and inform people about the GH line than EOSHD. I think the way Panasonic have treated me in return has been a massive let down. Even had to pay for my own taxi when I visited them in Hamburg for the GH4 unveiling. There seems to be a prioritising of the printed press magazines over bloggers. It's the wrong way round in 2015. ​But to be honest on my part I have not reached out as far or as vigorously as I could have. Building personal relationships with marketing people, engineers, product planners and ambassadors at the manufacturers is as bad for impartiality and outspokenness as it would be being paid to write positive reviews. You always see this ethics statements these days saying they have not been paid for a review, etc, etc. But they ARE best friends with the marketing bloke who just plonked their baby in their hands for them... if anything that personal relationship is even more powerful than being paid off. I do not want to get too close, lest EOSHD loses its honest edge and drowns in cool-aid. Also going out and buying cameras is really satisfying and allows you to go in depth with them for months and years, writing the guides and all sorts of other benefits. I would not be able to do that if I had to rely on my 'mates at Panasonic' to send me a loan unit for a week. What I WOULD like however is a technical working relationship, beta testing new firmware and suggesting new product features. Regular feedback meetings in Berlin (had one before the GH4 came out) would be a start. V-LOG should have been on the blog and in my hands. I should have been given something to write about and they could have encouraged the already very extensive GH coverage with a few scoops - like a visit to the factory in Japan for example or other activities which would have made for interesting features for you guys to read. But again, it's not my top priority. My filmmaking is. If they ever get a clue I'd consider putting the time into it, but these relationships are usually all a bit one sided - i.e. firmly to the advantage of the manufacturer and their sales. Again, ​I think they ARE tapping these markets but I agree on most of your other points!

Yes very annoying. And very stupid. The solution is not to use Samsung's lenses until they fix it. There's no excuse for having to enter the focus menu to enable MF every time you want to shoot a take... and at the worst possible moment as well - i.e. seconds before the take starts. Worse still, in order to have the magnified focus assist work, you have to be outside of movie standby mode. So you can't just stay in standby mode with MF enabled if you want to check focus that way. The auto-focus is very poor... hunts around and does not do what you want it to do.

No sorry you miss the point of the article! I own a 70D! I am not laughing at people who use the cameras in the bundle deal... I am laughing satirically at the kind of people who might fall for the pathetic marketing ploy of an old camera in a new box with a very basic mic.

​Of course it matters! Are you seriously suggesting it doesn't matter that Canons are pegged at line skipped 1080p in 2015 while Sony is giving us 4K and 250fps 1080p with no moire IN A COMPACT CAMERA!?

​Don't think it has the variable frame rates but shutter speed can go slower than 1/24 in video mode if that helps and for time-lapse @ 1-24fps you don't need the video mode just the intervalometer. I think the A7R II has 14bit raw. Still slightly compressed though. Sony are aware of requests for lossless.

It is an 8.3x zoom (24mm x 8.3 = 200mm). 25-250mm would be 10x zoom for example. 25-400mm well that is 16x. If you just want the zoom range and 4K on 1" sensor and not the fancy constant F2.8 aperture or slow-mo then the FZ1000 is seriously worth considering over the RX10 M2, it is also considerably cheaper.... especially in Europe where it is 750 euros vs 1599 for the Sony! No SLOG or built in ND though!

​Yes you need the U3 card for the 100Mbit/s bit rate settings. These are cheap on Amazon, nothing special thankfully. The RX100 M4 will only go to 5 minutes continuous for 4K before it has to stop and cool down. If you try and make it go again straight away you will only get another 2 minutes before it stops again. And from then on it may shut down altogether. This is a heat limit of the little compact, it does get very hot, poor thing. The RX10M2 doesn't have the same restriction so if you plan to do long interviews, YouTube selfies or live event filming you know which to choose.

