i just finished making the appropriate changes to my m2 setup, and everything seems to be working lovely. once the appropriate shim height is set, the minimum focal distance is a complete non issue. i used the 1/16" shim (the thinnest one in the kit) which aligned the a1 nicely on the vertical axis, and then i was able to push the achromat right up against the m2 and the ground glass was in perfect focus.

here's an image of the setup.

http://www.enjoyuserexperience.com/images/a1_m2.jpg

Hey Henry, seeing as how you have your M2 setup, any sign of an LCD flip at all? Seems like this question keeps coming up, but no one has an answer.

stefan... i can say, almost definitively, there is no image flip, unless canon put some undocumented easter egg somewhere in their custom functions menu, which is highly doubtful. it's unfortunate as the camera's form factor seems an ideal match for the m2. let's hope for a future update.

WEll, that's unfortunate, and seems extremely odd for Canon to leave out, seeing as how the H1 has it, and the A1 is so extremely customizable. Any chance that a magnet will work? :)

even if it were possible, i've always been wary of sticking a magnet on the camera, especially a camera i like :). if i recall correctly, a few people messed up their cameras this way. the best portable solution IMHO is to get a small preview monitor with image flip. if the hd monitors are out of your budget, the cheaper 16:9 sd lcds like xenarc, varizoom, etc. should be fine for framing purposes.

Actually I allready use an LCD, mounted upside down on my DVX, but I use the magnet as well on the LCD. To me this is still an inconvinience, as there are times when I don't want to use a larger LCD on the camera. I've been using the magnet on the DVX for about 9 months, never had a problem, I think it's important to use a magnet that is strong enough to flip the monitor, but not do any damage. I have even stuck the magnet to other parts of the DVX when I'm not using it, and have never had any problems. Well, hopefully canon will release some kind of update, while it's not really a deal breaker it is a major inconvinience.

Hey Henry...PHEW! was terrified cause plan to use it exclusivly with the M2!

Anyway, I just finally got my XL2 hardmounted (YES!). Think the hardmount should work with this cam then?

Matt

seems extremely odd for Canon to leave out, seeing as how the H1 has itReferring to image flip in the LCD... your statement that "the H1 has it" is not entirely accurate. Yes the H1 has this feature, but it does not work when an XL lens is on the camera. The feature is accessible only when the XL lens is removed, and there aren't many adapters that connect directly to the H1 at the lens mount. So for the majority of people, it's as if the image flip feature isn't even there.

Good info on the customizing buttons, Chris. I don't really see the misplacement of those switches as a big deal because I don't generally flip back and forth between daylight and tungsten much. But it's nice to know you can, in effect, put them where you want them if you so desire. That kind of customization is very cool.

A question about the M2 adapter photo...does that cover up the fast auto focus sensor? Also, I'm wondering if anybody has yet checked out the regular through-the-lens focusing at 24F. I know on the XL2, the auto focus button is borderline useless when shooting 24F but OK in 60i.

Bill -

Like with any 35mm adapter, you need to disable AF in the camera so the location of Fast AF sensor won't matter in that case. Same applies to image stabilizer. The camera has to keep hard steady focus on the screen inside the adapter.

I agree about daylight/tungsten switch. It's not a problem with custom WB settings available so easily.

Henry - thank you for testing the cam with M2. It's good news it works. As far as LCD flip is concerned, I hope the magnet trick works. As long as one uses small piece, it shouldn't cause any damage to the cam, maybe some scratches only.

Oh...duhhh...yeah, a slip of the brain there...the camera lens focuses on the ground glass. I knew that. I need more coffee before I post again.

Just a note on attachments.

The Bracket1 works fine on the XHA1 to hang your wireless from. It doesn't block the xlr ports nor the mic holder.

There's no way to attach a stud to put a light or monitor on it. Hot shoe only. You could clamp something to the vertical part of the top grip, but the grip itself is chock full of controls, so you can't clamp to it.

The mic holder seems to be 7/8" -- it's smaller than a sony holder, but bigger than a sennheiser shotgun. Time to get out the gaffers tape.

There's a line-in switch for the xlr's, but it seems to be both channels or none -- can't have a mic on channel 1 and line-in on 2. There is a separate attenuator switch for each channel. Volume controls on the audio are marked with those stupid different-size dots instead of being numbered -- it will take a while to remember which way is higher and which way lower.

hey matthew, i'm going to need to fine tune the m2 before i answer your question. i'm inclined to say hardmounting without a small spacer is probably not going to happen. as it stands now, it needs at least the couple of mm distance the rubber hood provides. however, i noticed during zoom in that i clear the motor before the edge of the ground glass. once i adjust the motor vertically so that they disappear at the same time, i may be able to save a little on the zoom and get the achromat a little closer. also, i find i can go slightly beyond infinity on the 35mm lens, which means, for better or worse, i'll need to tweak the position of the ground glass on the motor inside the m2. these adjustments will probably impact how close the achromat can get... as soon as i make these fixes, i'll let you know what i find.

stefan/bogdan, i'll read up on this magnet trick thing again. thank you for the heads up.

my apologies to everyone if this thread has gone a little too m2-centric...

