Nick DG

As to the question with which you ended this post "Where is Canon in all of this", they were probably desperately trying to protect the margins of their high-end offerings, like the 1D C or the C series. Well, tough sh.., competition is here and they will have to respond if they don't want to concede the DSLR 4k market to Panasonic and Sony. My sense is that they will respond and they will have to respond soon.

Somebody has to explain to me WHY anyone would care what Laforet thinks. WHY? He was at the right place at the right time five years ago and made a couple of low light tests, which he called "films" (hello a "film" has to have a story, a plot), Canon rewarded him by letting himd direct one of the C300 promotion films and.... and that's it. All he's done since then is to heavily promote the most expensive equipment and vendors in this industry, who, btw, sponsor his site. And like someone else said, why would anyone be surprised by the fact that he said "we should be focusing on the C series..." You're asking Canon's public relations guy to tell you what the best choice is ... come on! I'm a Canon user myself, but I need to find the best tool for the buck and all Canon has done since they accidentally started the DSLR revolution is to try to push everyone upmarket by rationing technology.

Now, I'm not really the conspiracy theorist, but nobody thinks it's rather odd that this is happening at the moment BM is kicking Canon's (and everybody else's) butt with their affordable RAW offerings. Not to take anything away from Magic Lantern's achievement, but could it be possible that Canon willingly leaked some technical info that made this possible, at a time when it does not have a competitive RAW video camera at this price point?

Hey Andrew: What cards are you using with your GH2 with the super high bitrate?

Hi Andrew: I'm a big fan of your blog and I've been reading pretty much all your posts, but especially since the mkIII came out, contemplating my next camera purchases. I'm primarily an events shooter, weddings, etc. I shoot both stills and video professionally. I have the mkII, a 60D and a few GH1. I'm waiting for the price of the GH2 to dip a bit before I start adding GH2s to my stable. I've been reading your posts on the mkIII and I've been feeling the same sense of frustration, without even having the luxury of comparing the footage of mkIII to a GH2 firsthand, like you have. But I really don't need to even do the image comparisons to be frustrated and angry at Canon. Four years later, and you can't even put an articulated screen or 60fps on the successor to the mkII? Seriously? They are clearly trying to put the gini back in the bottle, as you have said in different words, but I think it is impossible and it will hurt them big time in the long run. I'd like to add this from the POV of the events shooter. The FS100 or the AF100 or even the 5DmkIII are NOT a good option for events shooter anymore. Events shooting, at least the way I do it, is about redundancy and about having multiple cameras and angles to cover a non-repeatable event and having choices in editing. Why on earth would I spend 5k on a single camera to get 1080p when I can buy a GH1 for $400 --which I did when they were clearing them out last June-- and GH2 for $600-700? That thinking led me to dump my two 3-chip HDV Sony cameras last year, and replace them with five GH1 and a ton of great inexpensive FD glass, and I haven't look back since. Not to mention that for the past three years or so, looking at all the great footage coming out of DSLRs I hated shooting video with HDV cameras. And with the DSLRs I rekindled the joy of shooting video. I've been referring to the 5DmkII as the leader of the "accidental revolution". With the mkIII Canon have proven that it was indeed an accident and not a stroke of marketing genius. But if they're trying to get us to buy "traditional" video cameras again, it's too late. Myself and every other serious event shooter I know, ditched the all-in-one form factor of the HDV cameras, for the superior quality and choices of the DSLRs, (and I include the GH1/GH2 in that term). The inconvenience of separate audio, buying a rig, etc, well I've gotten over it. Superior image quality always wins over convenience, if you're a true shooter. I think there's a line in "Tora, Tora, Tora", the 70s movie about the Pearl Harbor attack, where admiral Yamamoto replies to a subordinate who's bragging about their success in Pearl Harbor, along the lines of "I fear all we did was to wake up a sleeping giant." I'm afraid all Canon did was to wake up Sony, who has not taken kindly to Canon hurting their video camera business, and responded with a myriad of options, the FS100, the NEX line, the A series etc. As far as I'm concerned, not being a "moneybags" pro shooter, as you put it, my next camera purchases would be GH2 and NEX-5n (for that 60fpsthat Canon could not include in the mkIII). Will I buy the mkIII? Maybe, but mostly because of the improved autofocus, the dual card format (for redundancy) and I hope better high ISO performance for stills. When it dips in price, and not for video. And my hunch is that it would dip in price soon, in the same way the C300 dipped almost overnight because of the Scarlet.