Thank you Kaku Ito. I am new around here but have downloaded many of your clips from the H1 in the past.

It is an invaluable service you and others who have access to the new crop of cams provide people like me. Respect....!

TT

I took a few minutes this morning to set up the XL-H1 and grab a few frames for CA check at 9.9, 44.8, 27.4 and 208 mm at f/3.4 (i.e wide open at the long end). In all cases the CA was less than 1 pixel except at the long end where it crept up to about 1.5 (i.e. worse at long focal length as might be expected). This is, IMO, pretty darn good for a lens in this price range. If someone can get me a couple of shots of an ISO 12233 target with any of the new cameras I can run the CA on them too. I need well lit shots with the CA/MTF target (the thing that looks like a tilted dumbell at the edge of the picture. Next best thing is a sharp change in contrast slightly off vertical like the edge of a wall, also near the edge of the picture.

A.J.deLange,

There must be some variability in the manufacturing of these cameras. I had two of the H1s and sent them both back because I could not live with the amount of CA that I saw. I saw similar channel separation as those seen in those images posted earlier in the thread which were in my view unacceptable. They originate from someone called Disjecta (sp?).

If that is all the CA you have then that is very good and bodes well for the A1 and G1.

It looks like a straight shootout between the Sony V1 and the A1 for my cash. The screen grabs Simon Wyndham posted today from the V1 showed slight CA but well within my acceptable limits. Only noticeable by getting close to my 24" display and from a normal viewing distance it's invisible which is my only criterion for judging acceptability. If I can't see it then neither can my clients...

TT

Thanks again! I am really looking forward to your footage. I hope Chris will upload it soon. Anyway, I am sorry to hear about your difficult time. I guess we all have to go through one every now and then. But by doing things like what you are doing now for us, you will get appreciation from many people. And if I ever need help with distribution etc., you are the one I will call!

Thanks Floris.

Hey Kaku, maybe you should get a commission from Canon :) Hopes have been high for the A1/G1 and your footage seems to be right in line with our expectations. This stuff is looking good, thanks again!

www.philipwilliams.com

Thanks for all your efforts!

If anybody can tell me how to download and watch those clips on a Mac, I'd like to know. When I download one, I get an m2t.txt file, instead of an m2t.

I think www.videolan.org has a Mac compatible player.

I think its just a matter of renaming your file and opening it with VLC. Maybe a Mac person that's actually done this can add more insight....

Philip is right -- VideoLan's VLC version for the Mac should do it. Renaming the file extension should help. I thought about renaming the extensions all of the clips to something like .m2x anyway to prevent them from being opened on the server side, which is a real drain and slows things down for everybody else. Then all you'd have to do is download the file, re-name the extension to .m2t, and open within the VLC player or whatever else you're using as a viewer.

Ah, Chris answered it.
One thing that we can do is to zip them.

Thanks for the footage Kaku! We definitely appreciate your efforts to bring us the first real world footage from this camera. May you be rewarded with lots of good karma!

Kaku, thank you very much indeed for the footage. Unfortunately, CA is just as bad, or worse, as on the H1 (as I feared). This is basically the same camera with the same flaws. Very dissapointing. I just don't find this acceptable. I have just cancelled my A1 order with B&H. Screengrabs from Kaku's latest footage below. If this doesn't bother anyone else, then I guess standards for quality are lower than I imagined.

I noticed some CA too, but nothing I felt was intrusive. Certainly no worse than what I've seen from the other 3-6K HD cams...

Which camera are you going to look at if this has too much CA? I ask because I remember looking at some of the frame grabs from the Texas Shootout and there was some serious fringing in some of those shots - from all the camcorders.

The new Sony looks pretty good from what I've seen, but I think I spotted some CA there too... I don't think there's a perfect lens out there in this price range.

That's also what I want to know. What alternative do we have? The XL-H1 has it... what about the Panasonic HVX-200, HD111 and the Sony HVR-Z1?

The only model left then is the Sony HVR-V1...

My only HD cameras right now are the Panny HVX200 (that exhibits some degree of CA but nothing like as bad as the H1/ XH) and the Canon HV10 that is killer (I managed to get basically CA free footage as long as no overexposure happens). The Panasonic paid itself thru work long ago, and the at the price, the HV10, cannot be beat for my causal fun shooting. The HX is not, image quality wise, a justifiable upgrade to me in any way. Also, the footage I've seen so from the new Sony HVR-V1 is not too encouraging either but I'll have to see more clips before haping a firm opinion on it.

And folks, in my very humble opinion, this is not a matter of cost to manufacturers to build good optics. I mean, the lens on the $1200 HV10 blows away the quality of the lenses on all the other Canon cameras (evene the Leica on the HVX200), so, go figure.

For now, I'll keep working with the Panasonic (that makes me money), and playing with the HV10 (that cost me little) and looks absolutely killer for 95% of its usage.