Dear Canon... Please Give Us These 5 Things
Dear Canon,
I'm a filmmaker and a photographer that has built my business using tens of thousands of dollars worth of Canon cameras, lenses, and accessories. I've been using your gear for almost a decade now, I’m a paying Canon Professional Services platinum member, and my video reviews of your cameras have been watched over a million times here on YouTube. All that to say, I’m heavily invested into Canon and the future of what you release next to help creatives like me out. So here are 5 things I want you, Canon, to do for us, your customers, in 2020 and beyond into the next decade.
1. Don't leave video shooters behind with your new RF lens technology.
As primarily a video shooter, I’m not going to invest in RF lenses until you either release a cinema style camera with an RF mount (like RED is doing with the Komodo) or you figure out a way for me to adapt them to my current C200 or C100 camera bodies. Lenses are incredibly expensive investments, especially your new RF lenses. The “holy trinity” of RF lenses all start at over $2,000 US each. Buying lenses that only work with some of my equipment doesn’t make financial sense for me, even if they are sharper, faster, or smaller. Please make an RF cinema camera body or create a way for me to adapt the new RF lenses to an EF body.
2. Give us full-frame 4K
I really do appreciate that your 4K options in cameras like the EOS R are pixel for pixel readouts which leads to a really high bit-rate recordings without much moire. But sometimes, downscaling the full sensor read-out is really important for getting a wider angle shot you need. Let's take vlogging as an example. To get a wide enough angle of view to vlog with a 16mm equivalent in cropped 4K mode, even the new 15-35mm RF lens becomes about a 25mm. So you have 3 choices:
- Film more cropped in with a shallow depth of field.
- Film with an EF-S lens like the 10-18mm with a minimum aperture of f/4.5.
- Or film in 1080p.
Please give us the option for full-frame, full sensor 4K (and eventually 6K) when filming on hybrid & stills cameras.
3. Give us a 10-bit 4:2:2 C200 codec
You go backwards all the time to create updated firmware to make autofocus work better or make a camera work with a new lens that was just released.
There is no good reason why there isn’t a 10-bit 4:2:2 codec in the C200. Everyone has been asking for it for the past 3 years. The internals can process Canon Raw Light at up to 14-bit. The only argument I’ve ever heard is that you didn’t want to cannibalize sales of the C300 Mark II. A camera that had already been out for over 2 years and anyone that really wanted to get would have by then. It's not just about needing files to go to broadcast, its about having a higher quality codec in a $7,500 camera than is in your $1,000 cameras without having to take the time to transcode raw footage or use CFast 2.0 cards. There are a lot of people still using C200’s to film and there’s still time to make this right. You gave us XF-AVC, you can do this. Please give us a firmware update that includes 10-bit 4:2:2 for the C200. (Heck, charge us for it if you want. I don’t even care at this point.)
4. Fix your app.
I'm sorry, but the Canon Camera Connect app is SUPER buggy. Every time I try to use it with my EOS R it either won’t connect, disconnects randomly, or fails during a transfer. Yes, I'm on the latest firmware on my camera. Yes, I have the latest phone. Yes, I have updated the app to the newest version. Other camera manufacturers like Sony have great phone apps. Please hire some software developers and get this right. It really adds to the functionality of the camera to have an app that works well.
5. Put 24 frames per second in every resolution, in every camera
I think you've learned this lesson already from going back to add 24 frames per second to the EOS RP, 90D, and G7X Mark III, but just to reiterate… People want to be able to film in 24 fps. Please just put it in all cameras by default, when you release them.
Summary
I know it might sound like I’m being hard on you Canon, you’ve been a great partner all these years. Your dual pixel autofocus, gear reliability, and fantastic service support have kept me from switching to Sony or another brand these last few years as you’ve taken your time to catch up on features and switching to creating mirrorless cameras, but I hope this feedback and tough love encourages you to keep making us wildly amazing equipment to capture the world and share our stories.
Cheers,
Caleb Wojcik