Aimed directly at the market space currently dominated by the Sony FS7, a camera that has become a mainstay for many church film teams across the country thanks to it’s robust feature set, the new Canon EOS C200 Digital Cinema Camera boasts a truly impressive list of specs, inside an extremely portable form factor, for well under the $10,000 mark. In this article we’ll be examine how this camera stack ups and what it potentially has to offer to ministry film departments.
Canon EOS C200 Cinema Camera
Officially announced a few days before the kickoff of the Cinegear Expo in early June, the C200 is a brand new entry into the Canon EOS line of cameras. It sits comfortably between the well-loved C100 Mark II and C300 Mark II Cinema cameras, with a form factor almost as small and light as the C100 with features that rival or even exceed the C300.
The camera boasts a Super 35mm sensor capable of capturing footage at 15 stops of dynamic range when filming in raw. The C200 also records footage at 4K up to 60 fps and HD up to 120 fps, which are the highest frame rates ever offered by Canon in their EOS line for under $25K. It features dual SD slots for filming MP4 and a CFast 2.0 slot for filming in Canon’s new Raw Light compression scheme. More on that in a moment.
The C200 includes reknowned Dual Pixel Auto Focus, as well as popular focus assist features from their higher end cameras like Continuous AF and Face Detection AF. The camera also boasts a new four-inch LCD touchscreen monitor, which allows the cinematographer to select and adjust focus points by simply touching the screen. Fortunately, it also retains the built-in viewfinder from it siblings for filming in bright environments.
One of the real strengths of the EOS line of cameras from the beginning has been their ability to successfully film in an almost impossibly wide spectrum of lighting conditions. The C200 boasts a100-102, 400 extended ISO range for filming in low-light conditions. It also features -2, -4 and -6 stops of built in ND, which can be stacked to produce -8 and -10 stop setting as well.
In addition, the C200 boasts dual XLR audio inputs, which have been moved from the handle to the body. It also features live streaming from the camera over a built-in Ethernet port.
C200 Initial Reaction
Right away it’s clear that the C200 has the potential to be a groundbreaking camera for Canon. We’re thrilled with ability to finally film 4K at 60 fps, something that until now has been reserved only for the high-end C700. We’re also excited by the new touchscreen LCD monitor, which could prove to be extremely useful for smaller film crews. Anyone who’s used Canon’s Face Detection AF feature will know just how powerful this little feature can be, especially when filming in run-and-gun or on a gimbal rig.
The biggest question we have about the EOS C200 is the camera’s implementation of codecs. On the one hand, the camera is one of the very first in this price range with the ability to film Canon’s new Raw Light internally. This means that 4K footage can be filmed at an astounding 12-bit 4:2:2 color depth directly to a CFast 2.0 card. While the footage produced in this manner should look amazing the file sizes will be impractically large for most projects.
One the other hand, the only other internal codec available is MP4 with an 8-bit 4:2:0 color space at 150Mbps in 4K and 35Mbps in HD. This is essentially the same bit depth the C100 Mark II has been filming in for years, and it’s a little disappointing to not have a better ‘middle ground’ option. Canon’s is promising an update that allows internal XF-AVC recording in Q1 2018, which will hopefully alleviate this issue.
We hope to dig into this and other features when we receive a review unit later this year.
