This article was originally published on www.display-central.com.
Adorama recently presented an event featuring Larry Thorpe and Canon cinema cameras in the Union Square Ballroom in New York. Adorama is a sales and rental company that focuses on digital imaging, especially high-end digital imaging including both sales and rental of Canon cameras and lenses. Larry Thorpe is a Senior Fellow of the Professional Engineering & Solutions Division of Canon USA, Inc. and has spent over 20 years leading the industry in HDTV development. The well-attended event seemed to have attracted every HD and cinema acquisition geek in New York.
Thorpe discussed four Canon cameras, all introduced in the last year or so, targeted at cinema and HDTV applications. They are the EOS C500, EOS C300, EOS C100 and the EOS 1DC. The image shows what part of the acquisition market these cameras are targeted at. Canon says the low-budget (green) range have production budgets in the $10K – $250K range, mainstream (red) have budgets in the $100K – $2M range, high-end (orange) have budgets in the $2M – $50M range and the very high end (yellow) have budgets in the $50M – $250M range (and up). The EOS C500 and EOS 1DC can both do 4K acquisition while the EOS C300 and EOS C100 are limited to HD/2K acquisition. For example, the C500 will record 4K (4096 x 2160) or UHD (3840 x 2160) at 4:4:4, 10 bit, 60Hz progressive, but make sure you have lots of storage available. Full specifications for all of these cameras are available on the Canon Website.
When asked, Thorpe said that the C300 has already been used in production of 3D content, using a mirrored 3D rig. He added that while he isn’t aware of any 3D production with the other three cameras, they have the capability of being used for 3D.
4K is a hot topic in digital cinema right now and this isn’t the first time I have written about it. Previous 4K articles include ones on 4K Professional Monitors, the public demonstration of live UHD-TV at the Olympics and 4K acquisition, plus Insight Media’s Ken Werner wrote a DD on UHD-TV for the consumer. In addition, there have been numerous additional articles on 4K/UHD-TV for our Large Display Report subscribers.
One of the issues with 4K is the very limited distribution channels. There are cinemas equipped with Sony SXRD projectors, all of which are 4K, and the newer 4K DLP projectors. Some movies have even been distributed in 4K format to take advantage of this cinema resolution but even where 4K projectors are available, most movies are show in 2K format. At present, the main need for 4K is to produce better 2K and 1080p content through the elimination of artifacts than can be present if these images are acquired at 2K or 1080p resolution. This doesn’t mean that 4K distribution is impossible, or even incompatible with existing distribution infrastructure, because it has been done. On October 20th, 2012, a J-League baseball game between the Vegalta Sendai and the Urawa Red Diamonds was transmitted live in 4K from Yurtec Stadium Sendai to Odaiba Cinema Mediage in Tokyo.
After the main presentation, Thorpe showed a short movie that had been captured on the C500 at 4K resolution. Unfortunately, the projector used for the presentation was the Canon WUX5000, an LCoS projector with WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolution. The movie looked good, of course, but it wasn’t 4K. On the other hand, much of the current justification for 4K acquisition was it eliminated artifacts from 2K or 1080p presentations. I certainly saw no spatial artifacts in this clear and sharp 1080p presentation.
As an aside, Canon first decided to enter the large format digital cinema camera business in 2009 after the 2008 introduction of the Canon EOS 5D camera, the current version of which is the EOS 5D Mark III. While that camera was not intended as a cinema camera, it was used that way anyway, and could produce excellent 1080p/2K video. Canon introduced their first dedicated HDTV/cinema camera about year ago. And this year, they won an Emmy award for “Improvements to Large Format CMOS Imagers for use in High Definition Broadcast Video Cameras.” Good job, Canon!
Canon isn’t the only company introducing new large format 4K cameras for the cinema. Sony recently introduced upgrades to its flagship F65 4K camera and introduced new F55 and F5 cameras, but that’s a different story you can read on Display Central or in the upcoming issue of Large Display Report. –Matthew Brennesholtz.
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