Did I pay too much for a used Canon DV XL1?
 

I paid $2500 for a Canon XL1 DV camera used that has about 190-210 hours worth of use on it. It comes with a tripod, lith battery, metal case and some other misc items. What do you think? Too many hours? Are these cameras durable?

Welcome Adam!
 

No, I think you paid a fair price for the total kit based on your general description. The XL1 is a durable camera that should last for thousands of hours of shooting if cared-for well.

I would, however, recommend that you send it to Canon service for a cleaning and inspection as soon as you can do so. They'll check the head alignment and make sure the overall camera is up to manufacturer's specs. It's not a free service but it's worth the time and expense to avoid more costly problems or, worse, an avoidable problem while shooting something important.

Congratulations on your new (used) XL1! You have plenty of company here at DVInfo.

Thanks Ken! I'm new to this board and have been doing wedding shoots for about $1000.00 and using my home PC. I have been using studio 7 since studio 8 stinks. I recently got the Premiere 6.5 version and it looks hard to use. Ilike the studio because of the ease, but I was using an old analog camcorder to film the weddings and the quaility of the picture was not good. I'm hoping the XL1 will help do the job.

Sounds like 2.5 nuptuals will cover your camera costs!

You'll want to cruise around in our "Non-linear Editing on the PC" forum when you have a chance.

Sounds like you got a good deal Adam, you should notice a big difference in quality with the switch to digital from analog.

As for editing; Premiere 6.5 is extremely easy and very efficient to use once you learn the basics.

Good luck with the camera.

Practice a lot with the XL1. Get to know it. It is a lot different from most analog camcorders in both form factor and ergonomics.

Premiere 6.5 is a more complex tool, but you can do a lot with it. If you can find a tutorial it can help get familiar with Premiere's features. Like everything else, the way to learn it is to use it.

And $2500 sounds like a reasonable price, especiallky if it is in good condition.

That's a reasonable price. Even better if it came with a really good tripod.