Canon EOS C300 to Arrive in Japanese Stores on Jan 31, PL Version in March

Canon Japan has recently announced that the Canon EOS C300 cinema camera, which was unveiled in November last year, will reach Japanese stores by January 31st sporting a yet undisclosed price tag.

Designed by Canon to come as an alternative to the RED cameras used by many in Hollywood, the EOS 300 draws its power from a Super 35mm CMOS sensor capable of supporting up to 4K resolutions.

The sensor reads Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) video signals for each of the three RGB primary colors, a feature that Canon promises will decrease the incidence of moiré while realizing high resolution with 1,000 horizontal TV lines.

Furthermore, the C300 sensor was also built in order to reduce rolling shutter skew, while its association with a DIGIC DV III image processor facilitates high-precision gamma processing and smooth gradation expression.

In addition to MPEG-2 Full HD compression, the processor also supports 4:2:2 color sampling and can sustain video bitrates up to 50Mbps.

All the content recorded can be stored on a pair of CF card slots, but an HD-SDI output is also available for storing the video captured on an external device.

Canon will make the C300 available in two versions, one with an EF lens mount for compatibility with Canon's current EF lenses for EOS SLRs and EF Cinema lenses, while the other one will use the PL lens mount. 

Only the former model will become available at the end of the month, while the PL version is scheduled to make its appearance in March this year, according to engadget.

In the US, the EOS C300 was listed for pre-order by BH Photo Video at $15,999.00 (12,537 EUR), but shipments will most probably begin only after the camera is released in Japan.

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