Canon EOS-1D C Cinema Camera Body
First Impressions
This thing is amazing! Its a digital film camera that fits in your hand and priced under $12K. While that price point should exclude a lot of prosumer/amateur filmmakers, this thing seems to have the capabilities of changing the playing field in a similar way the 5D did. The quality of the image in addition to the being able to utilize your EF lenses in a 35mm crop and even 4K without any additional or expensive equipment is insane.
The picture quality is amazing. I didn’t get a chance to play around with the settings too much and I found the video was a little dull (the two shoots were on cold cloudy winter mornings so that may have had a little to do with it) but crystal and I mean crystal clear. I think it has something to do with the fact that the contrast range is so wide there were never crushed blacks and blown out whites. Kind of insane when you are shooting a parade that goes from slightly diffused sunlight into full shade in the same frame with minimal to no lost color information.
When I dropped the footage into my NLE software, the amount of color information at my disposal was much more that I’ve ever been accustomed to. I was able to tweak the footage in ways I didn’t think possible. I’m no expert at grading, but from first glance it seems like the post production possibilities could be almost limitless. Aslo, each and every frame was a clear as the previous – this was shooting at 30fps as well. I can only speculate at how smooth a 60fps sequence would look slowed down.
Things I liked
The image. Just unreal. The few photos I took were so rich and sharp it was crazy. The sound of the shutter was solid and meaty – it felt like a serious machine. I loved the level feature even though it is a little silly getting excited about that in light of all this cutting edge technology.
Things I didn’t like
I love using the zoom function to double check my focus and the placement movie from your right index finger to your left thumb which was very inconvenient when running and gunning. I think it can be argued that this isn’t a “run and gun” type camera but I’m sure there were naysays who said the same thing when discussing the 5D in its early days. The battery grip on the bottom made the camera a too large for the follow focus on the Red Rock. It would also be nice to have an XLR input on the the thing. The role size limitations was weird (4gb) and I would assume could become problematic when shooting long sequences in 4K. It need to create a new file pretty much every 35-45 seconds.
Bottom line
Would I buy this camera? Hell Yes. As a one man production company the price point right now puts it out of reach, but this is similar to owning a versatile RED/Markii hybrid. Unless something crazy comes out in the next year, this thing should give aspiring filmmakers and the means to produce some seriously beautiful work. The field of 4K is still unexplored but looks to become the new standard and this thing is only going to help that process along, one crystal clear frame at a time.
