For someone who advocates that the 7D Mark II is a great camera (which I still do) why did I make the jump to a Canon C100?
Well I’ve been looking at getting a more ergonomically friendly camera for work for quite a while. My 7D Mark II is great, but all the things that I hate about it also slow me down when I’m out on a shoot and as all my shoots are normally 1-2 days I cant really afford to slow down.
To set the scene – Enter my Canon 600D, old faithful, reliable and dependable. I used it as an A camera for 3 years and then as a B camera along side a Canon 6D before getting my 7D Mark II.
I have a lot of admiration for that camera. We’ve been through thick and thin together and shot work on it I’m extremely proud of.
That was until 31st May 2016 when it died mid way through a shoot and threatened to not turn back on. Eventually it did with some jerry rigging before it gave up the ghost the following day as the circuit board died.
This broke the camel’s back and forced me into getting a new camera and deciding what camera I wanted.
The short answer: That would be the Canon C300 MK II.
Alright we can dream but who realistically has £15000 to spend. I had a maximum (and I mean maximum) budget of £4000.
“So what camera did I need?”
I looked at the C100 MK II because everything else I have is Canon and to swap brands would a nightmare. The C100 MK II had almost everything except a broadcast codec. But then I wondered what the difference is in terms of real use between the MK 2 and the MK1. After taking the advice of Rowan Johnson, the Director of Southpoint Films who had recently purchased his second C100 MK1, it got me thinking.
C100 MK II or MK I?
So what was I looking at:
- Image quality
- ISO performance
- A large EVF
- 60/50fps.
- Audio
- Ergonomics
Image Quality
Right off the bat the image quality between these two cameras was going to be minor. Its the same sensor. The image quality compared to my Canon 7D Mark II is sharper, cleaner at every ISO and holds far more detail. I was both stunned, shocked and quite frankly very pleased.
ISO Performance
Honestly I barely shoot over ISO 1600 in any situation due to work and it easily holds up all the way to 6400. At 6400 it does require some denoising but its hardly worth mentioning.
Its not a low light camera, but for the type of work I do, I’m not normally without a set of lights anyway.
EVF
You’d think I would be swayed by the MK II but you’d be wrong. Aside from being £1500 cheaper, I’ve never liked using an EVF at the best of times and have a good solution for that. Again I’m not really a fan of Loupe’s. Something I used on my 600D was a stick on cover. I didn’t want a stick on one so I found this one from Neewer which slides over the LCD screen.
It needed a tiny bit of modification to fit over but it works very well outside without the need of a Zacuto Z Finder and because it folds up, it doesn’t take up much room in my camera bag.
Slow Motion
The C100 does lack the ability for slow motion. That’s a fact.
I get around this fact because on every shoot I take two cameras with me and I’ve used 50fps precisely ONCE in a whole year with the 7D Mark II.
Slow motion I think is very overused and for me, slows down the pace of a video. As a lot of my work is online work, most (if any) shots I take in 50fps are cut anyway to save time.
I prefer to create timelapses rather than slow motion shots, so again, the 7D Mark II is the favourite here.
Audio
Well yes and no. The preamps on the C100 are pretty good. Coming from a Zoom H4N with the noisiest preamps in the world, I solved that problem by using Fetheads which provided 20db of clean gain.
My two main mics are the Rode NTG1 & the NTG2. I had a problem with my NTG2 is the same that everyone has with it. It’s a very weak microphone.
My Fethead effectively boosts the signal from the mic to the camera giving me audio that matches up with the Rode NTG1.
“But if you take the handle off to put it on a steadicam, you lose audio. Why would you do that?”
A revolutionary thought and scandalous to say but I don’t own a steadicam or a Ronin. There I said it. Why? Because they’re a lot of money and for the type of work I do, completely unnecessary. If I do ever need one, I hire a steadicam or Ronin operator. Far easier. This means I don’t have to worry about stripping the camera down but also, I know a trained user is much better than me learning how to use one.
Ergonomics
Ergonomically the Canon C100 is wonderful. Within 5 minutes it felt like I had been using this camera all my life. I added an extra hot-shoe mount to the top handle so I can mount the Ninja 2 (I’m yet to find a magic arm that doesn’t swing lose when I’m not looking) and made my Rode NTG1 as the main camera mic (had to wrap some surgical tape around it to get it fit in the mic holder – which is something I knew I was going to have to do).
The battery life is incredible even when providing phantom power to microphones and the EVF and LCD screen.
There are other things that I really like about it. The glory of returning to built in ND filters and something I never expected to be much good, the dual pixel autofocus. It’s a feature also on my 7D Mark II which is relatively good at what it does and is certainly handy in a pinch. One thing that makes it better in the AF department is the face detection which again is very useful but missing on the C100. I’m not too bothered but it would’ve been nice to have. The AF on the C100 is very good though, my TAMRON 24-70 focus bumps a little bit and my old Sigma 17-50 is just not fun to use, but my Canon 70-200 f2.8 is fantastic and so (very surprisingly) is my TAMRON 70-300mm f4-5.6.
I can put it in my camera bag easier and it focuses like a dream. So now I can have that as my walk around long lens but on paid work my 70-200 comes back out to play.
“OK, there must be something that you don’t like about it?”
I’ll admit there are some things that I don’t like.
Unless you’ve got a long baseplate, the baseplate mount feels like it’s in the wrong place and the placement of the one shot AF button is lunacy unless you have fingers that could dislocate a shoulder. (I have since turned it into the AF lock when autofocus is enabled)
Apart from those very minor gripes, this is a great camera for online and digital work. Being able to reduce the amount of bags I drag around is a huge bonus (especially for my back and shoulder). Some other nice features are dual recording to SD cards (cheaper media and back-ups) the handle which is solid and feels comfortable to hold and built in limiters and attenuators (taking a feed from a sound board will never be a problem again).
Final Result
As you may have guessed from all of the pictures, I went with the C100 MK1 and I haven’t had any regrets since. For some people the MK2 might be better for them.
Personally, I’m happy with this choice and will be for a long time to come.
The video below was taken about a month after getting the C100 and I’d had a chance to play with it and get to know it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKGklWkQIEc
If you’d like to see more of my work, check out my Vimeo channel.
If you’re interested in working with me on a project then get in contact by heading over to Design Sheep.