canon Eos C200 or other Cine camera for action

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Richard Kane

Has anyone tried different cfast memory other than san disk?
I notice Amazon sell other brands much cheaper such as Delkin?

Cards have to meet the CFast Collective's VP-130 rating to record Cinema RAW Light

Sandisk Extreme Pro - Only VP-130 card approved and tested by Canon

Lexar 3500 only - the 3600s will not work, the 3500s, if you can find them still, will work but Lexar as a brand, has been shut down so little to no after purchase support

EgoDisk - These cards meet the VP-130 standard and are relatively inexpensive. I have two, so far, so good with the C200 and Cinema RAW Light, but I have barely used them as have others

KomputerBay - Meet the VP-130 standard and are only slightly more expensive than the EgoDisk

AngelBird - Meet the VP-130 standard and more expensive than the EgoDisk or KomputerBay

Transcend - I emailed Transcend USA customer service and tech support. No Transcend cards meet VP-130

Delkin - No Delkin cards meet VP-130

Hopefully the Egodisk cards will prove to be reliable with Cinema RAW Light because nobody wants to pay Sandisks exorbitant prices but if none of the low cost alternatives pan out long term, you won't have a choice if you want to shoot Cinema RAW Light.

[Richard Kane]

The camera has arrived!!!!
So far only had time take a 30 second clip testing it with my 70-200 L canon IS lens
very easy to use :) I can't wait to dive deep!

A few quick questions.

Any case recommendations? I plan to take this the C 200 to Scotland.
Looking for a carry on case doesn't have to be a hard case. Preferably a case where i do not have
to disassemble the handle and screen.

Also looking into buying the t4.4 18-80, anyone with experience with this lens, Anyone use this lens hand held? If using hand hold what type of setup do you use? Grip on lens?

I was surprised how stable the 70-200 was on this camera with IS.

I have a great tripod but to heavy to bring along everywhere I go.

Got the camera from Professional video in Oregon they were amazing!!

[Dan Brockett]

Congratulations Richard, you're going to have a lot of fun with the camera. I received mine last week and did my first pro shoot with it yesterday, shooting boat racers on the beach and in the harbor down in Oceanside, Ca. coincidentally, with the CN-E 18-80 T4.4.

As far as a case, before you buy one, I strongly encourage you to take the time to read Slavik B's article on his website. I travel all over the world shooting, went to Scotland, about a decade ago to shoot a documentary for Paramount for the special edition of Braveheart, but since then I have done shoots in South Africa, Morocco, Brazil, etc. many times. Transporting your camera and all of the gear needed to make it work is different than working with your camera at home or locally. Using the method Slavik B lays out here, I reduced my cases from five to three when I travel and the whole amount of gear I bring went down in weight completely by over 100lbs. Read it carefully, especially toward the bottom of the page. The C200 body fits in to the Tom Bihn Brain Bag nicely. Video Production Equipment for Documentary Filmmaking - Gear Dads

The CN-E 18-80 worked great yesterday shooting interviews on the beach. It's a very nice lens. It is not great for low light, you may find yourself cranking your ISO to 2500 to 6400 indoors unless you are lighting, for documentary type shooting, it is a bit slow indoors. The good news is, the C200 image holds pretty well at ISO 2500, even up to 6400, although I prefer to not go above 3200. Make sure you get the ZSG-C10, you'll want and need it. For shoulder-mounted shooting, Eric Coughlin over on DVXUser recommends using dual handgrip extensions, the ZSG-C10 on the right and the Canon Grip on the left, which is a GREAT idea, that's how I will be using it handheld. Then you can use the servo with your right hand, without having to awkwardly place your hand up on the lens, which is tough when handheld.

The C200 and the 18-80 T4.4 are a great combo, made for each other. Perfect verite' setup.

[Stewart Hemley]

Thanks for the continuing updates Dan.

Quick question: did you shoot raw and if not, have you graded any 8 bit yet?

[Richard Kane]

thanks Dan!

I shot my first Raw yesterday,
Any tutorials around the web on how to use Canons Raw developer?
I inserted the clip and than exported it and it created numerous .DPX files.
isn't the developer program supposed to stitch those together into a single file?
It is only one short clip. Thanks

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Stewart Hemley

Thanks for the continuing updates Dan.

Quick question: did you shoot raw and if not, have you graded any 8 bit yet?

