Hello, I'm David Leitner.
I'm a filmmaker and an active director of photography based here in New York.
And I'm here on behalf of B&H to discuss Canon's Cinema Eos family of cameras.
We're going to do this in five parts.
The first part will be an introduction where I'll briefly go over each of the cameras.
The second part will be a look at HD capture and recording using the C100 and the C300.
The third part will be about 4K and 2K plus HD capture and recording using the C500 and
the 1DC.
The fourth part will be about Cinema Eos workflows and the fifth part will be about
the universe of lenses that are available for these cameras.
That would be EF lenses, EFS lenses, Canon's own Cinema Eos Super 35 lenses.
Now before we get started, I'd like to frame this discussion by looking at two legacies
that are brought together in this family of cameras.
One would be motion pictures and the other would be Canon's own Eos technology.
Cinema of course came first.
Motion pictures began with the introduction in 1892 of one and three eighths inch motion
picture film, four per 35 millimeter and with a frame that today we call Super 35.
So Super 35 is a legacy format.
Now in the 1980s Kodak looked at 35 millimeter to determine how much digital resolution would
be necessary to capture everything on a 35 millimeter color negative to a digital format.
And they came up with 4,096 pixels.
In other words 4K, that's where 4K comes from.
Now Cinema Eos is derivative of Eos.
Eos is electro optical system and Canon introduced that in 1967 for autofocus in 35 millimeter
SLRs.
Prior to that lenses had had mechanical linkages to cameras to SLRs.
The Eos system brought electrical contacts which were used instead of mechanical linkages
to operate lenses.
That allowed lenses to be smaller and electronically controlled which gave rise to today's universe
of Eos lenses which we now can use for HD acquisition as well as 4K acquisition.
So let's review the Cinema Eos family of cameras.
The C100 which is right here, the C300, the C500 and the 1DC.
They're based on two platforms.
The first is an innovative lightweight camcorder shape using modular design.
It's what Canon calls their mobile core design.
And the second platform is a DSLR platform.
We'll come back to this in a moment.
These three cameras are distinguished by system modularity, for instance, this hand
grip fits onto both the C300 and the C100 by attaching at this point and it attaches
to both of them.
It's the same hand grip.
It's an intelligent hand grip.
It has a start, stop and button in the front.
It has a iris control button for the index finger.
It has a joystick in the back and it has a magnification button two times.
The C300 and the C500 share a modular LCD.
It is an articulated 4-inch LCD.
It's quite large.
It turns in all kinds of directions.
It's kind of like a transformer toy.
It attaches on top and it provides 100% coverage of the image.
The C500 and the C300 also come in a PL mount version.
The C100 is EF mount only.
The 300 and 500 come in EF or PL.
Now features common to all three of these cameras include HD acquisition.
HD acquisition is a worldwide reality.
It's far more programming in the world as shot in HD these days, televisions, movies,
commercial production than in any other format.
These cameras are also world cams and that means that they function equally in 50 hertz
or former PAL territories or 60 hertz former NTSC territories.
They all share a 16 by 9 4K Super 35 CMOS sensor with 8.2 million photosites.
That's 3840 by 2160.
It's called Ultra HD these days but it used to be known as Quad HD because it's four
times the photosites necessary for HD.
Now this confer is a real advantage.
That is to say when you have two green, one red and one blue photosite per each pixel.
For one thing, there's no debayer process.
You don't have to interpolate any color information.
Secondly, when you have two green photosites per pixel, that equals something that Canon
calls super green.
Super green is twice the Luma signal.
Luma equals the detail that we experience when we look at a video image.
It corresponds to our perception of detail and sharpness.
Well when you have two green pixels, twice the green, two green photosites in every pixel,
you have a very high modulation transfer function, very high MTF, zero aliasing in the all important
green channel.
It makes for a very clean image and a very sharp looking image.
Now when you're shooting 4K, there are 8.85 million photosites available.
