A review for Canon XL-1 DV Video Camera

I got lucky in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, but it wasn'

t at the tables. Instead, I was fortunate enough to spend some "quality time" with the new Canon XL1 digital camcorder and get a guided tour of its features from some of the Canon team (Joe Bogacz, Technical Coordinator of the Video Division; Tim Smith, Development Team Technician; and Mike Zorich, Production Manager).

First, I gotta say, it's AWESOME. I've been looking for an affordable DV camera that has all the features I needed, such as a neutral density filter, FireWire in & out, XLR audio inputs and a shoulder mount. The XL1 has all this and much more.

Most importantly, the XL1's excellent 16x long glass lens is interchangeable, which greatly benefits serious videographers and digital fimmakers alike. One of the best things about the old Canon L1 and L2 camcorders was the 3x wide-angle lens, and a similar 3x lens is available for the XL1. Anyone who's ever had to shoot inside a car, or tried to frame a building exterior without backing into the lake will really appreciate this. Plus, there's an EOS adapter available for shooting with Canon's EF series photo lenses.

My personal test for any zoom lens is to find out how discretely you can change focal length (like the "slow imperceptible zoom" technique in professional cinematography). There are eight speeds in the XL1's feathered zoom, and it can take up to a nice, slow 60 seconds to go through the range. The fastest speed is two seconds, and there is a manual zoom ring on the XL1, an important feature that Sony's VX1000 doesn't have.

This camcorder was designed for superior low-light performance using CCD's with large 72-micron pixels. This normally results in a compromise for image resolution, Canon avoids this with a revolutionary process called "pixel shift," a technological advancement that rivals more expensive cameras and which makes the Frame Movie mode possible.

Frame Movie shooting provides a welcome alternative to normal interlaced video recording for serious digital filmmakers. This mode records 30 full flicker-free frames per second WITHOUT using interlace (but, like 35mm cinematographers, you'll need to be careful not to pan too fast). There's also a digital photo mode for still photography, and a hot shoe for adding an E-TTL photo flash.

I especially liked the large "pro"-style viewfinder. It ajusts for right eye or left, and tilts to just about any position. Its large, high-resolution color display allowed me to quickly find critical focus. There's a "far" switch so you can stand back from the camera when it's mounted on sticks and still see the display. I'm particularly thankful for the brightness control since the monochrome EVF's on Hi-8 camcorders were always blinding me on nighttime shoots.

There are multiple sets of audio inputs, both line and mike level, and they can be mixed together in the camera. This is another amazing feature. The XL-1 is the first camera in its class that can simultaneously record four channels of audio. Through the headphones and the audio level meters you can monitor the mix or cycle through each input separately. There are three digital audio recording modes to choose from, and recording levels are manually adjustable, another necessity that's missing from the Sony VX1000.

All camera settings are controlled from the left-hand side where I could keep an eye on them, and the size and position of the viewfinder allowed me to scan the buttons, knobs and audio level meters without taking my face away from the display.

The foldout shoulder pod isn't the XL1's best feature. For better hand-held functionality, I strongly suggest getting the optional full-size shoulder mount attachment, which includes XLR audio inputs and a compartment to hold either a dual battery pack or a wireless mike receiver.

I talked to Tim Smith, the Canon Development Team Technician at length about the development of this camera and he summed it up this way: Canon is two years late getting into the digital video arena but has produced a camera that's five years ahead of the pack.

Part of the delay involved ditching the original vendor for the tape transport and engineering it entirely in-house (as is everything else on the XL1). Tim said that in those two years they've had a lot of time to come up with ideas to use on the camera -- features that were not in the original plans. Tim said the XL1 project was a lot of fun to work on due to the design freedom they were given.

Probably the deepest impression I got from talking to the Canon development team was that they seemed to have a very real sense of "ownership" in the XL1. Allowed to develop the features they wanted to see on a product at this market level, the team commanded attention from Canon's upper level management? and from me. That's much more important than any great leap in engineering technology.