This is the best £100 you will spend for your Canon C100 a 3″ Hoodman Loupe with a 4″ Hood Riser. The one thing that had me in a tiz using the C100 was focusing, the C300 has a decent viewfinder but the C100 comes with a VF that quite frankly is a joke.
Add the Hoodman with a hood riser and you have cracked it, the 3.5″ LCD is more than capable of allowing critical focus, this brings the C100 into a different league adding a cracking second camera to the C300 and an all in one solution.
As you can see the Hoodman loupe can be used in this upright position for lo-angle filming it comes with a flexible sheath that contains the 3″ loupe and the 4″ riser you will have to cut a section out of the sheath in order to get it to fit round the LCD.
Took the C100 out for a further spin today using it as a B camera just to satisfy my curiosity, as you can see both cameras match very well together and thats on a C300 @ 720p and the C100 @ 1080 50i.
I would have no second thoughts using the C100 as an A or B camera, Canon may have downgraded the camera to 4:2:0 @ 24Mbps but take it from me back in the edit suite taken onto a 720p timeline you cannot “see the join”.
I now have a dilemma I was going for a JVC GY-HM600/650 for run and gun but the success of pairing the two Canon’s together has made me re-think what avenue to go down. I love the C100’s lighter body for hand held use…the far better use of XLR’s on the handle…the 3.5″ LCD on the back of the camera and finally the IOS button on the body of the camera.
Having dug out my Hoodman and hood riser has given me a far better feeling towards the C100 as it gives you the ability for critical focus something thats sadly missing from the standard C100 configuration. I also have the Zacuto EVF but that needs arms, batteries and adds weight…no thanks.
I hope to film a scenario with the C100 on new years eve just to give you a flavour of the run and gun performance and low light capabilities, this should be edited the next day and uploaded for all to see during this coming week, have a Happy New Year and a great 2013.
Update (September 2013) : Since writing this there is not any cheaper alternative for the Canon C100, The Hoodman is not perfect but works, especially if you are using it with the LCD in default mode (resting against the camera body).
Zacuto have this loupe called the C100 Z Finder Pro but at a cost of £311 from CVP.
Great!
And you wanted to give this little beauty ***.
Glad you changed your mind. 😉
The lcd screen on the C100 is 3.5 inches. Are you not seeing some of the picture on the Hoodman? Hoodman also has a velcrow strap to attached their viewers to camcorder screens. Might that work?
Thanks,
Just to give some follow-up on this… The riser that Philip uses on the Hoodman converts the 3″ Hoodloupe to work on 4″ screens. This is suitable for 3.5″ screens too, I used one years ago on the 3.5″ screen on my Sony V1E.
The photos above show the velcro strap wrapped round the loupe and riser already.
With the evf attached, do you think its putting to much torque on the flip out lcd to do any harm?
Thanks!
Thank you very much, Philip, for this forward stroke. You made my day! I use tape to fix the Hoodman and it works very good.
Hi Philip,
I love your review on the C100; it is very useful and accurate above all; I was somewhat frustrated with the LCD screen, so the Hoodman loup is a great alternative, the neoprene strap make the whole thing collapse though, so I opted for a rather simpler solution, this works for me and thought I mention it. Here is a picture: http://www.smugmug.com/photos/i-QcX7SVQ/0/L/i-QcX7SVQ-L.jpg
Thanks again for your review on this amazing camera.
Regards,
Felipe
Quite possibly the worst advice, I just wasted £100 on this setup and it does not work! it slips off the weight is too heavy and it is not ergonomic !
Sorry don’t waste your money :o(
HDW : Thats your opinion Paul, I used it with success on the C100 I had for review, without it critical focus is a non starter, but if you want to spend £311 you can always buy the C100 Zacuto Z Finder Pro.
PS. Did you use the sheath as shown, the sheath has a velcro back allowing a very tight fit.
Rather than criticizing those that come up with innovative solutions for this huge design SNAFU; complain to Canon for releasing a poorly design product; they are the ones to blame; and CANON, if you are listening, watch out the competition is right behind.
Take a look at this simple solution I came up with, it works for me most of the time:
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/i-QcX7SVQ/0/XL/i-QcX7SVQ-XL.jpg
Hi sorry for the long delay in answering you
Yes I used everything in your post including the sheath and it would still slip its not the best solution and you are correct I will have spend the money on the C100 Zacuto Z Finder Pro.
I too like everyone who has bought one of these lovely cameras find it ****** frustrating that you cant see sod all through the EVF.
Keep up the good work on all off your other reviews but I had to disagree with this one sorry.
MASSIVE SMILEY FACE :o)
Felipe
Thanks
Felipe, what if you were to attach a Zacuto z-band to the body of the camera and ran it under your existing rubber bands? Do you think that would fix the support issue?
HDW : Don’t know this was my solution at the time of my review, you can’t see any LCD outdoors in sunlight unless you use a loupe.
Clayton,
Yes, absolutely, that would work just fine; I ended up doing something similar w/o having to pay $15.00 plus shipping for the Zacuto z-band aka suspenders. Although I must confessed that the whole thing looks very clumsy and unappealing to me. Again, I am quite disappointed with the folks at Canon, for releasing a half-xxx product like this.
This solution doesn’t work very well when moving around.
The viewfinder flip-flops around far too much with this thing on, which is super distracting while on the job. Maybe it’s possible to shove a marshmellow or poly under the viewfinder. I’ll experiment with that next shoot; unprofessional though it seems to be using straps and tape!
Terrible form factor camera but I love the footage we get from it.
We will find a way!
I have used the Hoodman loupe kit with the hood crane on both a Canon 5D mark ii and a Black Magic Cinema Camera, and besides making adjustments here and there, it seems to work fine. If this Hoodman set-up is used on the C100, and is in the default position with it down, I don’t understand the whole flip-flopping around issue. It seems like the weight of Hoodman attachment itself would help to hold the LCD panel flat. To me, this seems like a perfectly valid solution. None of the solutions proposed look great. One option is to use a magnet and the other is to use the Zacuto, which seems bigger and more overpriced than it needs to be. I see Zacuto now has a special mounting bracket that attached to the top handle, but that bracket alone is the cost of this solution. Are you guys still using this set-up with success? Does this set-up flop around? Normally, if I were shooting, my eye would be pressed against the viewfinder as a point of contact, so I don’t get the flip flopping around issue.