That would be 4096 by 2160 in the C500.
On top of that, the sensor in these cameras affords a 12 stop exposure latitude with the
use of Canon log consistently in all three of these cameras.
It provides a wide ISO range from up to 20,000.
In video camera terms, that corresponds to gain settings of minus 6 dB to plus 30 dB.
Now the base sensitivity of the sensor is ISO 640.
That equals a master gain setting of zero.
But to deliver the best dynamic range using Canon log, Canon recommends an ISO of 850,
which corresponds to a gain level setting of about 2.5 dB.
That's to capture most effectively the full dynamic range when using Canon log.
Now custom picture settings with a choice of video gamma, including an option of wide
dynamic range or Canon log gammas, add to the versatility of these.
Canon log video gamma is an option for HD recorded to MXF files.
Canon log is also automatic when you're in the 2K or 4K mode, when you're shooting C500
for instance.
All Cinema EOS cameras offer view assist.
View assist is a function that provides a LUT or lookup table to the viewfinder or to
the LCD while you're shooting in log mode so that the image looks more or less normal
to your eye so that you can make exposure judgments.
All of these cameras provide standard definition as well.
They don't record standard definition though.
They record high definition.
But they make available standard definition in a real time down conversion.
All of them can output for instance from their HD SDI port standard definition.
All of them can output from their HDMI port.
But in addition, if you need analog composite standard definition, the C100 can output from
its AV out terminal.
The C300 and C500 can output standard definition from their sync out terminal.
And the C100 in addition can perform a really neat hat trick.
If you've recorded AVCHD onto an SD card in a C100 and you need a standard definition
version, you can put an SD card in the second slot of the camera and the camera internally
will do a conversion from AVCHD on the first card over to MPEG 2 standard definition on
the second card.
I don't think I've ever seen that before in another camera.
These three cameras also provide a full suite of built-in video scopes.
Very important.
I've argued for years that video cameras should contain waveform monitor displays.
These cameras do that.
Their waveform monitors include line, line and spot, field, RGB and also component, YPBPR.
In addition, they will display a vector scope display, although that's not available in
the C100, but it is available very much so in the C300 and C500.
They'll also display an edge monitor display that is used as an optional focus aid.
And what I mean by that is you see along the bottom of the image a series of waves that
when the image is sharpened and focused, the waves peak.
And you can very quickly see mechanically whether or not you're in focus or not, even
if you can't quite see the image very well.
In camera mode, as well, each of these cameras provides 15 assignable buttons.
Virtually every button on these cameras is assignable.
In addition to that, because these cameras are designed from a common standpoint, the
buttons tend to be organized in the same way.
For instance, along the lens here, there is the same series of buttons, magnification
at top, peaking, zebra, and wave form.
So if you've used a C500, for instance, you can then pick up a C100 and pretty much know
where the buttons are.
These cameras also provide two channels of audio compressed or uncompressed.
The input, audio input, is flexible.
They each, in the handles, which are modular and attached to the top of the camera, they
each provide two XLR inputs.
In addition to which, they provide a mini-phone jack on the side for microphones that don't
use XLR connectors and use the mini-phone plug.
These cameras, in addition, provide pre-recording.
It's a three-second cache that loops video for three seconds until you press the record
button, at which point it captures the prior three seconds.
These three cameras also open a door to an entire universe of EF lenses, Canon EF lenses.
And that includes EF lenses for the full format, such as the Canon 5D Mark II and Mark III,
a full DSLR sensor, and the APS-C-sized sensor that, for instance, the Canon 7D contains.
These are Super 35 sensors.
They're about the same size as APS-C, meaning that both EF, with its larger coverage and
EFS lenses, are appropriate to use with these cameras.
That creates over 60, access to over 60 lenses.
Now, on the side of these cameras, there are switches right near the lens that, in each
case, activate an ND system.
In the case of the C300 and C500, the NDs are driven by a small motor system.
