As market introductions go, Canon's groundbreaking XL1 had a rocky one. As soon as the XL1 shipped, new owners began to complain about vertical lines in the image, image posterization, soft focus at full wide, loss of focus in manual-focus mode, and an LCD viewfinder that sunburned easily. The 16X lens had a zoom ring that was especially awkward to use, and the lens was prone to jumps during zooms.
Despite these problems, the XL1 became an enormous success. This was due in large part to the fact that Canon handled the problems in a forthright way. Other companies could take a lesson from Canon on addressing bugs that are all too often found in new equipment.
In a strange way, problems with the 16X (5.5-88mm) F1.6 zoom lens turned out to be a blessing. Because the XL1 features an interchangeable lens, another lens manufacturer was able to rush an alternative lens into production. OpTex marketed its XLPro 14X (5.5-77mm) F1.4 fully manual zoom lens, which has had strong appeal to those shooting DV “films.”
Clearly, a better lens would not have made the XL1 a success if a large audience had not been impressed with the camcorder's picture quality. The many admirers of the camera cite its film-look. Many shooters “enhance” the film-look by shooting in Frame mode to add judder artifacts.
When I reviewed the XL1, I was not one of its admirers. I felt “film look” was a fancy name for video without fine detail. I was also critical of the XL1's ergonomics.
In reviewing the new camera, I first tried out the newest “II” version of the 16X auto lens Canon sent with the camcorder. I still dislike the feel — or rather the total lack of feel — afforded by the manual focus ring.
So I replaced the lens with Canon's 16X (5.4-86.4mm) F1.6 manual zoom lens. Boy, what a difference! This all-black lens has the right look. It doesn't scream, “Look guys, I have a fancy camera.” And it feels right, too. The focus ring provides quick, direct action. You can snap-focus and follow-focus. You have your choice, by mechanical switch, of manual or servo zoom. If you select manual, a short handle makes zooming a joy. Return with us to yesteryear, when filmmakers zoomed an Angenieux or Pan-Cinor lens.
After shooting for a while, I encountered the camera's ergonomic issues. With the manual lens, it's necessary to keep one's left hand free to move among the manual focus ring, zoom lever, and iris control on the camera body. Therefore, the entire weight of the camera is supported by your right hand. I weighed the XL1S at 5lbs., which certainly is not heavier than many 16mm cameras.
But most handheld 16mm cameras have some form of pistol grip mounted to the camera to balance for yaw (left to right) and pitch (front to rear). The XL1S handgrip — like that of most camcorders — is mounted forward and to the right. One's wrist has to correct for yaw and pitch, plus bear the weight of the camcorder.
The solution, of course, is to treat the XL1S as an EFP (electronic field production) rather than an ENG (electronic newsgathering) camcorder. That's a fancy way to say “mount it on a tripod.” Tripod mounting has several other advantages. First, one can see the audio level meter. (Canon did not update the XL1S with a viewfinder meter.) Second, an LCD monitor then can be mounted to the camcorder.
Although the provided 0.7in., 180,000-pixel color LCD viewfinder is nice, a 5in. or 7in. LCD monitor is more useful for composing a shot. Additionally, an external viewfinder — with a 16:9 mode — will be necessary when shooting in 16:9 because Canon didn't enhance the XL1S viewfinder to display a true 16:9 image.
Its appearance has changed very little, but Canon has incorporated many enhancements in the XL1S. It still uses three 1/3in. CCDs (250,000 effective pixels each) and its signal-to-noise ratio has been improved by 4dB. For shooting computer monitors, shutter speed is adjustable from 61.9Hz to 201.5Hz. Two additional gain settings, +18dB and +30dB, are now available. Image noise is low at +18dB, but fairly high at 30dB. Two manual white-balance settings can be made and retained — either is available at a touch of a button. And yes, the XL1S now has a button to engage SMPTE color bars.
The XL1 menu system has been much improved. From the menu you can set the handgrip rocker to variable, low, medium, or fast zoom. The camcorder's handle-mounted zoom control can be set to slow, medium, or fast. Zebra can be set at 80, 85, 90, 95, or 100IRE. I found I needed to set zebra at 100IRE to avoid being guided toward underexposure. An intervalometer offers four recording intervals (30 and 60 seconds, 5 and 10 minutes) and four recording durations (15, 30, 45, and 60 frames).
Canon has added the ability to define three custom image templates. For each template, you can adjust Color Shift (toward red or toward green), Color Gain, Picture Sharpness, and Black Level (appears to vary pedestal).
During shooting, an Index Record button flags a shot as “good” for later rapid reference via the IR remote's “find good shot” button. The XL1S sends REC and REC PAUSE signals through an IEEE-1394 cable to an external IEEE-1394 device that can be a DV deck (with a large cassette) or a lightweight FireWire hard drive. (Imagine shooting time-lapse video to an 80GB drive.) A mode can be engaged to defeat the 5-minute automatic shutdown. Analog video (composite and S-Video) and stereo audio can be recorded by an XL1S.
During playback, a Character Record option burns the month, day, hour, minute, and second into the video image. Audio dubbing to tapes with 12-bit audio is available, and video inserts can be made to tapes recorded in SP.
All these features are good, but do they result in better video? With one exception, I found the answer to be yes. The exception was the restricted exposure latitude of the camera. When set to auto-exposure, the camera handled light walls and bright sky by reducing exposure so much that subject matter was underexposed. Setting the exposure bias to +1-stop could eliminate underexposure — but yielded overexposed highlights.
Thankfully, unlike most cameras with 1/3in. CCDs, the XLIS lost color details in overexposed areas, but color was retained and not bleached to white. Although latitude is not a winning feature for the XL1S, low-light sensitivity does appear to be more than a stop greater than that provided by the XL1.
I played back my test footage on both a 35in. monitor and a 6ft. diagonal RPTV. With both displays I was amazed at how three-dimensional the image looked. Image depth appears to come from object edges that are totally free of video noise. Canon's GL1 has a similar lack of video noise. But the XL1S, perhaps because of its 1/3in. rather than 1/4in. CCDs, manages to preserve more fine detail.
If you are shooting DV films with a budget too small to afford a camera with 1/2in. chips, you should take a very serious look at an XL1S.
