For many, the release of the Canon C100 has prompted one question: Which one do I get? Or, in other words, is the C300 really worth $9,500 more than the C100? These cameras have the same sensor and very similar bodies, and Canon even includes C-Log on both, but there are a lot of differences. Perhaps the most notable: C300 records internally 4:2:2 MPEG-2, while the C100 records 4:2:0 AVCHD 60p recording (at 720p) is available on the C300 but not the C100 C300 has HD-SDI & Genlock, C100 just has HDMI C100 is smaller There are other differences: The […]
by Michael Murie on Feb 6, 2013When L.A.-based director Rich Landes was offered the chance to shoot a short narrative piece for Canon he jumped at the chance. Landes has extensive experience as a commercial director, but this was a chance to direct a narrative based on his own idea, and with few restrictions from the “client.” But first he had to come up with an idea and treatment in two days. Then he had to fly to New York and cast, find locations, and hire a DP in four days, and then shoot the whole thing over the course of two days. None of this […]
by Michael Murie on Jan 15, 2013Recently we published an interview about the making of the short film Pulse, which was financed by Canon and shot on their new C100. Canon subsequently contacted us about a second short, BART, which was also shot on the C100. While Pulse is a documentary piece, BART is a four-minute short that is entirely an exercise in narrative story telling. Canon was specifically looking for a film that had little language and had a lot of visuals to it. BART will premiere next week at a special screening and workshop at the Sundance Film Festival, but today Canon is releasing […]
by Michael Murie on Jan 14, 2013In Part Two of this interview with Patrick Moreau of StillMotion, Moreau discusses the settings used while filming the short film Pulse with the Canon C100, as well as the lenses and audio hardware they used. He also discusses intercutting footage from the Canon C100 with other cameras. See also: Pulse: Shooting with the Canon C100 Part One Filmmaker: For this project you were recording to AVCHD? Moreau: Yes. We used AVCHD in this situation because we wanted it to be as natural as possible, which is possible with this small footprint. We did an AT&T campaign for the Olympics […]
by Michael Murie on Jan 10, 2013When manufacturers are preparing a new camera for release, they often loan pre-production units to filmmakers in the hope that they’ll make a video the company can use to promote the camera. Such is the case with the Canon C100. Canon loaned the filmmakers of StillMotion two C100 bodies and financed the making of a short video, Pulse. As StillMotion described in their blog post on the making of the video, the idea for the video came from a potential client: We’d recently been approached to make a Kickstarter film for a team who had created a pretty remarkable innovation […]
by Michael Murie on Jan 8, 2013Canon went and shrunk the C300! The company just announced its baby brother, the C100, which looks very similar but is slightly smaller and is absent a feature or two. Most notable, perhaps, is the use of the AVCHD codec, and the LCD has been moved to the back of the camera from the detachable handle. But the C100 has the same sensor as the C300, and may produce a very similar image. All of those issues may be less important, however, than the price; at around $8,000 it will be half the price of the C300. To get the […]
by Michael Murie on Aug 30, 2012