Canon Focuses On Station Camcorder Market

With three major manufacturers of ENG camcorders — Sony, Panasonic and JVC — now seeking buyers among the 750 or so TV stations that produce news, the market seems crowded, perhaps overcrowded. But that is not discouraging Canon, best known in broadcasting for its high-quality lenses, from trying to squeeze in and grab a piece of the business.

At the NAB Show last month, Canon pitched a trio of low-cost camcorders with solid-state media and ranging in price from $8,000 to $2,000 to stations as another option for HD news.

“We have jumped in with these products because we certainly have seen over recent years a very definitive move of broadcasters looking for lower-cost equipment for newsgathering and production and we play down there in that lower-cost end,” said Larry Thorpe, national marketing executive, Broadcast & Communications Division, Canon U.S.A.

The three units:

The XF305 — The hand-held camera features three one-third-inch native 1920 x 1080 CMOS image sensors and the new Canon XF codec (MPEG-2, 4:2:2, 50Mbps) for recording on widely available Compact Flash cards. Priced at under $8,000, it comes with a built-in Canon 18x HD L-Series lens and also features industry-standard HD-SDI output, genlock, and SMPTE time code (in/out) terminals for multi-camera productions. It can record at multiple bit rates (25, 35 or 50 Mbps), resolutions and frame rates.

The XF105 — Smaller than the XF 305 and less expensive (under $4,500), the camera includes has just one of the CMOS image sensosr, but has the same Canon XF Codec as the XF305 and the same ability to switch between bit rates, resolutions and frame rates. It comes with a Canon 10x zoom lens. It also has an infrared emitter for shooting in complete darkness.

The XA10 — An “ultra-compact” camcorder for “run-and-gun” shooting or for shooting when discretion in important, the XA10 also features a single CMOS sensor with AVCHD codec. It can record to either an internal 64GB flash drive or to two SDXC cards. It comes with the Canon 10x zoom lens and retails for under $2,000. Like the XF105, it has the infrared capability.

Thorpe believes his ENG “arsenal” is unique. “We’re the only manufacturer that makes all of the ingredients of a camcorder — the optics, the prisms and the filters, the sensors, the digital processing chips and, of course, the carcass, the ergonomics,” he says.

“By doing that, we’re able to bring a degree of optimization to a camcorder in terms of designing a lens and a sensor that really do work together and in terms of miniaturization.”

Since Canon is coming into the market at the lower end, its principal challenge is to JVC, which now dominates that space and has caused Sony and Panasonic to introduce lower-cost gear.

Dave Walton, JVC’s assistant VP of marketing, was reluctant to comment on Canon’s ambitions or its products, but allowed that JVC is “very confident” that it can maintain its leadership. “JVC has done very well marketing our professional cameras to broadcast stations primarily because we offer superb picture quality, fast work flow and affordable prices. We have struck the balance in all three categories. It’s going to be pretty tough for another manufacturer to do that,” he said.

Tore Nordahl, a management consultant now working with JVC, said it will be difficult for Canon to capture a significant share of the market, even though it is a “formidable” company. “Canon will really be a newcomer to this … market,” he said. And its products “are not likely to be fully competitive with the JVC, Sony and Panasonic offerings, perhaps because of no true shoulder-mount design and no live compressed HD output streaming.”

The Canon cameras are not new. The XF305 was introduced at NAB Show in 2010. The XF105 debuted last summer prior to IBC and the XA10 was formally unveiled in January

But the cameras generated “a considerable stir of interest” at NAB this year, Thorpe said. A number of station groups, including those of the Big Four networks, indicated that they would like to evaluate the cameras. “We would love to do shootouts and we’re busy organizing that right now,” he said.

Thorpe sees the XF305 as the workhorse at a station. The 18x lens is “in the range that ENG folks like and it has three chips, which means that you’re going to have the highest sensitivity.”

Although the XF305 was designed as a hand-held, Canon recognized that some broadcasters will insist on a shoulder mount and is trying to accommodate them. “We showed some shoulder-mount rigs at NAB and a lot of the broadcasters did try them and nodded their satisfaction and said, yes, this could work,” says Thorpe.

With just one chip, the XF105 is an “adjunct” to the XF305 and meant for situations where the shooter needs high mobility or is confined to a small space, he says. It also has infrared capability, he adds. “So, if you’re in a really difficult newsgathering situation where it’s close to pitch dark, or you’re doing investigative journalism, or you want to be unobtrusive in a dark space, it can emit an infrared and make a picture in total darkness.”

With Compact Flash cards, the XF305 and XF105 can record a lot of continuous video. A 64 GB card would record 160 minutes of video at 50 Mbps or 225 minutes at 35 Mbps, the bit rate typically used in newsgathering, Thorpe says.

The still smaller XA10, “a palmcorder almost,” comes in handy “where you don’t want to be seen as a professional newsgathering person,” Thorpe says. “The thing looks like a consumer camcorder, but it makes pretty high quality pictures and with the professional AVCHD codec.”

Compact Flash cards for the XF305 and XF105 as well as the SDHD cards used by the XA10 are inexpensive and ubiquitous. “You can walk into your Wal-Mart, Frye’s, all the popular houses, and get them,” says Thorpe.

Canon is promising to back its cameras with an “enterprise support program,” Thorpe says. “If a broadcaster buys some considerable number of these, we would have programs where we go on site and do annual maintenance. Or if they have trouble, we will have programs where we will give them a loaner while we make the repairs.

“We’re going to sit down with the broadcasters and do a final refinement on these programs based on their feedback on what we already offer for the prices that we offer. It’s a major task with us, which is something we are taking very seriously.”

Canon is not pinning all its hopes for the cameras on broadcasters, Thorpe says. “We’re looking at a broader landscape of anybody who wants professional camcorders of considerable quality, but at a modest cost,” he says. “ENG is squarely in there, but there are many, many other applications — commercials, the indie films people, all the governments, law enforcement, home shopping.”