Andrew Reid

Canon entered the indie filmmaking market in 2009 with the 5D Mark II whether they intended to or not. The live view stills mode enabled a rudimentary video feature. This provided the basis for a whole new business, that ignores completely the indie filmmaker.

Actually I preferred Avatar in 2D.   Rich is right. 3D adds nothing artistic. It adds nothing to the story. Artists - i.e. proper filmmakers - don't need it.   It IS a gimmick to sell cinema tickets and televisions. Wake up! Look at the production cost of the tech, it is so cheap. Pair of plastic sun glasses and a software routine which any open source media player can do on a Windows laptop!   It isn't a magical future technology that is somehow not quite there yet. It never even got started. The current technology is a replay of the 1960's. What is needed is for genuinely new technology to get started and develop into something actually useful and artistic, preferably before it hits our cinemas.

The D800 is no good at 720p. Much better at 1080p. For slow mo the GH3 is a better choice. The RX100 is nice but it is only a compact camera with a 1 inch sensor. You need a fast lens and larger sensor for shallow DOF.

The problem with 3D is psychological, until the human mind gets rewired it won't work. For some applications the technology does have a future when it moves beyond ridiculously cheap glasses and an equally cheap software trick on your television. This current craze was driven by sales people not filmmakers although filmmakers who were also sales people (cough cough PJ) did have a good go at it :)

It is a real shame that Canon's legal bluff has scared these guys off but I can understand their position, I wouldn't want to get into the politics of it either.   Still in my opinion I don't think it is illegal.

Well if hacking the 1D X is illegal than the GH2 hacks and 5D Mark III hacks are too.   I can see absolutely no technical difference in enabling higher bitrates on the 5D to enabling 4K on the 1D C.   You're simply turning on existing functionality.   Alex I think is talking about a port of the 1D C firmware to the 1D X and that is rather different.   But if the 4K features are already in the 1D X and just turned off, then that is legally and technically the same as any other hack we've seen.

It isn't about getting something for half price, it is about getting something which is fully enabled for the asking price (in the case of the 1D X) and not artificially crippled to protect some cynical business strategy.   Videographers and filmmakers who buy a 1D X are paying for hardware that does 4K video only for it to be disabled. If you disable such a big part of the camera, where's the discount? And don't say the 1D X should cost $12,000 and that $6k represents a discount, because it doesn't!   Had Canon no Cinema EOS line, they would have had 4K on the 1D X and we'd all be celebrating them and buying one.   Anyway 4K is the least of my worries. I still haven't even got dramatically improved 1080p from a DSLR yet which is why I am now a Blackmagic Cinema Camera shooter. People vote with their feet in the end, and the Japanese companies can play all the silly business games they like, let's see where it gets them. Total financial collapse is my bet.   Can you imagine Blackmagic or Red going to the effort of producing a hardware that performs to a certain high level then switching it off in firmware? It isn't business it's bullshit!

  Bruno. Listen before shouting nonsense. It isn't legally wrong. Ask Vitaliy. 100% legal. Magic Lantern as it stands does not modify the firmware code. It runs separately alongside it. Again the project is 100% legal and if Canon wanted to sue them, they really wouldn't have a leg to stand on. I hardly think "because we can" is a very strategic business decision. Also... You're trolling.

Usually most Super 16mm cinema glass won't cover the larger sensor in the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. The sensor is closer in size to the Panasonic GH3. However Shane Hurlbut has had a rather useful discovery, in shooting with the Canon 8-64mm F2.4 on the BMCC he found it covers the sensor just fine without vignetting. Canon 8-64mm F2.4 PL / Arri on eBay US

Promising signs. With The Hobbit snubbed for almost all nominations at the Oscars and with the commercial death of 3D, there's no room for HFR any more either. Good riddance!   Another one: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852452/death-of-3d