I have done some low light footages last night in 0db, +6db and +12db. Unfortunately the file size is bit too big for posting here.

If anyone can host them, I can send it to you. I am alos in the process of testing out the internal mic preamp of the camera.

I just finished my first real shoot with the camera this morning. I am creating a short commercial for a pipe fabrication facility. They are a huge company that makes large pipes and fitting for nuclear reactors so there plant is massive and the size of the piping is huge. Anyway.....the plant is dark and dingy and there is welding everywhere you turn. I had my concerns but the camera performed great. I brought in a few 600watt quartz lights and umbrellas and it was not really enough....still it came out very nice.

The thing that scares me is that I am so used to the H1 for finding all of the controls and buttons on the fly.....while the A1 is indeed a mini H1, the controls and feel are different enough to make it hard to adapt to. A big issue for me is the form factor....I know, I know....what did I expect? I knew the design when I bought it. I just didn't realize how accustomed I was to the H1 design. I was worried the handheld footage would be unstable.....

But alas my fears were put to rest....I watched the footage and I was amazed. I could not tell it was not shot on my H1. It looked absolutely like pristine HD that I am used to. Now I just have to get used to the design and familiarize myself with all the buttons. Then I'll be back in business.

Oh...and take this with a grain of salt but, last night I shot some candid, around the house stuff with my 5 year old daughter.....just plain house lighting. My initial feeling is it seems a little darker than the H1 did. I didn't compare footage or anything but I thought it looked a little drab.....but time will tell. If it is different it is not by much. Also....a contirbuting factor to this is the wide angle lens. Let me explain.

The H1 was around 40mm lens (35mm equivalent) At full wide the Fstop was 1.6.

The A1 is around 32mm lens (25mm equivalennt) At full wide the Fstop was 1.6.

Now on the A1 when I zoom to frame things a little tighter I am much further into the "zoom range" on the new camera and therefore the camera stops down a bit. (2.2-2.8). I am losing light simply by zooming a little to get equal framing to the H1. In addition I was used to using the 16x manual lens a lot and that lens hold its aperture all the way to full zoom. So a lot of what I am seeing can probably be attributed to the lens aperture changing and darkening the image.

FWIW.

The footage I shot today looked amazing....but there was sufficient light to allow me to expose properly throughout the range.

Peace!

That's fantastic - thank you Marty!

One question: did you notice any difference in image stabilizer performance? It's slightly different than IS in stock H1/XL2 lenses, but I hope not a bit less amazing.

The method used for Optical Image Stabilization is indeed different... the XL lens uses VAP (vari-angle prism) while the XH uses Lens Shift... but I seriously doubt that there's any visible, noticeable difference between the two.

Marty, you bring up a question I've always wondered about. How come with a "real" lens (ie., professional, manual zoom) there's little or no light loss from wide angle to full zoom, but on ALL the electronic lenses there is? I wonder why that is...why the electronic lenses do that. Probably has something to do with the production cost--ie., you want a good sharp lens for this price, you've gotta give up something to get it...I dunno. That's one of those things I've been wondering about for 5 years but never bothered to ask anybody or research it.

That's fantastic - thank you Marty!

One question: did you notice any difference in image stabilizer performance? It's slightly different than IS in stock H1/XL2 lenses, but I hope not a bit less amazing.

That's comparing apples and oranges for me. And I don't mean the 2 types of OIS on these cameras, I mean the camera form factors themselves. I have a hard time commenting on this at this point as I (personally)am not near as steady with the A1 as I was with the H1. You see the H1 is inherently more stable just because of it's mass and it's form factor. So add a camera that is more stable (H1) to a good OIS and you get really steady shots.

The A1 performed admirably but I saw a little wiggle and jiggle here and there. At this point I will attribute that to my own less steady hands. I am still learning the best ways to hold the camera and get steady shots myself.

I can say, in comparison to my experience with the DVX100 and the HVX200 that the A1 spanks them silly as far as OIS goes. My shots were far steadier than anything I ever did with those cameras even after using them for a while.

