Why has Canon omitted 24p 4K recording in their new cameras such as the EOS M6 Mark II, EOS 90D and EOS RP?
- Thread starter Canon Rumors Guy
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The 90D and M62 are fine still cameras with good amateur video capabilities. I'm sure they will sell well. Or as well as they can in this shrinking market. But the lack of 24p and the upscaled video* are going to send a number of buyers to other cameras. Some of those people will go ahead and buy a 5D4 or an R. Others will simply buy from another brand. Canon marketing apparently thinks the risk is worth it, that up sells to Canon equipment will out weigh losses to the competition. But I have my doubts.
The commenters here who are defending Canon's decision keep saying...directly or through sarcasm...that the target market does not need 24p. But that's an overly simplistic view of potential buyers. As but one example: if the 90D had oversampled 4k and 24p it would be my cinema/backup camera, compatible with all of my EF glass and offering extended reach and frame rate in wildlife and sports scenarios. I'm not the expected 'target market' yet I could still be a potential sale. But with hobbled video it becomes a no sale. I've been waiting a while for Canon to offer a hybrid to fill that empty spot in my bag. It looks like that spot will go to an X-T3.
There are many other examples. The vlogger who wants excellent 4k 24p. The film student on a budget who wants the same. The serious amateur or pro who wants to mix cameras to the same timeline. The guy buying a B camera to his "real" cinema camera. That's real money Canon is throwing away.
Now I'm not "abandoning Canon" nor do I think they are DOOMED. I've said repeatedly that I think 5Ds IQ is phenomenal, and I have nothing but glowing words to say about my L lenses. Add to that great AF, great IS, gorgeous color science, and best in field ergonomics. (And weather sealing. Let's not forget weather sealing cough Sony.) My stills kit overhaul was intended to satisfy me for years, and I could happily shoot that equipment for the next decade.
But some people will look at their budgets and their existing gear and decide "...if brand X can do everything I want and Canon won't even give me simple features, why not jump?" Those can be quite expensive losses to Canon. We keep talking about their marketshare but their profitability suggests they're shoring up marketshare through entry level sales. They also need prosumer and pro users who keep buying upper tier bodies and lenses over the long haul. That includes social media influencers: vloggers that some deride as 'the next Spielberg' or just some 'YouTube talking head.' Make fun of them all you want, but they drive sales. The last thing you want is some YouTuber making fun of your 90D with an animated 'cripple hammer' swinging around the screen. No, you want guys like JP and Tony to be screaming "OMG I can't believe Canon did it YOU WANT THIS CAMERA!"
As for up selling to the R: that strategy might have worked on me if the R was FF oversampled 4k. Or at least a relatively mild 6k crop out of the sensor to 4k. But with its severe crop it feels like yet another compromise, like Canon is trying to up sell me again. Trouble is, for stills/cinema hybrid they don't have anything left to up sell me to. But the competition does. I would have really, really loved to maintain a Canon only kit for the lens compatibility and ergonomics. But Canon seems bent on preventing me from doing that.
* The rumor here is likely correct. For full width readout Canon is either oversampling, binning, or line skipping. If they were oversampling then full width 4k would be better than crop. Hell, they might not even include the crop mode. Someone probably grabbed a frame from a sample video and figured out the actual recording resolution. This is worrying because it suggests that even with a new sensor, Canon still can't do oversampled 4k. Hybrid stills/video is only going to become more important as time moves on. They need to solve this.
The commenters here who are defending Canon's decision keep saying...directly or through sarcasm...that the target market does not need 24p. But that's an overly simplistic view of potential buyers. As but one example: if the 90D had oversampled 4k and 24p it would be my cinema/backup camera, compatible with all of my EF glass and offering extended reach and frame rate in wildlife and sports scenarios. I'm not the expected 'target market' yet I could still be a potential sale. But with hobbled video it becomes a no sale. I've been waiting a while for Canon to offer a hybrid to fill that empty spot in my bag. It looks like that spot will go to an X-T3.
There are many other examples. The vlogger who wants excellent 4k 24p. The film student on a budget who wants the same. The serious amateur or pro who wants to mix cameras to the same timeline. The guy buying a B camera to his "real" cinema camera. That's real money Canon is throwing away.
Now I'm not "abandoning Canon" nor do I think they are DOOMED. I've said repeatedly that I think 5Ds IQ is phenomenal, and I have nothing but glowing words to say about my L lenses. Add to that great AF, great IS, gorgeous color science, and best in field ergonomics. (And weather sealing. Let's not forget weather sealing cough Sony.) My stills kit overhaul was intended to satisfy me for years, and I could happily shoot that equipment for the next decade.
But some people will look at their budgets and their existing gear and decide "...if brand X can do everything I want and Canon won't even give me simple features, why not jump?" Those can be quite expensive losses to Canon. We keep talking about their marketshare but their profitability suggests they're shoring up marketshare through entry level sales. They also need prosumer and pro users who keep buying upper tier bodies and lenses over the long haul. That includes social media influencers: vloggers that some deride as 'the next Spielberg' or just some 'YouTube talking head.' Make fun of them all you want, but they drive sales. The last thing you want is some YouTuber making fun of your 90D with an animated 'cripple hammer' swinging around the screen. No, you want guys like JP and Tony to be screaming "OMG I can't believe Canon did it YOU WANT THIS CAMERA!"
