C300 Mark II announcement discussion

[Paul Chiappini]

Canon's C300 Mark II cinema camera will cost you $20,000

Hopefully we'll know more regarding pricing in the next few days.

[Dan Brockett]

B&H has it on pre-order for $15,999.00

[Derek Reich]

Okay, as both a long time Sony and Canon user, I can see merits for all the varied opinions for each in this post so far, just as there always is when comparing different camera manufacturers. Some people like Ford, some like Chevy. They all do the job in competent hands. But I have a couple of pressing questions, which have nothing to do with the new sensor, the LUTs or 4K. Maybe it's been covered here already (I admit I skimmed!) but did Canon fix the buttons on the camera to be a 'soft click'?? It's one of the things which drives me crazy on the 300.... you're set up in a quiet interview setting, and I have a compulsive habit of constantly checking focus, especially when using a very shallow DOF, and the subject can't sit still. I do this by obviously utilizing both magnification and peaking, and while the noise from the buttons rarely (if ever) has made it to the recording, it has caused me to receive stink-eye from more than one producer. They don't really know what I'm doing, all they hear is the constant 'click-click-click' as I toggle through magnification, peaking, zebra and this brings me to my other pet peeve with the C300. WHEN is Canon going to get the hint that we don't need all the display data in both the LCD and VF at the same time?? Did they change these small but somewhat annoying little specs?

[Pete Bauer]

Given how noisy the NAB show floor is, I couldn't verify it personally but quiet buttons was a specific talking point.

Also saw some 4k footage recorded internally and displayed on Canon's new Rec 2020 monitor. So beautiful.

[Barry Goyette]

Originally Posted by Derek Reich

...all they hear is the constant 'click-click-click' as I toggle through magnification, peaking, zebra and this brings me to my other pet peeve with the C300. WHEN is Canon going to get the hint that we don't need all the display data in both the LCD and VF at the same time?? Did they change these small but somewhat annoying little specs?

I can say that I didn't notice a different "feel" to the buttons, but yeah it was really loud so you couldn't tell if the buttons were quieter...(although, frankly, I don't think I've ever thought of them as loud.) The new perimeter info view on the LCD makes for a really clutter free image, and the LCD quality is substantially improved over the previous model. The color on it seemed very accurate, which wasn't the case with the Mark I.

To me it was all about the image, and the flexibility of all the new luts, looks and gamma's. The highlight range on this camera is insane.... in a completely different league from the previous generation of CinemaEos cameras, daring you to just keep increasing exposure to see if the skintones would burn out and get weird. They really never did, even at absurd exposure levels the skintones just faded to white...awesome. I set the exposure for the scene to what I considered "normal" and then tilted the camera up to the spots lighting the set and there was full detail in the fresnel lens and housing. The skintones seem to have lost the "golden" hue that could be a blessing or a curse on the old c300. The new skintones are a tad redder (definitely seeing the Alexa influence here) but never oversaturated. (The camera has an "original C300" look in the settings, but I never got to look at whether it rendered skintones more like the old camera or not...the booth guy said it should).

Finally, I was really impressed with the Rec.709 LUT and gamma on this camera. I always felt this setting on the C300 just looked contrasty and oversharpened and noisy. I've often heard about Alexa that it's pretty common in TV drama to just to use it's rec.709 setting straight out of the camera as it looks so good. From what I could see, Canon has followed suit here as well...

The only thing of concern that I (and several others) saw on the overhead monitors was some pretty nasty pattern noise in the deepest shadows at every ISO (things that would normally render as completely black). It was not clear if this was something the monitor was causing (you couldn't see it on the LCD), and it was certainly not in evidence on the demo film they showed in the theatre. The booth guys had no answer other than that they were engineering sample cameras and didn't have final color. I believe that (and I couldn't imagine Canon releasing a camera with such a glaring problem.)

[Mark Dobson]

Barry - thanks for that really informative post of the new C300 Mark 2 from NAB. Having a better monitor will definitely be useful, and one that stays level!

Did you manage to play around with any of the new autofocus features?

