Calipers do great with short reach, but do progressively worse as the reach increases. It has nothing to do with leverage, which can be adjusted in the design,and everything to do with rigidity. As the arms get longer the shoes are farther from the pivot bolt, which increases the bending moment on the arms. That can also be corrected for with larger section arms, but I've yet to se one brake that does so anywhere close to adequately.

While not ideal, cantis and V-brakes have the advantage of moving the shoes closer to the pivots greatly increasing brake arm rigidity. Properly adjusted, well made canti's offer the best ratio of performance to weight coming very close to, or maybe surpassing that of quality short reach calipers.

The only real drawback of canti's is that their performance depends on fork blade rigidity, and that can be an issue on lightweight forks, both steel and carbon.