Hello out there!
I am having a problem with the camera holding focus. After a few seconds it drifts in and out of focus. It just will not hold. I had heard of this problem back in the 90's with the first generation XL1's. I thought Canon fixed this though. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I'm shooting in the automatic mode on the selector ring and the Auto Focus button on the lens to the off position. Also image stabilization to off.

To start, I'd find an object with clearly distinct fairly large light-dark areas that have sharp transition between the light-dark zone (something the camera can easily find a focus). I'd also have a well lighted subject, with the iris/shutter settings up near the 100% IRE zebra zone. Then I'd start with a manual focus before moving over to autofocus. If it still went out of focus, I'd check to see if it always went wide or tight.

Next I'd turn off the camera, remove the lens and give the connectors on the lens and body a very close inspection. If necessary, I'd use a clean cloth to wipe off the contacts.

Then I'd carefully inpect the lens for dust spects, close-up look at the sensor, etc.

Last, I'd try to find another XL-2 lens to borrow and isolate the problem to the camera focusing system or the lens. Hopefully you hadn't removed the lens with the camera powered and won't do so borrowing a lens!

If worse comes to worse, I'm selling my XL-2 with 20X, 3X and 16X lens so you could buy one but I'll be closing them out on Monday. See the dvinfo classifieds if interested before I head off for ebay...

Good luck,

Michael

You sure you're shooting Automatic mode ('A' on the selector ring) and not the 'green box' mode which I think always forces autofocus to be on (even if you manually switch it off) ?

Piotr

Hello Piotr,
Yes it is in A mode, no other. Even with well lit subjects when I down load the footage in iMovie and do a frame by frame you can see the drift about every third frame. It's madening!