It seemed Canon have caught up with what consumers want and need with the release of the C300 at the end of 2011.. but now they are back with a smaller version… and cheaper.
Canon announced on the 29th August 2012 they will be releasing the budget version of the C300.. It is half the price of the C300 but has well over half of the exciting features of its older brother.
Its 15% smaller, shares the same sensor as the C300 (Super 35mm 8.3 Megapixel Canon CMOS sensor) It records as AVCHD codec at 24Mbit 4-2-0 which could be a problem, all’s not lost though as it has a clean HDMI out (WOOOHOOOO) so effectively you could put on a Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle and record ProRes at 4-2-2 (we think)
The camera also has the 2, 4 and 6 stop ND filters built in which we think is a massive selling point.. they are manual compared to the smooth electronic system on the C300 but I’m willing to make that sacrifice to keep the ND filters.
This could be the camera that distinguishes the DSLR film makers from the small to medium video production company, such as ourselves.
We are very excited about the C100, it goes on sale at the start of November for approximately £4000 on the CVP website.. we might even consider rooting around in our deep pockets to add to our ever growing kit list.. although saying that, the 6D is out in December and has built in WIFI and full frame sensor.. we’ll see what santa brings us.