[Barry Goyette]

No real surprises on the autofocus stuff. Meaning it all worked as advertised. The booth guys were all keen to talk about the assisted manual focus which let's you place the focus point wherever you like and gives you a nice graphic indicating the direction and amount of focus error for manual correction. Probably the most dramatic example of the DP-AF came in the classroom, where the teacher had a model sit down, while he framed her and quickly set a focus point near the edge of the frame and then ran a fast 4 foot slider move, wide open, directly at her with her face significantly off center in the frame... It was perfect and dramatic, and took him all of 3 seconds to initiate. Overall this is the best implementation of DP-AF on any of their cameras. And I doubt anyone will find much to complain about regarding AF.

[Jon Roemer]

Originally Posted by Paul Chiappini

Canon's C300 Mark II cinema camera will cost you $20,000

Hopefully we'll know more regarding pricing in the next few days.

Chuck Westfall in a PVC video confirms the $20k list...~7 min. in:

NAB 2015: C300 Mark II Up-Close on Vimeo

[Jim Martin]

and you understand what list price means.......it means you will never pay that price.

Jim Martin
EVSonline.com

[Jon Roemer]

Originally Posted by Jim Martin

and you understand what list price means.......it means you will never pay that price.

And if you had read the thread you'd see that of course I know what list price means.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Jon Roemer

And if you had read the thread you'd see that of course I know what list price means.

So why did you take the time to post a video and specifically mention the $20k list price? What is the point you are trying to make exactly?

[Jon Roemer]

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

So why did you take the time to post a video and specifically mention the $20k list price? What is the point you are trying to make exactly?

I had posted on p. 2 of this thread, http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-ci...ml#post1883038 , in response to Mark Dobson, that the pricing I had seen for the Mark II all said $16k (e.g. NewsShooter.com). There was no mention of list prices above that. So, my hope was that similar to the Mark I release, the actual street price would be below that.

Paul Chiappini responded that the list he saw was $20k w/a street price of $16k but his source was Engadget. Engadget doesn't always get its camera info correct. Paul also said, "Hopefully we'll know more regarding pricing in the next few days."

So, when I happened to see Canon officially saying, $20k list, $16k street, it was confirmation of the situation.

Given that I quoted Paul with my posting of the video it's pretty clear that I'm saying - hey, here's confirmation.

[Gary Huff]

B&H has it up and listed for $15,999. So does Texas Media Systems, EVS, AbelCine, and many others. Why is that not good enough?

[Jon Roemer]

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

B&H has it up and listed for $15,999. So does Texas Media Systems, EVS, AbelCine, and many others. Why is that not good enough?

Gary - you're missing the context. The discussions above are from about a week ago to almost two weeks ago when the camera was first announced.

When the discussion started none of those vendors had it up and listed. Then $16k appeared on B&H's site but at the time there was still no confirmation from Canon USA as to whether $16k was list or a street price. That's why the discussion was going on. That's why my post made sense a week ago and my earlier one made closer to the camera announcement on the 8th made sense.

[Mark Dobson]

Someone, somewhere mentioned they thought it a shame that the C300 Mark 2 had not been called the C400. That would have left the C300 as a viable 1080p entity ( which it is ! ) rather than a bit of a has been.

As to the final sale price of the C300 Mark 2 we will just have to wait but fingers crossed it starts heading downhill.

Canons decision to slash the price of the C300 might be great for potential new owners but creates a slight feeling of distrust for me. Buying the C300 was a big investment for my company, a definite step up in terms of the amount I'm used to paying for a camcorder / DSLR set up, and to see a couple of grand knocked off my investment hurts.

To widen the debate slightly and for another perspective on this announcement here is a blog post from a Cameraman / DoP Daniel Haggett ( who is also a childhood friend of my eldest son ). His blogs are always well researched and informative.

Sony FS7 vs Canon C300 Mark ii vs Sony F5
Sony FS7 vs Canon C300 Mark ii vs Sony F5

For me the C300 Mark 2 seems irresistible and I need to look at how I'm going to finance it. But I won't make a final decision until I've spent a good period of time playing with the XC100 4k camera to see how the additional resolution and consequential additional storage demands will impact on my business.