Which New Camera Should You Buy?

Ramboz Media Group by David Acampora

November 3rd, 2011. It was the day camera enthusiasts the world over were waiting for. Video camera juggernaut Canon was set to release their new flagship camera; a piece set to compete with the best from Sony, Panasonic and even Red Digital Cinema. The rumors started to fly early; everyone had their wishlist: a 4K sensor, interchangeable EF and PL mounts, maybe even a RAW recording option. Canon was trying to compete with Red, weren’t they? Anyone who has ever used a Red One or Red Epic camera will tell you that RAW video capture is the wave of the future. So how many of the Canon fanatics’ wishes actually made it to the camera unveiled on November 3rd?

None of them.

Instead Canon created a camera with less-than-stellar specifications. The camera would output specifications very similar to its current crop of DSLR cameras, which have been ruling the indie film world for the past few years. The camera outputs a 1080p, 8-bit image maxing out at 30fps. Drop down to 720p resolution and you can shoot up to 60fps, but 1080p is the de-facto minimum resolution for broadcasting nowadays, and some might say that 1080p is even too low of a resolution for cinema distribution.

Its not all bad though. The C300 upped the game from 4:2:0 color space in their DSLR cameras to 4:2:2, making for easier and more predictable color correction. The camera also uses an industry proven XF Codec at bit rates up to 50 Mbps, for extremely high quality, edit friendly compression. The camera also writes to CF cards that you probably already own, and finally Canon has introduced time-code and the proper input and output options necessary for even the most basic film and television production. read more...