XH-A1 and Stop Motion Animation
 

I really like the XH-A1 and am narrowing down my decision. I'm leaning toward the XH-A1.

The question I have is: Although the camera can be used as a still camera, can it capture one frame at a time for stop motion animation work? I understand it does not have a time lapse feature on it but can you manually shoot one frame at a time?

I called Canon. The lady said you can take single frames and then combine them in post however in the way she was describing it, it sounded cumbersome. And she also didn't sound very confident in the answer she gave.

Has anyone done stop motion with the XH-A1?

Thanks!

Mike

I think you can only do it when shooting tethered. I've tried it with both premier elements 4 and with ScenalyzerLive recording straight onto a laptop. Otherwise, get a stills camera that can be set to take a photo every second or so and use the stills as individual frames. Tedious, but it works

But why would you use a VIDEO camera to shoot stop motion, when a STILL camera would do the same job, better, for a fraction of the price?

May I suggest that you watch carefully the "making of" of "Wallace and Gromit"?

Some miniDV cameras will take single frames, but I don't know of any HDV cameras that will. Something to do with the long-GOP structure of MPEG, I expect.

Tape mechanisms can not be used for single frames.

(Late) DVRack and similar PC-based programs can use video camera (without tape) to capture stills or speeded up video at any frame rate slower than 30/25 fps.

By far the easiest method with best quality (any resolution even above HDTV, actually, and good control of DOF) can be had with a dSLR. All better editors take numbered stills sequences and turn them automatically into a video. I have done dozens of those with both PPro and FCP.