What Canon are doing here makes no business sense to me. They make a healthy margin on the 1D X as it is at over $6k, imagine the sales leap had they enabled 4K video on it.   So they are going to sell how many 1D C's? 2000 of them? Mostly in one country. Does that seem like a good reason to piss off the 40,000 who would have bought a 1D X for 4K video? Does that seem like a good business decision, really?   Aside from the morally repugnant profiteering and loss of reputation such a cynical product results in for Canon, they have had to cripple their core business to satisfy this tiny niche of Hollywood cameras. We all know the video on the 5D and 1D X is not as good as it should be. It is just as well their competition is so utterly clueless and weak. Nikon anyone? Sony? Red have had 4K cameras out for what seems like a whole era and the Japanese are only just now bringing cameras out.   Essentially when you can produce a camera that does 4K and make a nice profit on it at $6k, it just shows how weak the competition is when Canon can still be a market leader and DISABLE the entire feature, instead selling it for double the price to a select few. 4K isn't mainstream yet, but when it is Canon won't be able to sell a 4K DSLR for $6000 let alone $12,000.

And I am the one who will decide not to buy it. Great arguing with you Bruno, have you thought about a career in business?   Do you realise you are defending the indefensible and also voting against your own interests??

This stuff about CPUs and graphics cards being differentiated by firmware switches and clocking is hardware related. The chips that don't pass quality control perfectly are put into the under-clocked boards. It is not the same as what Canon is doing here and the prices between different CPUs and graphics boards is minuscule compared to the huge $6000 Canon wants for your 1D C firmware and heat sink.   Yes clearly some management guy has said "how can we extract added value from our mass produced 1D X camera and L series of lenses". The answer is - modify them in a minimal way, double the price and sell them in lower quantities to a bloated film industry where price is no object, and forget about all the other filmmakers, artists, consumers and enthusiasts who happen to make up 80% of your business.

As a stills camera I liked the Fuji X100 - it was an actual die-hard photographic tool with gorgeous good looks in a sea of plastic consumer gadgetry. However the terrible AF and fly by wire manual focussing technology spoilt it, and the video mode was very much an afterthought. Fuji have taken steps to address all of this with the X100S getting a significant upgrade under the familiar retro style casing.

Wow this is going way off topic.   I have removed the video as it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the 1D C / 1D X. Feel free to post in the screening room Max.

  The firmware features are exclusive to the 1D C, and disabled in the 1D X code.

  They were not sales reps, I can't stress this enough. They were product managers in charge of the whole spec whose job it is to work with Japan to form a product.

A few months ago I reported back what Canon had told me officially at Photokina - that the 1D C had some very minor hardware changes over the 1D X (like a headphone socket) but that the camera was fundementally the same camera with a firmware update to enable 4K recording. The Canon product manager was technically knowledge and utterly adamant this was the case, there wasn't a hint of doubt in his eyes when I had this discussion face to face on the basis of mutual trust. Later Canon were keen to point out I had got it all wrong and that the 1D C had a different circuit board, etc. etc. and was well worth your extra $6,000. So why are there traces of 1D C firmware in the 1D X?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6m0l3Yr1B50   Enjoy!

  Erm, apart from 4K recording built in. Quite important no?

In May last year I reported that Pavavision were working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on sensor technology for a possible digital cinema camera. In a surprise unveling at the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography (Camerimage 2012) in Poland they have indeed signalled their intention to join the game. On offer is a prototype digital cinema camera aimed at bettering the Arri, Sony and Red. It has a huge by cinema standards 70mm sensor (similar in size to full frame 35mm).

Because the Scarlet is even more expensive, not as good in low light, not a full frame sensor nor does is it as good a stills camera.   I am in the 1D C camp but it could have been much better.   25p, $8k instead of $12k, HD-SDI and articulated screen... But then Canon are conservative.

One option to consider to avoid the crazy pricing of this admittedly rather attractive beast is to get it on a finance deal, quit your job, and sell the your 4K footage as stock. 4K stock footage is in demand. Also I am pretty sure you could undercut a lot of Red shooters for a job which specifically demands 4K material.   The image on this camera is lovely. The pricing is indefensible though, but business is business.

  Fine if you are not editing raw natively in Resolve. You need NVidia CUDA for that and none of the Mac Minis have a powerful enough graphics processor for raw editing.

How does it compare to the Kowa 8Z Tony?   These Bolex Mollers are rare, don't see that many.   Kowa is very sharp, better than my Iscorama 36.