Canon Launches the 1200D EOS Camera and the Powershot D30 Adventure Cam

Canon today announced four new camera’s to their range – two of which are interesting to filmmakers. The Canon EOS 1200D – an entry level DSLR and the Powershot D30 – Canon’s rival to GoPro.

 

We’ll look at the EOS camera first.

 

 

EOS 1200D

This entry level DSLR is pretty standard as things go. Designed more for photography than filmmaking, the cam films in HD 1080p and uses an 18.0MP APS-C CMOS sensor and Canon’s DIGIC 4 processor. It has Canons 9-point AF system, incorporates Canon’s 5 artistic styles (miniature, fisheye, toy camera, etc – people sure do love their instagram filters) and sports a 3″ 460k-dot resolution LCD back screen. As we said, a pretty standard affair.

Of more interest is the new ring flash launching with the camera the Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX II.

MR-14EXII Flash Ring

MR-14EXII Flash Ring

This little baby adds fully automatic E-TTL II flash metering to the full EOS range. It has independently variable dual flash tubes, wireless triggering, and new high-brightness white LEDs. The flash can also be used as a wireless optical master unit to operate and trigger EX-series Speedlites remotely, has a guide number of 14 (at ISO 100/21°) and a maxiumum recycle time of 5.5 seconds.

The EOS 1200D will be available in retail stores across Australia ( and presumably the rest of the world) from March and the MR-14EXII from April. Prices will be set at the dealers’ discretion.

The next camera in the Canon announcements is the…

Powershot D30

Essentially, this is Canon’s rival to the well loved GoPro Hero 3. The ‘littlest’ adventure cam (ED – ok the littlest was added by me) has 12.1MP CMOS sensor, a 28mm wide-angle, 5x zoom Canon lens and has a gps for geotagging. Best of all is it’s capable of shooting underwater action at depths as low as 25mtrs without housing (beating Nikon’s Coolpix AW120 by 7mtrs). The cam can also be frozen (ED – who does that?) up to -10 °C, is dustproof and shockproof for drops of up to 2.0m (so don’t go dropping it whilst parachuting). The D30 has a dedicated ‘Record Movie’ button, however, there’s still no word on whether it shoots in HD or not and at what framerates are available.

Canon are marketing this cam as “ideal for daring adrenaline seekers, for a snow trek, rock-climbing, or underwater explorations. With a durable body that’s both slim and lightweight, you can throw the PowerShot D30 into a rucksack full of gear with confidence” big words that we’ll have to wait until reports start surfacing on whether it can deliver. However, according to a recent CNET review the D30 still has some way to go before being a true contemporary of the Hero 3. The new camera is really only a durability update of the D20 – which means “you’ll be getting the same slow 5x f3.9-4.8 28-140mm lens and a 12-megapixel BSI CMOS sensor and two-generations-old Digic 4 image processor. From a shooting-features standpoint, that’s going to put this camera well behind the competition”.

The D30 will be available from April on at a cost of $329.99 USD – no word yet on what it will cost Australian buyers.
 
Canon also announced another two new point & shoot compacts at the same time. They are the PowerShot SX700 HS and the PowerShot G1X Mark II.

For More Info on the EOS 1200 and the Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX II, check: www.canon.com.au/IMR-EOS-1200D
For the D30, check: www.canon.com.au/PowershotD30

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