FWIW

Chris,
with a different OIS design in the A1 will I still see the "dancing balls of light" when I get lens flares in my shot?

Thanks.

with a different OIS design in the A1 will I still see the "dancing balls of light" when I get lens flares in my shot?Hmm... I don't know! That's a good question. I think you should test this and let us know what you find out.

Hmm... I don't know! That's a good question. I think you should test this and let us know what you find out.

I'll see what I can do. Last year I went on a Holiday Train ride and afterword I got some cool extra shots. There was a 2nd train ride after ours, so I went down the tracks and tired to get a shot of the train coming towards me. While the shot was steady enough, the beam from the train caused a lens flare that danced all over the place! It looked weird...like some kind of UFO acitivity!

If I can I will give it a whirl tonight.

By the way? Does anyone else feel like a dummy trying to figure out what all these options are in the menus? Cause I do! I need to read the manual!

...
I can say, in comparison to my experience with the DVX100 and the HVX200 that the A1 spanks them silly as far as OIS goes. My shots were far steadier than anything I ever did with those cameras even after using them for a while.
...

I'm glad to hear that, esp. considering 20x vs 10x zoom lens. Of course, form factor matters a lot. I was just curious how it felt. Thanks again Marty.

Glare and other weird light reflections esp. against strong sources? I dare to say no lens is free from those problems, just like from CA.

Back tomy threadjacking Henry,

Considering this lens is shorter, what is your Fstop when you hit the appropriate Zoom and focus?

Marty,
Industrial videography? Man after my own heart!

matthew, i hit f2.2 with the iris wide open when the gg in the m2 fully occupied the screen. an observation... after playing around with the a1/m2 a bit, i think hardmounting the m2 on the a1 would be a disservice to the camera. without crunching numbers, the improvement of the a1/m2 combo over the xl2/m2 at first glance are, to me, nominal, probably due to the some inherent image softening in the m2 -- i always thought results from the 16:9 xl2/m2 looked phenomenal, and i was relatively less wowed when first previewing the a1/m2 on an hdtv. that said, the a1 output, all by its lonesome, is beautiful stuff in its own right.

this is all just first look stuff from me, so take it all with a grain of salt. looking forward to rolling some tape this weekend.

I dont own one of these cams but I just checked one out at the local photog shop, and man what a beast this thing is!
I had initially assumed this cam was gonna be a black plastic GL2 that would do HD (and I would have been pretty satisfied).
But Holy crap! the leap of technology/professionalism/beefiness from GL1/GL2 to A1/G1 is enormous, I was stunned. From the cool matte black finish (that seems alot more durable than the old pearly plastic shell) to the giant 72mm dia. lens. Man, all I have to say is WOW! these are impressive in person. This is such a giant step up. Great work Canon.

Henry, the hard moutn is quite removable. It's jsut a more secure, and actually, sharper way of mounting the M2 to a Camcorder body... http://redrockmicro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1741&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Should help with softness.


You can overcompensate buy turning up the sharpness in the canm, or adjust the GG REALLLLLLLY finely

Cant wait to get my A1

I just checked one out at the local photog shop...Nice to hear that Precision Camera has them in stock... say hi to Jerry Sullivan for me next time you're in there.

Yep it was Precision, you're good Chris. Those guys run a nice shop.

Originally posted by Brent Graham:
The only problem though is the internal battery bay. Although I love the idea, my large capacity 970G got stuck in there!!! I had to stick super sticky tape to the battery to pull it out from the compartment!

CAUTION TO ALL WHO USE 970G SIZE BATTERIES!!!

Originally posted by Chris Hurd:
The 950G is the same size as the older BP-930, and the 970G is the same size as the older 945. The internal battery well in the XH A1 and G1 will accomodate the larger BP-970G.

I'm not sure I want to try and put the 970G battery into my brand new Canon A1 ... has someone else had success in using this battery & not getting stuck?

Don

I imagine there is some trick people are missing to remove it.

last night, i tried to adapt/throw in some of the xlh1 presets for kicks and got some pretty nice looks. the h1 and a1 share the same adjustment settings, but the a1 puportedly has 140% of the color space of the h1. all i did was copy over the same values and multiplied the h1 setting by 4, for starters, to compensate for the differences in value range and color space wherever the value range was updated (-9 to +9 on the h1, as opposed to -50 to +50 on the a1). i have no way to compare these settings to what they actually look like on the h1, but there were some very nice results when i previewed out to my crt. a big thanks to the authors of the original presets for giving us all a nice starting point to work off of.

also, the lcd/viewfinder at the default settings is way too bright and does not give an accurate depiction of what it will really look like when output on a calibrated monitor. taking down brightness almost all the way, and cranking up both color and contrast almost all the way helps, and got me pretty close to what i was seeing on the crt brightness & contrast-wise. there is still a slight difference in hue which i don't think anything can be done about.

i've swapped in three BP945s without a problem.

