Impressions of my XA10
 

Hello,

I recently got the chance to purchase a XA10 which are in very short supply in Germany. Overall I am very impressed with the camcorder. In particular the build quality and manual settings.

But there are two areas in which I am not entirely satisfied. The first one is the sharpness. I am really surprised that the picture isn't that sharp. Now it could be that as I recorded in 25p (which is 50i in 25p) that I see motion blur and the picture is sharper then the impression but still

The second part is that the model sold in Germany doesn't support true 24p or 25p but just 25p recorded as 50i in a 25p wrapper. Now I do fully understand the technical difference between 25p recorded as 50i and 50i but I don't understand the visual difference because I would expect it to be not that different to the viewer. And I could see that it doesn't record true 25p before I purchased the cam. And I really don't understand Canons decision to just offer this in the states. When I found out my first reaction was that I wanted to sell the camera but then I decided to keep it because I wouldn't know which model to get instead.

If you like you can see a first short movie that I recorded during an event and created it for the people who have been there and not for external viewers. The second short movie is recored with my old Canon HF10 and you can decide yourself how big the difference is between a $600 and $2000 cam (not a lot).

Please view them on my site Cosmocreek Medien Produktion

Btw - the first movie is edited in FCPX which overall I like but has some bugs. First is that there must be a memory leak or so - I have to quit and restart the app after a while of use. Second - I added stabilization and I cannot see any difference in the clips w/ or w/o stabilization. In some scenes it is obvious that now stabilization was applied even so I clicked on the button in FCPX. The second movie was done in iMovie (even so I usually edited in FCP 6 - now I want to move on to FCPX, skimming is too good)

Best
Andreas

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

what are you comparing to? I have G10 side by side with EX1, I can say for the price it performs amazing,
try your XA10 with Z1 and tell me which one is sharper :)

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

Well - I have no Z1 :-(

If you say that the camera really produces a very sharp image, could it be that the Hoya Filter I added confuses the autofocus? I don't think that it should but maybe that is an option?

Best
Andreas

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

the xa10 has a very sharp image. I was using a UV filter on my camera and took it off because of some lens flaring. I don't have a xa10 right now but have the g10 same PQ. Try it with out a filter, check out some of my test clips on vimeo from my web page and see if thats what yours is like. If you don't mind post some of your clips that you think are bad.

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

Btw - the first movie is edited in FCPX which overall I like but has some bugs. First is that there must be a memory leak or so - I have to quit and restart the app after a while of use. Second - I added stabilization and I cannot see any difference in the clips w/ or w/o stabilization. In some scenes it is obvious that now stabilization was applied even so I clicked on the button in FCPX. The second movie was done in iMovie (even so I usually edited in FCP 6 - now I want to move on to FCPX, skimming is too good)

Best
Andreas

Hi Andreas, I have the XA-10 too, and sharpness has never been an issue, even at low light levels with wider aperture compromise, I have several night shots right on this forum you can look at them and tell me if you see any difference or issues with yours.

FCPX will ANALYZE your clips for stabilization when you ingest them if you desire that in your Preferences
BUT……You will only get stabilization if you invoke stabilization AFTER the clip is on the timeline, it will also go thru background rendering. Analyzing on ingest and doing the actual stabilization are two different things.

Thanks,
Luis

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

A good quality filter really should not degrade sharpness. I use B&W's on my cam, and they are somewhat more expensive relative to most others. Hoya also makes some good filters, do not use their least expensive though. Never put a piece of cheap glass in front of a good lens.

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

Ok, just went in my backyard and took two sample clips.. Camera on full auto(green setting).

I imported to FCPX and exported the ProRes .mov using Share-->Export movie-->current settings.

Cam was on a tripod, nothing applied in FCPX.

Please see for yourself if those are sharp:

http://www.2ontour.de/misc/Testproject.mov

Maybe it is an autofocus issue, I don't know.Maybe I just have a lemon, happens. Btw - tried it with and without the filter - there is no difference. I could try and import to iMovie to see if FCPX is the problem, but I really don't think so.

Just found that if I zoom in the picture appears to become quite sharp. Strange.

Best
Andreas

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

OK, try any other 1/3 camcorder, not sure why you're not happy with the image, but after all it's $1500 camera, and nevertheless it performs outstanding for that price

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

Did you watch the video linked above?

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

Do you have the ability to post the movie on Vimeo or YouTube I was unable to play it thanks

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

Of course I can but due to all the compression I am not really sure if it is visible. The clip is in ProRes - a direct output from FCPX. Could that be the problem?

I just exported again - this time in H264. Could you try if this works better? Same link:

http://www.2ontour.de/misc/Testproject.mov

I added some footage that is really zoomed in which is sharp and just fine. Maybe the additional sharpness on the zoomed in picture just comes from the horizontal resolution

http://www.2ontour.de/misc/Testproject_zoom.mov

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

I'll try on my laptop later it wil not let me view on my iPhone thanks

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

Ok, got it. I uploaded now to Vimeo as well. I zoom out after about 35s.


And here is another one that I filmed at an event two weeks ago:


At around 4:34 I added two picture I took at a concert, you can easily see the difference.

Best
Andreas

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

Andreas
I think it is very hard to make critical observations from a web presentation file. And frankly, it can be difficult to tell exactly what you have by viewing in the NLE or other software players.
IMO, the best way to determine the image quality you have captured is to export your timeline to full data rate Blu Ray (25 MBs), burn a disk, and watch it on a good quality HDTV. In my experience this will tell the tale about color, sharpness, contrast, dynamic range, motion rendering, etc.
I keep several rewritable BD on hand just for this purpose.

Re: Impressions of my XA10
 

I may not be seeing what you are but to me they look good zoomed in and out.