wildlife, closeups
 

Hi everyone, i use a canon xl1s for filming snakes and insects in Britain with the standard lens, i have had some nice results, will i benefit from a dramatic picture improvement by changing to an xl2/ a sony hdr fx1, or is there a better cam considering i walk many miles in a day? thanks for any help guys.
Jerry

I'd stick with the XL series because you can pop off the stock lens and pop on a macro lens. At http://homepage.mac.com/ajdel/FileSharing5.html I've got an example shot with an XL1s using a 105mm Micro Nikkor. I'm always impressed with what this lens will do.

Hi, thanks for your reply, i was told last year by canon UK that a macro lens would not work with the canon xl1s , nor any wideangle lenses, i have a tamron 90mm lens for my canon 10d , will that work ok ? i hope so , i am really excited now!

You were? That person was absolutely wrong. Any 35mm lens for which you can find an adapter will work just fine. With Canon lenses you use the Canon made adapter which passes the electical signals through so auto exposure works (and maybe even autofocus if it's an autofocus lens?). With other manufacturers lenses you require a third party adapter. For the Nikons I use one made by Optek (located in the UK). Bear in mind that a 90mm lens is a long telephoto on the XL series cameras because of the small chip size so a tripod is a big plus. As for "wide angles" I have used a 35 mm Nikon lens and a 17-35mm zoom as well. These both have moderate telephoto effect on the XL's but capture really sharp images. See the thread on full moon shots in the XL2 forum for more discussion and some video shot with Canon telephoto lenses.

thankyou very much for your time