So, unless I'm missing something - the 945 should be the same size as the 970G... and it ought to work.

Thanks Henry.

Yes -- the BP930 and 950G share the same physical dimensions, as do the BP945 and 970 G.

No, you got me wrong, the 970G works, it's just such a tight fit and so sunk in the battery bay that theres nothing to grab onto in order to pull it out. To get a battery out you have to pull this plastic tab out to the side and the battery gets pushed out by two springs located on the back face of the battery bay, but if your battery is a tight fit, these springs don't push hard enough to get the battery out. Hence I had to stick tape to the battery to 'pull' it out. The batteries work fine, they're just a tight fit for the bay.

I live in Austin too and am considering purchasing the camera. Never been to precision camera. What is their website?

Andrew, it's http://www.precision-camera.com/ -- they're located at 38th and North Lamar.

Sweet thanks.

Battery goes in and releases just fine, no sticking - I actually like the balance with a heavier battery in it.

Thanks!

>>a big thanks to the authors of the original presets for giving us all a nice >>starting point to work off of.

Henry- can you point me towards this thread/link? I'd love to see what you're talking about.
Thanks,
Greg

Henry refers to our XL H1 Custom Presets Download Library (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=66776).

Thanks Chris. This forum is a treasure!

As soon as folks start sharing their XH custom presets, custom functions, and custom display settings, then we'll fire up an XH Custom Settings Download Library.

I've shot enough tape to get a feel for the camera now and wanted to post a couple things I haven't seen yet.

First is that the image stabilizer is amazing. You'll be able to shoot handheld in situations you wouldn't think possible.

Second is that the lcd and viewfinder really suck. The lcd is almost unuseable in sunlight. And the viewfinder, though high-resolution, is way too small. The type from essential info display covers most of the image. If you wear glasses, the high magnification of the viewfinder means you have to work at it to get your eye centered on it. And the lip of the rubber eye piece doesn't fold down so you can't get your eye closer.

On the other hand, the lcd folds every which way, so you can have it on the side of the camera, which is great for keeping an eye on framing during interviews.

chuck

Hey Chuck,

Unfortunatly that is a drawback to all LCD's... grab yourself a lieel lens hood from Hoodman, and you're good to go.

the built in lcd monitor is not in a symmetrical shape , therefore it would be hard to find a hood to completely shade it off. I hope there will be not much light leak from the gaps.

I do have an 7" external LCD, but I still have to use the built in LCD or Viewfinder because the zebras will not transfer to an external LCD.

I've been closely reading and watching this forum and keeping the tissue handy to wipe away the saliva.

I just ordered mine from ZGC and should be fiddling this weekend. Now to decide what to do with my partially broke GL2...

I emailed Hoodman about the A1 and got the following response today.

Dear Steven Glicker,

Thank you for contacting Hoodman about a hood for the 2.8" LCD on the Canon XH A1. At this time we don't have a hood that will work well on it but we will be working on a new hood that will fit the widescreen LCDs that are being used on several new professional camcorders. We will place your inquiry into our file of customers to contact when this new hood does become available.

We hope this information is helpful to you. Please contact us again if you have additional questions about our products.

Sincerely,

Charlene Gordon
Hoodman Corp. Customer Service
20445 Gramercy Place, Ste. 201
Torrance, CA 90501
(800) 818-3946
(310) 222-8608
(310) 222-8623 Worldwide Fax
charlene@hoodmanusa.com
www.hoodmanusa.com

I've shot enough tape to get a feel for the camera now and wanted to post a couple things I haven't seen yet.

First is that the image stabilizer is amazing. You'll be able to shoot handheld in situations you wouldn't think possible.

Second is that the lcd and viewfinder really suck. The lcd is almost unuseable in sunlight. And the viewfinder, though high-resolution, is way too small. The type from essential info display covers most of the image. If you wear glasses, the high magnification of the viewfinder means you have to work at it to get your eye centered on it. And the lip of the rubber eye piece doesn't fold down so you can't get your eye closer.

On the other hand, the lcd folds every which way, so you can have it on the side of the camera, which is great for keeping an eye on framing during interviews.

chuck

Thanks for this, chuck ... when you say the LCD sucks, are you comparing it from memory to another camera's LCD? For instance, I assume it isn't as good as the LCD on the FX1, but is it comparable to the one on the PD170 (or whatever camera you're familiar with)?