On the C100, it's manual, and maybe you can hear it click.
And what we have are clear two-stops, four-stops, and six-stops, which pretty much covers the
gamut that you need.
And these NDs are remarkably free of IR pollution at bright exposure levels.
That was demonstrated recently in New York at a comparison.
Cameras were lined up, and black was under high tungsten lighting.
Different types of black materials were exposed, and some cameras showed very bad IR pollution,
and required IR filters, special IR filters, and the Canon cameras remarkably seemed to
require almost none.
So these built-in ND filters are actually quite efficient as far as IR pollution.
These three cameras come with a three-eighths inch threaded hole for use with professional
tripod adapter plates.
But Canon, very thoughtfully, for those of you who use quarter-inch, quarter-twenty tripods,
smaller tripods, which are very popular these days, Canon provides an adapter plate, which
is a quarter-twenty adapter plate.
And all you need is a screwdriver to remove these four screws, and you can convert any
of these cameras within a minute to a quarter-twenty tripod plate.
You'll notice that there's a quarter-twenty hole in the three-eighths inch tripod adapter
already, but that's more for use as a second attachment point when you're using the three-eighths
inch screw to attach to these cameras.
These cameras also, these three, use commonly the same Canon intelligent battery.
It's a BP955 intelligent lithium-ion battery.
They're very popular.
They're used in Canon XF camcorders.
They have been around for a while and are easy to obtain.
Now let's talk about the cost-effective member of the Cinema EOS family.
That would be the C100.
It's a smaller camera, if you look at it compared to the C300 and C500, it's about 85% the size.
It has a smaller viewfinder.
It has a slightly smaller LCD screen.
This LCD screen, by the way, is the only way you can get two times magnification, which,
in this camera, only appears here, but doesn't appear here in the viewfinder.
This is an EF mount only.
There's no PL mount.
There is a DigiDV3 image processor.
Below are the two slots for the SD cards that this camera uses.
This camera records, as I said, HD only.
It's ABCHD, and as such, it only records 1920 by 1080 and 1440 by 1080, which is favored
by broadcasters sometimes.
There's no 1280 by 720.
ABCHD, H.264.
Now there's a removable handle that includes the XLR inputs, two of them, on one side over
here and the controls over here to control those two.
The controls line up with the inputs, and so that makes it fairly easy to know where
you are.
You connect it to the camera like that by adding a lens.
We very quickly are building a camera that was designed for use by one person.
When you attach a hand grip, you see you're in business.
The hand grip goes here, actually.
You remove this cap first.
You're in business.
Very quick, very light, very mobile.
In addition, this camera has something that the C300 and C500 don't have.
It has a stereo mic built into the handle.
I've found many times that that's useful when you're building your camera, something
starts to happen really fast.
You don't have quite time to attach the external mic, and this saves the day.
This is, I think, a very useful feature.
I almost wish the other cameras had it, but I'm glad this camera has it.
There's push auto iris.
Very helpful.
Push auto iris when you're using EF lenses, when the lenses can talk to the camera, Canon
EF lenses.
There's one-shot autofocus, which again requires use of Canon EF lenses.
One-shot autofocus means that it's not continuous autofocus.
You press this button, and the lens will focus once and grab what it thinks the focus is.
It doesn't change focus throughout the shot.
You release the button and start at that point.
If you want continuous autofocus at NAB this year, a firmware announcement was made.
There's going to be, later this year, a firmware upgrade that will allow the use of STM lenses.
EF lenses with the STM designation on them, and STM stands for stepper motor.
Those zooms will have, with this camera, an continuous autofocus capability, and that's
something that we look forward to.
That'll be a lot of fun.
This lens, by the way, that I've got on here is an EF 24-105 L-Series Zoom at NAB.
It was Canon announced that this would now be the kit lens for this camera.
This camera and this lens complement each other very nicely.
Now let's talk about the C300.
