Tuesday
Jul092013
Canon 70D
Tuesday, July 9, 2013 at 12:18PM 
Canon has announced the Canon 70D, availble for pre-order at Amazon and B&H for $1,199.
On one hand, this camera, with its flip-out LCD, new sensor technology that allows better live-view autofocus, and built-in WiFi, seems to be the heir apparent to the APSC HDSLR throne.
On the other hand, it’s hard not to feel that Canon is updating their DSLR line as slowly as they feel they can get away with.
I like what Mike and Jason had to say on the RC podcast #132—essentially, one has to hope that we’re nearing the end of hoping for accidental improvements to the video capabilities of low-cost stills cameras.
The Canon 70D looks to be the best camera you can buy for DSLR video, and yet it’s impossible to get to excited about it.
Reader Comments (6)
Indeed. And what happened to the 7D replacement? Talk about slow. The 60D was released well after the 7D and gets updated before.
I wouldn't even be sure it is "the best camera you can buy for DSLR video". Even if we're talking "for the price", if it wants that title, it will have to beat the Nikon D5200/D7100. Are we even sure yet that this one is free of aliasing/moire (the 6D also had a new sensor) and that HDMI-out is clean and useful?
Looking at their new cameras from the last couple of years, Canon seems to be really mad that DSLR video shooters even exist.
Its so easy to get cynical and feel beaten down by Canon's lack of innovation but seriously do they even care about the 10% of us who use these cams for video and not stills?
Also while I'd love to move away from Canon (I have a 7D and 650D/T4i) I have a ton of glass and as great as the GH3 looks. I think the real next step up would be a C100 with a Ninja 2 Box for when I need to do Green screen.
Either way I'm going to be getting this camera, the focusing alone looks great and to have as a B-Cam (sorry 7D I'm going to have to say good bye) it looks passable. Not great but hey.
always a lot more than happy when you listen to the show :-)
With everything moving to 4K so fast these DSLR's, no matter how good, are going to soon be relegated to hobbyists and wedding photographers. Even my GoPro shoots at higher frame rates and higher resolutions than this new offering.
On the other hand, the auto focus and the color rendition from this new sensor/processor combination looks amazing. It looks like the 60D I'm using as my backup is headed for e-bay. (yes, I'm admitting I'm a hobbyist, but only when I'm not on a set with 'real' gear.
Today when everything is 100xtimes compressed for youtube "outstanding " quality, resolution means nothing for end user. Exactly the opposite, new BR player, new cables, new monitors..for what..in the end everything is so compressed to fit the ultra high 8Gb/s internet bandwidth.
The 4k resolution will help to "normalize" pixel density on 2m+ led tvs where a HD movie still looks crap because of high diagonal and will be also very good for keying. So in the end end 90% off people will still use the 320/480settings on youtube.
I do motion graphics to in hd for many years and in the end the client uploads them on youtube where all my nice 32bit graded shots and graphics look like an amateurs work.
All this race for more pixels is like MP marketing crap, noise, low light sensitivity, lenses, maters more then any amount of pixels they put on them and if u are a bad cameraman or art director not even 10k pixels helps u. Not to mention the lost of "cinematic" feeling the movies should create. I still prefer the 720p over full hd for movies. To much resolution means to many distractions for the eye on a shot so is easy to lose focus on main character and study the background or don't know what dark corner where u see some weird shadows, and the blurry out of focus "wedding style" background does not help either. All this increase in detail is not good for everything. A documentary with 4k would be outstanding but movies risk to lose their magic. Soon we will reach a point where would we put generated compression artifacts over Xk resolution images to mask all prosthetic and cg backgrounds(for cg is already done this ). I had so high expectations from The Hobit but cg was so "fake" looking, and many shots u could see are indor shots, because of high resolution u could even notice the plates if u had some ideea of compositting. Not to mention a the wrong dof on many shots.