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CANON C200 USER REVIEW
cards you can afford. Tantalisingly, the specs for the camera describe Canon’s excellent XF-AVC CODEC as being available in a future firmware release, though Canon is tight-lipped about when that might be. The C200 is going to be a very important camera for Canon. It is so close to being a C300 Mark II – in terms of build, features and image quality – but at an amazingly competitive price. Even without a time code input, it would go at the top of my shopping list.
Detail was recovered very quickly at the over-exposed end of the scale, whilst the under-exposed end was limited by noise – the image detail was retained well below the level at which the noise was considered objectionable. This is very comparable to other cameras that claim an absolute dynamic range of 15 stops, so we have no reason to doubt Canon’s claim. Oddly, we measured rolling shutter at around 4x10-4 degrees/ pixel/second, which is about twice that of the class-leading C300 Mark II (though still very good – much the same as the competition). The C200 has two DIGIC DV 6 processors – a generation in advance of the DIGIC DV5s in the C300 Mark II – hence our surprise at this result. Canon confirmed that the camera’s algorithm for reading the sensor is different to the C300 Mark II. There is a big gap in image quality between the MP4 and RAW Light files – and a big gap in price per minute for recording those images. This, and the lack of time code input, are perhaps the two limitations forced on this camera by the price. It’s not that the MP4 is bad, it’s just that once you’ve seen the RAW Light you start wondering just how many CFast
ABOVE Canon has hinted its XF-AVC CODEC may be available in a future firmware release. BELOW Almost a match for the C300 Mark II? The C200 is going to be on a lot of wish lists…
THERE IS A BIG GAP IN IMAGE QUALITY BETWEEN THE MP4 AND RAW LIGHT FILES or sharpening, so they may need a tweak in the grade. As standard, the maximum ISO is 25600, extendable to 102400, but I’m not sure I would use over 6400. We use a ‘real world’ measure of dynamic range – essentially filming a low contrast but richly patterned surface, evenly lit, from massively under-exposed (black) to massively over-exposed (white). We take this footage into a grading suite and pick the exposures which we can grade to reveal rich detail at each extreme. Of course, this is subjective, but it’s the kind of subjective that DOPs and colour graders are likely to be looking at. It usually gives a value a couple of stops fewer than the maximum quoted by the manufacturers, and for the C200 we reckoned there were 12 stops of usable range, which is excellent.
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MARCH 2018 DEFINITION
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