Canon’s camera division seems to have been very busy recently. Besides the Rebel T4i which I examined in my last post, they have also released three other new cameras, which are all very different from one another.
The C100 is the newest member of the Cinema EOS line, and is a stripped down version of the C300 for half the price. It records 24Mb AVCHD instead of 50Mb MPEG2, and has no slow motion options. It has HDMI instead of SDI output, and is marketed as being 15% smaller and lighter than its big brother. It looks like they have done a pretty good job of creating a stripped down C300 for those smaller operators who want that level of image quality without paying for all of the extra features that they will never use.
The Canon 6D is their newest model of DSLR to have a Full-Frame CMOS sensor, similar to the 5D line, but with fewer features at a lower price point. It doesn’t have the top of the line auto-focus system, and has fewer buttons and lower frame rates, in a noticeably smaller body. On the other hand, it does have both Wi-Fi and GPS integrated, which I would anticipate seeing in other new cameras as well. As with any full frame camera, it only works with EF lenses, and not the smaller EF-S lenses that are optimized for APS-C sensors.
Canon also created a new derivation of its EF lens interface, the EOS EF-M Mount, for their first mirror-less interchangeable lens camera, the EOS-M. These products are presumably to compete with Panasonic and Olympus’s Micro 4/3rds, Nikon’s CX line, and Sony’s Alpha NEX line of digital cameras. The technical specifications for the EOS-M are very similar to the Rebel T4i, with the same sized sensor recording 18MP stills or 1080p video, in a much smaller form factor. It also offers continuous focus in video mode, and STM silent lenses. It accepts EOS EF-M lens, which have a much shorted focal length, or can be adapted to use any other EF or EF-S mount lens. Presumably the adapter extends the focal length to account for the depth usually taken by the mirror, allowing users to continue to use their existing Canon lenses with their new toy.
