Canon EOS 300 Cinema Cam Available for Pre-Order, Ships at the End of January

Introduced back in November of 2011 in front of the film industry’s elite, Canon’s EOS 300 cinema camera is now available for pre-order with shipments starting at the end of this month.

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 it 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 being 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 latter use the PL lens mount for use with PL lenses.

Right now the EF-version of the C300 (body only) has been listed by BH Photo Video on its website (thanks go out to engadget for spotting it) for a cool $15,999.00, which translates into about 12,537 EUR.

Shipments are expected to start on January 30, so in little less than two week from now you will have the C300 on your doorstep.