What are the official specs concerning focus for the 16x manual? What's the closest you can get fully zoomed in and still focus? Full Wide?

See the table at the bottom of my 16x Manual Servo review.

I'm sorry Ken, I don't understand, does it mean at both wide and macro it focus to 5cm, or only with the macro function on? I'd still like to know the minimum focus distance for the wide setting without macro activated.

Without macro function it focus' to 1m. In macro and lens zoomed to widest angle it will focus to 50mm, about 2 inches.

Alright, thanks. Sometimes on wide, I get close to my subject, but I can't see it any blurriness. Then, when editing, it looks a little soft. Now I know why.

For low cost closeup work, consider using a "closeup lens set" (really an adapter). A +1 or +2 adapter will work reasonably well with full zoom through and allow stand-off distance for lighting, etc. You can shoot from 18 inches and have a dime fill the frame. Note that depth of field will be rather small. The adapters can be rather low cost if you get a Hoya or Tiffen set, on a par with filter prices.

For a good bit more money you can buy a quality achromatic diopter adapter from source such as Century.

I also have a B+W close up set, an NL1 and NL2, combined together gives you an NL3 equivelant. Works very well, tho not entirely zoom-through. If you were going tight, you'd use an extender instead anyways, but wide allows for very close shooting.

Focus problem?
 

If I zoom in on a subject, focus and slowly zoom out, my XL1 loses focus. I was told that the early XL1 cameras have a focus problem. Is this true?

Some units shipped with poorly adjusted back focus, more common with early production.

There was a firmware issue in that if you set manual focus at anything less than full zoom, it would not track as you change zoom. This was corrected a few several years ago by a firmware patch.

The other issue is that auto focus mode in general is a bit fussy about what is in the focus zone of the scene. If image content is not suitable for auto focus sensing the lens will start to hunt.

Another issue is with supplementary lenses on the XL1.

I almost always have a Century 0.7 WA adapter mounted on my lens and it seems to cause a problem with back focus. The image just doesn't stay sharp throughout the zoom range.

If I take the WA adapter off, the lens works as advertised. I have two lenses, one from my original XL1 and one from the newer XL1s. The newer lens seems much more prone to this problem than the older lens. So at this point I'm relying on the older lens and have the newer lens set aside.

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions

XL1s Stock Lens Focus Problem
 

Hi,

I'm having problems keeping focus when I zoom out. I have my XL1s set on manual exposure and focus (gain might be auto). I'm using the stock 16x lens.

I zoom in and use the auto focus buttom to focus, but when I zoom out the picture is out of focus. I think things seem better if I focus a few feet in front of my subject, but I don't always have something to focus on if I do this.

I'm thinking of buy the 16x manual servo lens to fix this problem. Will this help?

Thanks,

Leland

Sounds like it may be the back focus is off. See:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...&threadid=6021
for additional discussion that might partlyaddress your question.

James suggestion has totally eliminated any problems (I thought I had) with my XL1S...looks like the auto settings of the Canon are a bit sad/weak...but setting using (M) focuing, setting gain to 0 and preset your WB...the camera behaves as good/better than anything I've used (love the trademark softness of the Canon glass). In the big picture of things, we/I should be avoiding the auto settings anyway....
Mark

AF
 

On the camera lens there is a switch AF and M. you have to set this to M. even when you have the camera in
Manual it still will try to auto focus if this switch is set to AF. i hope this helps.

The camera also has to be out of "green box" mode too.