Canon’s “revolutionary” new camera was announced today at a press conference at Paramount Pictures studio in Hollywood, California. High end cinema cameras are decidedly not my forte, and I had initially not planned on commenting on this if it turned out to be a cinema body. However, after looking at both the specs for the new C300 and the announcement of a new VDSLR in the pipeline I decided I’d throw my 2¢ out there too.

I won’t event try to summarize the specs, they’re way out of my comfort zone (but you can read the press release). That said, the big thing that stands out to me, are that the camera has a QFHD/4K sensor (weighing in at 8.3MP), but can’t output 4K video. Instead Canon has elected to down sample the 4K bayer sensor into a 1080p Full HD ouput that has full RGB color for each pixel. On one hand this will provide a better image than a line skipping VDSLR. On the other hand, if you have to read the full sensor out, it seems like it would be reasonable to have the option of storing the full sensor output. Doesn’t it? Then again, Arri doesn’t do more than 2K resolution with the Alexa, so, maybe it’s not that big of a deal.

What they did do right, is not try and cram another video camera in an SLR body down our throats. Which makes the second announcement all that much more confusing; Canon says they have a VDSLR that can shoot 4K video in the works. In my opinion, the success of the VDSLR isn’t because of the form factor, but because of the cost and the fact that just about anything can be adapted to any use with enough “hacking”. However, starting from a better user interface, makes for a platform that’s that much easier to use and adapt. The C300 is definitely designed with that in mind.

Oh ya, I’d be remiss for not mentioning that in addition to the C300, Canon announced a handful of new cinema lenses. Three primes, a 24mm T/1.5L, a 50mm T/1.3L and an 85mm T/1.3L all EF mount; and 2 zooms, a 14.5-60mm T/2.6L and a 30-300mm T/2.95-3.7L in both EF and PL mounts. There’s not much I can say about them, other than they’re designed for cinematographic use, i.e. they’re fully manual (zoom, focus, and aperture), they have geared control rings (zoom, focus, and aperture), the focus and zoom throws are considerably longer than still photographic lenses (300° focus throws), and are designed for minimal breathing when focusing. Canon’s press release has the details.

Finally if you want to see what the C300 is capable of, check out Vincent Laforet’s Mobius in all it’s 1080p detail.

Mobius – 1080p HQ from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.