The C300 was the first Cinema EOS camera.
It appeared in about late 2011, and it was introduced as both a cinema camera and a television
camera.
For that reason, it featured both an EF mount and a PL mount, PL mount being the mount used
by cinema cameras in feature filmmaking.
The processor inside of this camera is a Canon Digic DV3 image processor.
That's the same one that the C100 has, but this camera records not ABCHD, but MPEG 2,
and it records MPEG 2 to two CF cards in the back of the camera.
It records 1920 by 1080, 1440 by 1080, which broadcasters are fond of, and 1280 by 720.
Again, MPEG 2, it includes all of the common frame rates, including 23.98, and a true 24.00,
24.00 for filmmaking.
It outputs an uncompressed 8-bit HD signal via HD-SDI using a 10-bit carrier, but it's
an 8-bit signal.
It's created from a much higher bit depth signal that is used in the internal processing
of the camera, so it's a very high quality HD signal that comes out of the HD-SDI.
There's a firmware update that was announced at NAB in April that will add one touch or
one push, rather auto iris and one shot autofocus, which had been borrowed from the C100.
It was so popular with the C100, why not?
This camera will have that, too.
Also, the firmware update will bring an additional format, which is 1440 by 1080 at 35 megabits
per second.
Now, let's talk about the C500.
The C500 is essentially a C300 with added capabilities.
You might say that it's on steroids.
It's designed for high-end television episodic production, as well as cinema, as the C300
is.
And like the C300, it comes in both an EF mount and a PL mount.
With a slight difference, the PL mount on both cameras is the same, but the EF mount is different.
On the C500, the EF mount comes with a locking ring.
It looks exactly like this PL mount, only it's slightly smaller and it's an EF mount.
The reason that was done was because this is a true cinema camera and Canon anticipated
it would be used with cinema-sized zooms, much larger zooms that require a more robust
mount.
This camera records HD internally, just as this camera does, and exactly the same formats.
They're all MPEG-2, long-gop, 1920 by 1080, 1440 by 1080, 1280 by 720.
Again, the two cameras are identical in that regard.
Where the cameras are different is in the ability of the C500 to output 4K and 2K.
4K raw, I should be specific, 4K raw, 4K half raw, 2K RGB and 2K YCC.
And to output those signals via their dual 3G SDI terminals that are required to output
the larger signals like 4K, that implies an external recorder and that would be a third-party
recorder.
That doesn't make the recorders necessary to record 4K and 2K RGB and 2K YCC.
Because there's no compression, there's no image noise due to compression.
When Canon Log is used in general, but specifically here where Canon Log is automatic to raw output,
a 12-stop exposure latitude is ensured.
Raw output is accompanied by internal recording of MXF files to CF cards.
And what that means is that when you're outputting raw from this camera, whether 2K or 4K, you
can simultaneously be recording onto compact flash cards the MPEG-2 files that you might
record if you were shooting only HD.
So that means that whatever you've output to a third-party recorder, you have a proxy,
a copy, an identical copy onto the CF cards in HD.
In fact, if you decide only to use HD in the end, well, that might be your master file.
It's that good in quality.
Now let's talk about Canon's 1DC.
The 1DC is Canon's first 4K DSLR.
In fact, it's the world's first 4K DSLR.
It's EF mount only.
It is a DSLR.
It's based on a 1DX.
It has the same optical viewfinder and pentaprism of a 1DX.
It has all of the same still photography capabilities of a 1DX, but with the addition of HD recording
and 4K recording, it features a dual Canon Digic 5 Plus image processor.
Dual means two of them, because 4K is a lot of data to push around on the inside of a
small camera like this.
The sensor is an 18.1 megapixel CMOS sensor, full frame.
Its base sensitivity is ISO 400.
The ISO is adjustable from 100 to 51,200 with some extended settings.
There's a low extended setting of 50 ISO with a little penalty.
There's some diminished headroom.
