04 Feb 2010, Posted by David Torcivia in Articles,Equipment Reviews,Filmmaking,General, 2 Comments

What I Hope Canon Announces Tomorrow

At the moment, Canon stands on secure ground in the prosumer and low-end professional video market. The VDSLR trifecta of the 5D Mark II, 7D, and 1D Mark IV have enabled filmmakers to achieve expensive, film-like looks for unheard of prices. Consequently, over the past year the production value of short and independent films have increased significantly creating a mini-revolution in this branch of the industry. These cameras are not without their faults, however. Awkward framerates (in the case of the 5D), extreme shutter rolling, no video-friendly shutter speeds, awkward ergonomics, poor audio capabilities, lossy down-resing, and a poor codec are all gripes, many serious, from users.

The VDSLR’s success has come despite these problems because of the low price and large sensor size (and resulting depth of field and low-light performance) the cameras offer. This advantage is rapidly running out as the industry shake-up company, RED, prepares the launch of their Scarlet line of cameras. Red’s bottom priced camera offers a 2/3″ sensor (smaller than it’s Canon competitors), 3K REDCODE RAW (a vastly superior codec), 120fps, a high quality 8x zoom, vastly reduced shutter rolling, and several other filmmaker friendly features for $4750 – about the same price as a Canon 1D IV body. For ~$7ooo, RED sells a S35 sensor barebone version which would require another $3000 or so of accessories and lenses to make usable. The short version: a [relatively] large sensor camera, built for filmmaking (not photography), for [relatively] cheap.

Canon has ruined RED’s product line once before with the release of the 5DM2 which was groundbreaking enough for RED to cancel all their designs and restart from scratch citing that the game had changed. This move set RED’s production line back months making Canon the only kid on the block (Nikon doesn’t count) for cheap, large sensor cams. But with the release of Scarlet imminent, Canon has the opportunity to change the game again.

Imagine a 5D or 7D sensor, already mass produced by (or is it for?) Canon, placed in a camcorder body which has the room and bulk to allow for more electronics and processing units to give us: faster framerates, reduced shutter rolling, better down-resing in addition to the camcorder ergonomics, audio capabilities, and video specific framerates we all know and love. Attach a Canon EF mount, for Canon lenses (and another potentially huge source of revenue for the company) and you have a S35 or FF35 video camera version of a VDSLR.

Furthermore, Canon has a pricing advantage through the combined effect of their current sensor mass production and completed research and development giving them the opportunity to make this new camera extremely competitively priced. Combined with the announcement of their new MPEG-2 4:2:2 codec (while not RAW it’s much cleaner than their current HDV or H.264 encoding schemes) the stage is set. With the right price, this possible Canon camera would provide an exceptional alternative to RED Scarlet and keep Canon as the dominating force in the market.

Tomorrow, February 5th at 3:30 PST, Canon will announce their new tapeless camera at the ninth annual San Francisco SuperMeet and show if their video division can keep up with their VDSLRs and match the bold strides of RED.