I've only shot some test footage in RAW in my office, not on any of these projects lately because I don't yet have enough CFast cards and I don't think our clients would want to use the RAW workflow yet. I had a green screen shoot yesterday and shot 10-bit 4:2:2 1080p Prores HQ with our Ninja Blade for a film I have been shooting all year. And the day before, we shot interviews at the beach all day, about three hours worth, so we shot those 4K C-Log 3 .MP4 for our own documentary, which really doesn't start production until next Spring, this was just footage for our sizzle reel/pitch package. Have not graded the .MP4s yet but just looking at them, they look good, used the 18-80 T4.4 and it was semi cloudy so exposure was not too challenging and the 13 stops looked to be plenty, my white popup tents in the BG are not blown out and exposure on talent was perfect for available light.

I have been debating shooting RAW for the actual documentary with the other two producers and it is all going to be determined by budget. If we manage to get funded and have enough money, I would love to shoot the entire documentary, at least the A cameras as C200s shooting RAW (lots of Go Pro and drone will be shot so that obviously will not be RAW). But we have come to the realization that that will require a DIT/Media Wrangler on shoots with us, which costs a good amount of money. We would have two to three cameras shooting probably 3-5 hours per day though so that is a lot of CFast cards, drives and download time. If the XF-AVC codec update in February turns out to be decent data rate and 10-bit, we would shoot that over RAW, it would just be more practical for the large amounts of footage. But if the XF-AVC update is weak, that may drive us to shoot RAW. Or honestly, we may end up shooting it on a different camera, like the Varicam LT or EVA 1, time will tell.

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Richard Kane

thanks Dan!

I shot my first Raw yesterday,
Any tutorials around the web on how to use Canons Raw developer?
I inserted the clip and than exported it and it created numerous .DPX files.
isn't the developer program supposed to stitch those together into a single file?
It is only one short clip. Thanks

Coolness. I have only output Prores 4444 so I cannot address .DPX file workflow. I have not seen a lot of instructional videos on how to actually use CRD but you might want to check out the Newsshooter clip with Matt Allard, he talks about using CRD a bit.

[Travis Andersen]

Originally Posted by Richard Kane

thanks Dan!

I shot my first Raw yesterday,
Any tutorials around the web on how to use Canons Raw developer?
I inserted the clip and than exported it and it created numerous .DPX files.
isn't the developer program supposed to stitch those together into a single file?
It is only one short clip. Thanks

Richard, are you on PC or MAC? MAC only can you convert to Prores.. What are you editing with as well?

[Richard Kane]

Hi thanks,
I am on a mac just figured out i had to use prores and was able to export no problem.

So much to learn!

Still looking for a good case/bag that can fit the C200 and one or two lenses such as the
18-80

[Stewart Hemley]

Thanks for the reply, Dan. Detailed as ever.

I've been thinking about the 200 since it came out, either as a B cam for my C300 mk2, or even the A camera, but I just can't work out how I would use it. Unless the new codec matches the 300 - doubtful - it won't be up to broadcast work, especially as I like to keep the rig as simple as possible. The more I can do in camera, without external bits hanging all over the place, the better. And then there's that horrendous storage problem, especially if you're on location, which is maybe 99% of the time. It seems the existing codec will grade fairly well for event stuff, etc, but I doubt if it will stand up to much messing around if you need to. Fortunately, as you say, the EVA 1 might be an alternative. I guess these are problems we'd have loved to have just a few years ago.

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Stewart Hemley

Thanks for the reply, Dan. Detailed as ever.

I've been thinking about the 200 since it came out, either as a B cam for my C300 mk2, or even the A camera, but I just can't work out how I would use it. Unless the new codec matches the 300 - doubtful - it won't be up to broadcast work, especially as I like to keep the rig as simple as possible. The more I can do in camera, without external bits hanging all over the place, the better. And then there's that horrendous storage problem, especially if you're on location, which is maybe 99% of the time. It seems the existing codec will grade fairly well for event stuff, etc, but I doubt if it will stand up to much messing around if you need to. Fortunately, as you say, the EVA 1 might be an alternative. I guess these are problems we'd have loved to have just a few years ago.

I agree, just depends on your clients and their needs. For us, few clients will want to shoot Cinema RAW Light, we shoot too many days with 3-5 hours of interview footage. I am beginning to have a little optimism that the XF-AVC codec update in February will be good enough to use for broadcast type clients and in the meanwhile, we still have clients who want 1080 Prores HQ green screen footage and our Ninja Blade handles that nicely.

I have a C300 MKII here for testing and review for an article I am writing about the C200 as well as the CN-E 18-80 T4.4 and a prototype CN-E 70-200 T4.4. That was one of the things I was going to do, set up a nice scene and shoot it with both cameras with the same focal length and exposure to compare the .MP4 with the C300 MKIIs XF-AVC. I've shot with the C300 MKII a bit and certain things I love about it and a few things I really dislike. The C200 mitigates the whole "too tall" design of the C300 MKII, it eliminates the dorky and in the way dual cables from body to clamshell unit, the XLRs not being on body. It eliminates the slow motion crop of the C300 MKII and the 12-bit Cinema RAW Light does seem to look very nice. I have three of the 256GB 2.0 CFast Cards so far, each allows 34 minutes of RAW recording so I have 102 minutes capability. EgoDisk is shipping their 512 GB cards next month, so I plan on picking up two of those and one more 256 GB card for a total of 256 minutes worth of Cinema RAW Light recording capability so card space won't be a huge issue for most of our shoots.