There's a high setting of, there are two of them, of 100 and 2,400 or 204,800.
Those are so stratospheric, it's hard to wrap my mind around what that means.
But this is a superb low light camera as a result of that.
Even at 51,200 ISO, the image is remarkably usable.
It's noisy, but the noise has been diminished, an extraordinary camera for low light photography.
In camera capture of 4K is 24P and 25P only, 24 and 25P.
It's recorded compressed.
It's motion JPEG at 500 megabits per second, and that's a blazing amount of data to record
onto a CF card, so you have to have a very fast pair of CF cards in here to record that.
The C500, I mentioned earlier, outputs its 4K.
Its 4K is raw and uncompressed, but to record 4K internally, it's necessary to record to
a compressed format.
So again, it's motion JPEG, 500 megabits per second, and infrared frame, which makes
it a little easier to edit.
There's no long gop and there's no temporal compression.
The full frame sensor on this camera can be used to capture an HD image, but if you're
capturing a 4K image, what this 18.1 megapixel sensor does is it windows down to an image
that's 4,096 pixels across, which is somewhat smaller than the full sensor.
And that's how 4K is recorded.
If you're shooting with a Super 35 lens, which has a smaller image circle, which is about
the same size as well as APS-C, that format used in still cameras, if you're using either
Super 35 or an APS-C type of lens, then you're working at a much, an even smaller image circle
or image frame, and the 1DC can accommodate that as well.
You can output HD at a Super 35-sized frame, that it crops from its full frame size.
So HD can be output one of two ways, from the full frame, the full sensor, or from a
crop Super 35-sized portion of the sensor, meaning that you can use Super 35 lenses
and EFS lenses in the Canon EF9 or lenses used that are designed for APS-C cameras.
The Super 35 frame is the smallest.
The 4K window or frame is a little bit larger, and then you have the full frame.
With its recording, HD records at 24p, 25p, 30p, 50p, and 60p.
That makes it a world cam like the other cinema EOS cameras.
The HD is recorded to the CF cards as H.264, 8-bit, 420.
So again, motion JPEG for 4K and H.264, 8-bit, 420 for HD.
As far as audio goes, the 1DC has a built-in microphone, which I find incredibly useful
for running and gunning.
Sometimes you want to capture something really quickly and you don't have time to build
an audio rig on top.
You can just grab it fast.
It's also good for when you're doing double system sound, it gives you a reference scratch
track that you can use for lining up the higher quality audio recording later.
Now there's auto level control of audio, there's user manually adjustable audio control.
There's also a headphone jack to monitor what you're recording.
Now lastly, the 1DC has no fan, so it's perfectly quiet.
Audio recordists are going to love you when you're using this camera.
So let's recap, the C100 and C300 are optimized for HD capture.
That's what they do.
The C500 raises the bar on HD quality because of its internal processing.
At the same time, it enables 2K and 4K capture with the help of a third party external recorder.
The 1DC with its full frame sensor is a kind of a Swiss Army knife.
It's a remarkably versatile tool.
Now Canon's support doesn't end after you purchase one of these Cinema EOS cameras.
There's a website, Canon USA, where you can download manuals, free software, mac or PC,
and firmware updates, some of the firmware updates from NAB that I've been mentioning.
For instance, you can download a Canon XF utility for importing MXF files.
You can download LUTs to convert the Canon Log Gamma to Rec 709 or Cineon or Wide Dynamic Range.
You can download a Canon XF plug-in for Abbott or for Final Cut Pro X if you don't already
have that.
There's also a Canon 24-7 hotline, 855 Cine EOS.
Amazingly, 24-7, somebody will pick up the phone and answer your questions about hardware,
about software, any question you have, workflow, 24-7, and we all know that we work through
the night at times.
So in our next segment, we'll focus on HD capture and recording using the C100 and the
C300 in a little bit greater detail than we have.
Stay tuned.
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