Canon C200 Hands-On & Interview

by Nino LeitnerJune 5^th, 2017

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At Cine Gear 2017, I had a chance to look at the Canon C200 up close, and ask a Canon representative directly what were the thoughts behind creating this camera. Please read my recent post, “Who is the C200 for?”, in case you missed it.

[Update:]

I state in the video that you cannot have Log out of the HDMI and SDI. This is incorrect information and will be a useful feature for some shooters.
We want to assure our customers that you can record in LOG over the HDMI and SDI ports on the camera.

[Update 2:] Our Canon C200 Review has been published and you can see it here: LINK

Canon C200 – Handling

First of all, what’s really striking is how well thought-out the size and handling of the camera is – they have clearly enhanced the familiar C300 / C500 / C300 Mark II design since its inception. The whole handle part on top is now finally very sturdy and solid, along with the monitor itself. It feels like a serious piece of gear that won’t break under constant use, whereas the handle part on my original C300 got loose after a few months of shooting with the camera. Canon also managed to get rid of the screws that were used on the C300 Mark II, so you don’t need an allen key to remove the handle anymore – through a smarter thumb-screw design, you are now able to remove the handle and monitor on the Canon C200 only by hand.

The camera body is more compact than a C300 Mark II but looks extremely similar. I can even see how people will mix up the two cameras when the top parts aren’t attached. One certain way to differentiate them is that the XLR ports on the Canon C200 are on the camera itself and not in the top handle/monitor section anymore. This is great news because it means we can finally have professional audio inputs when we want to stay minimal or when we go to a gimbal or something similar.

Monitor

The monitor itself is crisp and clear, seems to offer high resolution, and the new mechanism allows it to be twisted in virtually any position and even moved on the handle itself. The touch-screen functions work well in conjunction with the Dual Pixel autofocus, which seems to work remarkably well with this camera.

Codec – high and low and at the same time

I also asked the most apparent question: why is the only efficient codec in this camera of such low quality? Of course, it’s to protect the market of the C300 Mark II, which is still a more expensive camera. At the same time, it can do a raw light codec which will eat 128 GB of storage for 15 minutes of footage – great for high-end quality, but tough to deal with for the indie shooter. My questions to Canon about the camera focused on that fact.

Conclusion

With the C200, Canon certainly has a very strong offering in their hands and I can see this becoming a very successful camera. However, it could be much more successful if it recorded in the proper codecs like its bigger sibling, the C300 Mark II. We’ll do our best to get our hands on the C200 and shoot with it as soon as possible for a proper review, so stay tuned until later this week to see some footage from this new camera.

How do you think the Canon C200 stacks up agains the recently-announced Panasonic EVA1? Let us know in the comments below!