XL-1 images with Canon 1200 mm prime lens?
 

Chris, I enjoyed the pictures of the "Big Guy" Canon 1200 mm prime lens they let you attach to your XL-1. But what did the video look like that you shot with that lens? You mentioned about being able to read a license plate from a half mile away. But were you able to record any images that would fall within the range of "normal" video? Or was the telephoto effect so great that all you got were extreme close-ups? Just curious as to what an $80,000 lens does for XL-1 video quality?

Don, it was actually fairly unusable. Look at the pictures and you'll see why... we had to support the XL1S body by hand. The resultant image shake was too extreme to be usable. We would have had to mount the camera with lens on some type of dual-mounting rod which held both items steady, and we didn't have that on hand in Salt Lake City. I did record some video and will try to pull some frames soon (kinda busy at the moment). However the heat waves from the street and buildings pretty much spoiled everything. The mountain shots were clear, though. The thing is you'd have no idea it was shot with that particular lens. There's no real merit to it at all; those photos were intended just to be a gimmick, something you don't see everyday, and we were interested in how it would look through the viewfinder. How it looked was pretty disappointing due entirely to the lack of proper camera mounting. Hope this makes sense,

It makes perfect sense to me, Chris. I guess I can cross the "Big Guy" off my XL1 wish list and confine my lust to the 16x manual lens, which I, hopefully, might be able to acquire soon. Thanks.