Disk space is actually not that big if a deal, 4TB bare drives and a drive dock are pretty cheap now, but the time it takes to download a couple of TB worth of material is still too long. I ran some tests and using the Lexar CR-2 Thunderbolt reader to the 1TB SSD in my MBP, I can download 256GB worth of material to the drive in 10:40, which is quite amazing. But I will now have to buy a few 1 and 2TB SSDs, which aren't cheap and because my MBP only has one Thunderbolt connection, some kind of Thunderbolt hub, which is one more thing to haul around.

If you have specific requests on comparisons between the C300 MKII and the C200, let me know, I will have the C300 MKII for a few more weeks, then it goes back to Canon. So far, the C200 is a pretty interesting camera, I have ran into two issues that I am waiting to hear back from Canon on so we shall see if they are really issues with the model or just issues with my copy. My two main sound mixers are bummed that there is no TC input, but that's the breaks.

[Travis Andersen]

Here is the latest update on the AVC codec.

C200 codec update in 2018 will only be 4:2:0 8-bit - Newsshooter

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Travis Andersen

Here is the latest update on the AVC codec.

C200 codec update in 2018 will only be 4:2:0 8-bit - Newsshooter

I knew it would be 8-bit but I am highly disappointed that it will be the same data rate as the .MP4, and will have the same lousy chroma subsampling 4:2:0. It makes no sense that a much older model Canon 4k camcorder that sells for 1/3rd the price of the C200 will have a considerably better codec, 8-bit 4:2:2 at 305 Mbps in the Canon XC-15. They should have left the 8-bit vs. 10-bit and the higher bit rate of the C300 MKII at 410 Mbps be the differentiator, not completely crippled XF-AVC on the C200.

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Dan Brockett

...I have ran into two issues that I am waiting to hear back from Canon on so we shall see if they are really issues with the model or just issues with my copy.

Turns out the two issues I was running into were because of menu items I had set incorrectly, I spoke with Canon. Although both items are very non-intuitive and I cannot find anywhere in the manual that specifically discusses these points so you just have to know them or figure them out with someone's help who knows these. In case this helps other C200 owners who will find themselves in the same situation:

1. For the CN-E 18-80 T4.4 and the CN-E 70-200 T4.4 lenses, you must make sure that the grip control function, first menu function, page 5, is switched to off. That is what was disabling the joystick while using those lenses. I had the grip zoom switched on, used the grip zoom control a bit, then forgot about it, went to some other still lenses, came back to the 18-80 and neglected to swtcih off the grip zoom which overrides the joystick menu control. The joystick would function with still lenses because the grip zoom options are only activated when you mount a compact CN-E servo lens.

2. Currently the Magnification button on the camera is set to the function "Magnification". This function magnifies over EVERY output. What you want to do is reassign that button to the function "Magn.: Video Output" instead. This will just magnify your Video Output, which is your touch screen. A quick, simple way to do this is hold the Menu button, then tap the Magnification Button (Number 1). This will bring you to the Assignable button menu for that button, and you'll see the proper option there. It makes no sense to me that the default is to have the HDMI and SDI magnification output to the video outputs be on, the shipping default should be having the Magnification not go out the HDMI and SDI outputs but that's how it ships.

[Richard Kane]

ok my first try with the camera c200 (for that matter any cinema camera)
I am using a rented 18-80 canon cine lens
I am a total rookie so take it easy
I was hand holding in a field just shooting my dog to see quality of mp4 recordings
I tried to get rid of the shake using final cut pro stabilization which creates the wobbly artifact
any suggestions to fix shake in post processing other than using automatic in FCP
very excited about this camera!!! I know its a long journey as this is my first cine camera and I have so much too learn. I also bought Da vinci resolve and red giant "looks" to help process Canon Log and raw any suggestions very much welcome. More to come I shot some raw today as well. This was b709 in camera.
i am not pleased with the color, also shot some canon log 3 will try to color grade that and will post.
Any ideas or help appreciated.
Also I have noticed on the Canon Raw light there doesn't seem like there is much to adjust with Canon Raw development unlike the numerous adjustments that can be made with
raw photos taken form a camera. If this is the case what is the advantage of Raw light over mp4 canon log 3?

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