You are free to call it tit for tat. I will call it technological progress. Sony are set to own the imaging sensor market and define image quality for CMOS for years to come. That means they will be able to dictate their own destiny and the image quality of their competitors like Canon and Nikon because these companies will soon have to buy Sony sensors just to compete. Tit for tat is one thing...how about Canon just try competing? Do they have an answer to the A7S for low light or an A7R II for high end mirrorless photography? No! This is not tit for tat, it is how enormous markets are won or lost in the long run. By the way the GH4 has sold just fine. It did not just fall off a cliff the moment the A7S came out. The LX100 is a completely different prospect on the market, not a GH4 competitor. It's a fixed lens compact for starters! And I am confused as to how you think an NX500 replaces the NX1 just because it is newer! You say that after years of R&D you have a few months to get units shifted before the next flavour of the month comes along (often from the same manufacturer)... that just isn't true. Consumer product cycles are often 1-2 years and they share the market with a host of competitors in that time, that's the way it has always been since the first affordable digital cameras. This is not something that has only just happened with mirrorless models.

​No, I mean why did they stop being interesting.

It is tongue in cheek satire making a point that Canon have released merely a new box as a whole new filmmaker package and charged top whack for it at that. It is making fun of the kind of idiot who would fall for this kind of cynical marketing ploy... and yes there are plenty of them. Hopefully not too many on here but sometimes I have my doubts

​The real irony seems to be a bit lost on you. But let's address your made up irony first... I have not "sacrificed" raw, 10bit, 422, colour science and other aspects merely for resolution. I still treat the image as a visual whole and not a mere number. I have shot with the Digital Bolex - lovely raw and tip top colour... I have shot with Blackmagic for 10bit ProRes and of course 5D Mark III raw, and could go back to any one of them any time I please... in fact it would make my life a lot easier not having to cover all these cutting edge new cameras that just so happen to be 4K, for ungrateful bastards like you.... But I don't and that is because the current 4K cameras look lovely. 14bit Raw or 10bit 422 and the best colour science is a spec like any other... and it is rather overrated itself. For example the highlight roll off is smoother in 8bit SLOG on the A7S compared to 14bit raw on the 5D3 - go and figure. Indeed I prefer the 8bit 422 LOG image from the 1D C to Blackmagic's 12bit raw for colour. Again, go figure... Hands down my favourite image at the moment is the Canon 1D C so I am not a brainless 'Canon basher'. Those you will have followed EOSHD for a while or those in the know will get the satire... others won't... If you don't get it, then hopefully it will tweak your interest in the current state of play enough to research into the subject a bit more.

Why did they stop?

​Erm! Ever heard of satire!?

Profit from the "Audio visual" business at Panasonic does not = profit from cameras. It has a whole host of crap dragging the profit down... cameras were not one of them. The reason Panasonic made 3 times more profit from eco-solutions is because of a strong demand for that but more significantly a fall in demand for certain audio visual products like their TVs where are unappealing both on specs AND price compared to Samsung & LG.

​You sound like you're arguing against your OWN interests here! Whose side are you on? Canon's shareholders or the filmmakers!?

Canon is repackaging a selection of their DSLRs to appeal more to video producers. Writ large with the phrases "FULL HD" and "SELFIE" the bundles come with one of Rode's cheapest mics and a 32GB SD card. The standard kit zoom (18-55mm) is provided as normal. Prices are anything but low end though with the bundles ranging from a hefty $899 for the T5i to a GH4/NX1 busting $1649 for the 70D. Read the full article

​Interesting post that one! The year 2001 was really a pre-digital era as far as the mass market was concerned, as affordable DSLRs didn't really exist until 2005 with the Canon 300D. 2012 was something of a peak because it was just before the mass market decided their phone was 'good enough' Good enough aside from the zoom which is why crap like the G3 X exists!! The DSLR is heading back to base. At the base are waiting a lot of enthusiasts pissed off at Canon for ignoring them. Most of them are moving to Sony. When Canon and Nikon lose their footing in the consumer market, we won't be there to patch things up.

Yes, well, film sets are one thing... but I at EOSHD always had an eye on the enthusiasts and consumers more than with the established film industry. The GH2 was for a long time the only camera we cared about! Cheap! Great image! Sure the C100/C300 strategy could be seen as "smart". But it is a totally separate strategy to what we're really in need of, which is for Canon to start playing the game again in that very significantly sized DSLR/mirrorless video market. If only idiots would stop buying over priced and under specced Rebels and get a clue, Canon would react and improve the breed I am sure.

​Yes will do that but there's really no comparison, the 120p from the Sonys is in a different league.