12Apr Canon 1D C Cinema EOS announcement
The Canon 1DX has yet to be released and Canon has already announced its bigger brother the Canon 1D C. Basically a video oriented version of the 1DX with some added frame rate options (24 through 60 at 1080p) and of course the ability to shoot 4k at 24fps Motion JPEG. All this recorded to Dual CF cards with no external drive required.
The 4k option crops the sensor to APS-H which is a 1.28 crop factor, so at 4k your 35mm lens would look like a 44.8mm lens (1.28×35). In 1080p mode no crop factor is applied so you’ll still get that beautiful full frame feel. The maxim ISO for the 1D C is 25600 (same as the 5d mark III), but with the reduced density of the new 18.1-megapixel sensor, you’ll most likely see better noise performance then the 5dmk3. The camera also includes a Super 35 crop mode if you need to punch in a little more on a given lens.
Basically Canon has “unlocked” some features they could have given us in the yet to be released 1DX and marked the price up about $7000 (Retail expected to be $15,000). But will it sell? Well if the flood of used Red One cameras for sale on ebay (with buy it now prices of $15,000 or less) is any indicator, i’m sure they will.
At least the 4k Motion JPEG format is something easy to work with. Post production on 4k Red footage can be a real pain if you don’t have the proper equipment in post. Price is still to far above my budget for this camera to matter much for me, but who knows, maybe the Canon C300 will see a major price drop when the new Cinema EOS cameras start hitting the market.
