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Jared Polin, froknowsphoto.com and this is a real world review of the Cannon XC10.
So here it is, this is the Cannon XC10.
Now what you have to remember is that this is a first generation model.
It's the first time they've come up with a camera just like this and they're calling
it a C-Type camera.
What does that mean?
Well, you have your A camera as your main camera, your B camera is for your B Roll and
C, well, it's one of those that you just have just in case to get some extra footage.
Now what we're going to do with this real world review is run you through a bunch of
different scenarios where we used this particular camera.
We've been using it for the past couple of months to do a lot of different real-world
reviews.
We've done things from New York City to Philadelphia at the Liberty Bell to flying in airplanes
to all over the country.
And now it's time to show you some of that footage, tell you the specs, what we think
about it so that you can determine if this is a camera for you.
So let's start with the outside of the camera, how does it feel in the hands, the ergonomics
and really where have we been using it?
Honestly, it's small, it's only 2 pounds.
That means you can mount it on a drone as a camera to fly because it's pretty darn light.
Now it feels pretty good in the hands for a first generation camera that they've made
but let me remind you of something, they have the Canon C100 Mark II, the C300 Mark II.
And something like this you can think of as the baby brother to those more expensive cameras.
Because right now this is a $2000 camera.
It came out at 2,500 bucks but it feels really nice in the hands.
And the fact that it's lightweight and easy to carry around means that you don't have
to carry around the DSLR all the time especially for times when we're doing run and gun type
of videos or we had something like the Cannon Expo, the Cannon World Expo because this is
just easier to carry around.
It's easier if you're a shooter who has to carry five, six, seven, ten more pounds on
your shoulder all day.
Something like this is going to give the quality of what you want but it also it's easy on
the hands.
The XC10 has a three-inch touch screen which is great for getting around the menu settings.
But it also comes with a viewfinder that you can put over the touch screen which allows
you to shoot it more like it's a DSLR or like a camera.
But one of the things that happens when you put that on the touch screen is you lose all
touch screen functionality which is obvious because you can't touch it any longer with
the viewfinder there.
But another cool thing about the screen is that it tilts.
You can pull it out, you can turn it down, you can turn it up and same thing with being
able to turn the camera all around, it's great for shooting at different levels.
Whether it's high or low or everywhere in between.
So one of the things that I have a little bit of issue with in this first generation
that I'd like to see them fix in a second, is being able to quickly get the viewfinder
off the camera.
AKA, be able to flip it up.
Right now it takes two hands to make that happen.
Let's take a look at the buttons around the camera.
Now I would like to see a few more dedicated buttons on the outside that are mappable to
things that we would find deeper in the menu system.
Because it’s kind of difficult to get into the menu system when you're out there shooting
and it would be much easier to have dedicated buttons.
But the dedicated buttons that you have you have three of them that you can map.
Now we map them to push focus.
Another one of them, up top is this jog dial which we rode the ISO with.
Now you can control just about anything you want with it but we liked using it for ISO.
You also have this red button on the front which is your record button, red, record and
you can switch from still shooting into video shooting but I don't really recommend shooting
stills with this camera.
That's not what it's for.
If you want to shoot stills grab a different camera for yourself to use but really this
is meant for video.
You also have a dedicated hot shoe that if you were taking stills and wanted to pop a
flash, you could use that.
You can also put a receiver or you could put lights in there.
Whatever you want to have that would work.
What you also have is the same battery that you will find in most Canon DSLRs and you
should get anywhere between an hour to two hours.
Of course it depends on the use that you're using it but the batteries are inexpensive
you already probably have a lot of them so it's nice that it uses the same battery.
So diving a little more into the specs, you have a one inch sensor in this camera.
Now that's a little smaller than what you will find in some other cameras but it gives
you a nice ISO range.
You have 100 to 20,000 ISO but if you're used to changing the game, you have the options
of doing that as well.
But what you want to remember is that because it's a smaller sensor, you may not want to
push the ISO too far.
I think you start to get into a certain pushing it too far range around 3200 – 6400.
You just want to watch where you're at depending on the amount of light that you have.
You also have 12 stops of dynamic range which is pretty nice to have but one thing you want
to remember is if you're shooting in C log, the lowest ISO that you can use is 500.
Now I ran into an issue when I was flying in an airplane and shooting outside.
I was like, “Why can't I shoot lower than 500 ISO.
I had to put on the ND filter and I was trying to figure it all out and then I realized that
C log will only let you go as low as 500 ISO.
So let's take a look at this lens.
Now this is a Cannon 4K video lens and its equivalent is 24-240.
When you're shooting in still mode or in video, it's 27 to 273.
Now it's also a 2.8 - 5.6 so it’s variable aperture.
If you want to blow out the background, you're going to have to make sure you zoom all the
way out step a little further back and whatever subject you're shooting have them far away
from their background.
So being that this is a fixed lens on this camera, you can't switch lenses like you can
with your DSLR.
You will also find that it's much easier with a DSLR to blow out the background but I just
told you how easy it is to still get great backgrounds with this camera.
But one of the things that I would like to see in the future is not this style of zoom
which is very similar to what you would find on a DSLR when you're zooming a lens.
It would be great to have a powered zoom that you can control at different steps to make
it either go slower or faster.
But it's much easier to do than trying to rotate your thumb or whatever you want to
do to make it zoom like this.
So when using this lens, we found that we stayed out around 5.6 while we were shooting.
Now we were shooting in manual most of the time because as you zoom in and out, you don't
want to have to worry about changing the exposure.
But you could do auto, that means the camera is going to take care of everything for you
but we like to leave it in manual and ride the other settings ourselves which was pretty
easy to do.
