Hywel Phillips

Years ago I saw a post explaining various companies' segmentation strategies, and I think it still holds true today. Canon have always made cameras that lack one specific major thing that you take for granted on other cameras at the same price point, apart from their very top models. This is why they have the cripple-hammer reputation. There's always ONE thing that's just a disappointment. For the C70, I'd say it's the EVF. For the R5, obviously, it's the recording time limits. The one time they neglected to do that was the 5D Mark II and they're still dealing with the unexpected consequences of that internally, I think. Panasonic by contrast have always had the reputation of giving you one specific thing that everyone else's camera lacks at a given price point. For DVX100 it was progressive scan. For HVX200 it was solid state recording and HD (of a sort). For the AF100 it was slowmo in HD. It persists to this day - I have a GH5 purely because it offers PROPER anamorphic shooting without costing the same as an Alexa. (I only wish their AF was up to scratch for video). Sony's pitch has always been technical advances. But they cannot design a user interface to save their lives, either physical or virtual (menu systems). It's the same with every Sony product I own, from PlayStations to BluRays. Great product technically, bloody awful ergonomics. For example, my Sony Blu-Ray player ignores the eject button if it's on standby. Every other player I've ever owned knows that if I press the button, I want the disk to eject. Now. Only Sony makes me turn the player on first (thus incurring an interminable boot sequence delay). RED's pitch has always been resolution and readout speed, facilitated by the best video codec there is. I still love my original RED Scarlet- in some ways it outperforms my FX9 and I'll probably keep it for decades. The main problem that is they tend to be assholes; the world would be a much better place with licenced REDcode RAW everywhere. And Arri's has always been targeting the top end, but I can't afford one so I don't know how they differentiate their cameras. The C70 and R5 show me that Canon are still just being Canon. The trick is to figure out where the missing feature is and does it kill your use case? Cheers, Hywel