As for up selling to the R: that strategy might have worked on me if the R was FF oversampled 4k. Or at least a relatively mild 6k crop out of the sensor to 4k. But with its severe crop it feels like yet another compromise, like Canon is trying to up sell me again. Trouble is, for stills/cinema hybrid they don't have anything left to up sell me to. But the competition does. I would have really, really loved to maintain a Canon only kit for the lens compatibility and ergonomics. But Canon seems bent on preventing me from doing that.
* The rumor here is likely correct. For full width readout Canon is either oversampling, binning, or line skipping. If they were oversampling then full width 4k would be better than crop. Hell, they might not even include the crop mode. Someone probably grabbed a frame from a sample video and figured out the actual recording resolution. This is worrying because it suggests that even with a new sensor, Canon still can't do oversampled 4k. Hybrid stills/video is only going to become more important as time moves on. They need to solve this.
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Well, I'm not worked up about it because I gave up on Canon producing stills/video hybrid bodies with great quality video long ago.
However (and although all this talk about licensing fees and cost of 24p is all very interesting), common sense tells us this is just another way Canon will continue to segment their stills bodies, leaving 24p to the higher end models since they would like people who are into film and video to spend more money to purchase these.
Nothing wrong with a company trying their hardest to make money for shareholders by differentiating their product lines, but this is why working, low-budget filmmakers who purchase stills bodies are all using Sony models now like the A7sII (soon to be A7sIII) and A7III, A7R, etc. Panasonic is also huge but I see those being used less on set. It's clear Canon is content to sell lenses to this crowd (many of whom still adapt) and has no interest in fueling it with serious video in their lower-end stills cams. I'm plenty happy with my Fuji X-T3 and still have my Canon lenses for more serious work when I need to rent a RED.
By the way, plenty of Canon stills cameras were used as B cameras and sometimes main cameras on award-winning documentaries and other productions, but I think this will be less and less as time goes on. No, Canon's not doomed, but they're certainly not following their own motto "Imagine the Impossible" with regards the video features on their stills bodies. It's too bad, because without 24p, younger people starting out with Canon for stills won't discover the magic of that frame rate, which is the basis for most of the history of cinema. And filmmakers just starting out will certainly continue to gravitate to Sony (or other) bodies and get into other camera ecosystems.
So, overall, not the smartest move by Canon except for the money and product segmentation which is a safe, yet predictable and uninspiring choice. This certainly won't win them any new friends or build a new halo around their brand.
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No, that is what he is actually intending to say. During the debayering process, you lose about 75% of the detail in the maximum resolution so a 3840p resolution drops to about 2.8k of resolving detail. Knowing Canon, they probably resorted to line skipping rather than pixel binning which is why he made the pixel binning comment. In any case, nothing Andrew Reid writes should be taken seriously as information.
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Don’t be so full of yourself. His omnipresence on this board finds ALL who criticize Canon or disagree with him. No one is safe.
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I must have missed the spec where the M6II can shoot 4K60P.
Good point! If I upgraded my M6 I would have been sorely disappointed when I went to shoot in 60p in 4k!
I much prefer to shoot in 60fps over all other frame rates.According to the spec sheet, they removed 24p even from regular HD 1920 x 1080. That's what I found so strange... they literally removed something that was already there. Even though I didn't use it, I think it was a bad idea to remove it.
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Not the only one on the web. If Canon would go bankrupt or stop their camera business, those guys would lose all of their meaning in life. The only way out of this psychic black hole would be to hold such a Mamiya pistol camera at their own heads and pull the trigger.
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Good point! If I upgraded my M6 I would have been sorely disappointed when I went to shoot in 60p in 4k!
According to the spec sheet, they removed 24p even from regular HD 1920 x 1080. That's what I found so strange... they literally removed something that was already there. Even though I didn't use it, I think it was a bad idea to remove it.
My bad. Sorry I didn't realize it was 1080P as well. Thanks for the tip though. I think I will experiment with 60p at 1/60th at bit more. 60p 120 can look a bit overbaked.
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I’m all for criticism of Canon or disagreement with me that’s based on facts and logic. I’ve delivered some criticism of Canon myself, occasionally here, but mostly where it can actually make a difference, i.e. directly to Canon. When people provide facts showing I’m wrong, I acknowledge it and appreciate learning something. When people bring claims they pull out of their ass, I will try to set the record straight.
For example, Mr. Humper claimed Canon’s Cinema EOS sales are dropping off a cliff. I asked for his source of that information, since I’ve never seen Canon publicize sales data at that granular a level. He has not answered. Big shock.
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All good, I'm glad you mentioned about the 60p on the Mark II.
Yeah I love the look of 60fps at 1/60th on my M6 . It's much better than anything over 1/100th+ second. So much so that it was worth me shelling out a few bucks for an ND filter to make sure I could shoot at 1/60th even in the brightest sunlight.
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Fuji knows how to 4K DPAF?
Fuji's video AF is good in its own right, and their footage is spectacular. You could literally do a Hollywood big budget movie on X-T3's.
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No disrepect to the X-T3 which is a great camera but there is something pretty amazing about the way DPAF pulls a focus transition between two subjects that I can't get with Fuji AF. Fuji's manual focus tools are much better than Canon's so I can usually get something using MF but it's not quite the same. Tracking a subject with AF is easier with the Fuji's in my experience.
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