Now, if you're not going to take my advice and you're going to shoot stills with this
camera, you're going to get 12 megapixel stills but only in JPEG.
But if you do do that and you want to transfer them via Wi-Fi, that is built into this camera.
Let's take a look at the video specs for this camcorder.
Now it shoots 4K but it does it in ultra HD, not cinema 4K.
It does up to 30 frames a second in 4K, you can do 60 in 1080 and at 720, you get 120
frames a second.
Video editors are going to love the data rate in this camera.
You have 305 megabits per second in 4K and you have 50 in 1080.
What that means is you have more information to play with in post that could be better
color grading.
It's just great to have more information because the more information you have, the better
you can make your final product.
So how do you save the files in this camera?
Well, you have two slots, you have an SD slot and a CFast 2.0 slot.
So it's nice that you have two different choices to have, SDs are pretty good, inexpensive
and CFast are super fast.
Speaking of recording, you can only record 4K to the CFast slot which means you need
to make sure that you have CFast 2.0 cards.
But if all you're shooting is 1080, you just need a pretty good SD card.
Now let's look at the quality of the 4K footage.
You get 8-bit 4:2:2 internally but if you'd like to record externally you can get 10 bit
to something like an Atomos.
Now, keep in mind that most DSLRs, especially the consumer ones, only record in 4:2:0.
Here's a cool feature for the photojournalists that are out there doing video but would like
to get stills, you can pull an eight megapixel still right from the 4K footage.
Now what's even cooler is because it has Wi-Fi built in, you could transmit right from your
camera to your phone to get it out to whatever wire service you would like.
A nice little feature to have.
One of the most important things that you will find in a run and gun camera is how is
the image stabilization?
Now there's two types of it in this camera, you have your optical, you also have your
digital and they can work at the same time.
We found that it worked extremely well on the shoots that we were in.
You could hold it, handhold it just like this and get really solid and stable video.
So this camera has features that you're not going to find in your typical DSLR.
You have your zebra lines, your focus peaking, and even a two-time zoom in to check your
focus right in the camera.
It has that and much more.
How's the audio in this camera?
Well, it's pretty good for a built-in system.
You have a stereo mic up top but what's really cool is you have a bunch of different presets
that you could choose whether you're shooting an interview or you're doing some kind of
speech or you're at a concert, you can select the different settings of presets.
So now it has a three-and-a-half millimeter audio jack so you can plug in external microphones.
It also has a headphone jack so you can monitor your audio but what it doesn't have is an
XLR input like the bigger brothers to this camera.
So other pro-audio features that you have are compressors, low-cut filters and limiters.
Speaking of audio, let's hear what this camera captured.
It makes you see the world differently and so when I go into a situation, I’d like
to have the wide angles, the mediums, the tights of things that I shot and how the camera
worked out for the situations that we were in.
Now you take a modified printer like the one you see over here and then it lays down layer
upon layer of UV cured ink.
With that end of Cannon Expo 2015, we're going to have to wait another five years to see
another thing like this.
I have to ­
Male Speaker 1: Well, I’ve been in Philadelphia for probably about 15 straight years and the
last time that I played this song in Philly was probably about 10 years ago.
Male Speaker 2: Even product on the field, in the stands and behind the scenes.
Here’s a quick overview of what you're going to see today.
Jared Polin: You have a few different picture profiles to choose from.
You have your EO Standard, CLog and the Wide Dynamic Range for if you want to shoot flatter
and have more control over your files.
So how did we feel about the auto focus in this camera?
Now it works extremely well though it is a little slow on the uptake but when it hits,
it hits really hard.
So it has face detection with tracking but remember if there's no face in the frame,
it's not going to focus on anything.
Now you also have the ability to do it manually but it's very slow focusing and very hard
to do it in manual but that's why we love the auto focus.
A little slow but when it hits, it’s really tech sharp.
So for those of you used to shooting with Canon DSLRs, you know that you're limited
to 2959 with your recording.
Well being that this is a camcorder, you have unlimited time as long as you have enough
space on your card and enough battery power to keep the juice flowing.
One of the things you'll notice with this camera is that it has a built-in exhaust vent.
We had no problems with overheating at any points which you may find with DSLRs or certain
mirrorless cameras.
So an exhaust vent being built in is really great for those continuous recording videos.
Another nice feature built into this camera is a 3-stop ND filter.
Now if you're shooting in bright daylight especially in CLog where your ISO can only
go to 500 ISO or higher, you're going to want to pick up a 58 millimeter variable ND filter.
It's great to get those extra stops, the three built-in are good but you're going to want
a little more so put one of those ND filters in the bag.
So that about rounds up the real world review of the Cannon XC10.
Now for a first generation go at a new camera, I think Cannon did a fantastic job.
There's not a lot of major issues that we found here.
There's a lot of great functions that can get built upon in the second generation and
third generations of this camera.
So who's it for?
If you're a content creator who's running and gunning and doesn't want to carry something
much heavier around this is a great option to have.
Now at $2,000, you have a bunch of different choices out there into the market but you
can decide for yourself whether this is what you want to carry around.
We love having it for the shoots that we take them on because it's light, it's easy to carry,
it’s pretty affordable at $2,000 for what we're doing.
But we love the quality that we're getting and we can recommend this if it's something
that you're looking for.
So that is where we're going to leave it, that is a real world review of the Cannon
XC10 4K camcorder.
Jared Polin, froknowsphoto.com, see you.
So I hope you enjoyed that real world review of the Cannon XC10.
If you'd like to see the 4K footage, you can click on the screen right now to get some
4K sample footage that we captured with this camera.
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