Why get an A1?
 

What features does the Canon A1 have that persuaded you to purchase it over another similarly-priced HD camera?

That's my question. I've been researching HD cameras for nearly 2 years now, and I'm hoping to make the jump to HD later this year, so I'd just like to know (from actual A1 users) why you chose the camera you did. Thanks!

I love it for its image control, the naturally sharp picture (even when sharpness is turned all the way down), and the best latitude I have seen in this price range. Combine it with some of the fantastic image presets on this board (my fave is TrueColor, modified to my personal liking of course), and you get some fantastic results. Just don't judge it by the factory presets -- they are pretty bland.

My 2c worth:

Price is fantastic,
Image resolution is one of the highest in the range (XH, Z1, HVX, V1 etc)
Massive control over the image
It has a pretty good lens for the money
Reasonably compact
Records to tape (you may think disadvantage but for me it is definitely an advantage)
Performs reasonably in low light (compared to others in the range)

Jon

Thanks guys.

Funny you should mention recording to tape, because I would really like to go to a tapeless workflow and get away from the "wear and tear" of moving parts and the "capture time" associated with tapes. The lack of solid-state media recording is probably the biggest disadvantage for me with the A1.

I do love the images I see on here that have been created with the A1, though. Plus I'm using Canon GL2's right now, so I'm already familiar with Canon setups.

I didn't realize the A1 had better low-light capabilities. I thought I read somewhere that it was slightly worse.

I work with an A1 and an FX1, currently, and there is about 6db of difference in brightness, to the A1's favor.

Well, that's good to know. Thanks.

I own the XH-A1 and the new Sony EX1 XDCAM-EX.

- The XH-A1 is a STEAL. The 3-CCD sensor all things being equal is preferable to CMOS.
- 20:1 zoom range, fluorite glass, it's fast and sharp at both ends.
- Good low light performance.
- Canon "instant" auto focus, it's the best.
- The XH-A1 HDV codec implementation is better than by all rights it should be, excellent motion handling.
- Tapes? Yes it does. I'm not hung up on the point. It's just a media type that is cheap and effective. It has no bearing on the quality.
- Get one of the presets from here, VividRGB, Panalook2 or Truecolor.

Basically, the whole package is complete, and highly tuneable. Very ergonomic and effective. Just a well conceived product end to end.

Compared to the EX1 which has the SXS memory cards, I just don't feel the cameras could be more different. The XH-A1's 60i picture quality is more than a match. I won't harp on it, but it's that good. The EX1 is in another league when it comes to 24p, and the other special effects like over and under cranking, manual lens, solid state memory and Sony brand name account for it's wild popularity.

I feel a special emotional connection to the XH-A1 because it has delivered the mail, and I am instantly confident. I was going to sell it after purchasing the EX1. Honestly, I'm not sure I can. I look at the beautiful images from the EX1, yet in more than a few ways I think the Canon looks better (at 60i).

The XH-A1 has great battery life, intuitive yet comprehensive. But things work the way they are supposed to.

The XH-A1 does have some slight color fringing. But you can see through that, a beautifully transparent, low noise image with saturation, smooth yet razor sharp, totally absent the "digitally processed" look. Highly recommended. (Still is).

Good to hear Brandon and Tom,
Both interesting perspective as you compare and own FX1 and EX1 respectively, so I would say pretty unbiased.
All we need now is someone with a panasonic and we've got the trio!


Travis: What type of work are you going to be doing as you may want to consider the G1 and capture uncompressed footage and omit the need for tapes. But obviously you need a laptop with capture card close by or a firestore (I believe)

Considering the shooting modes (60i, 24P, 30P), the extensive manual controls (3 rings on the lens, lots of external buttons, custom keys, etc..), the massive image tweakability, the solid low light performance and the 20X zoom... I honestly don't feel there really *is* a similarly priced HD camera that competes.

And frankly its hard to beat the versatility of the XH-A1. You can shoot a proper 24P movie with it for a week, then switch over to 60i and grab a wedding gig on Saturday. Pretty much can handle any job you throw at it.

As for solid state recording, yes, that would be a really cool feature. On the plus side, the XH-A1 price point leaves wiggle room to add a Firestore either initially or maybe down the road. If its a major sticking point, then I'd recommend waiting on the upcoming Panny that shoots to SD card (assuming you have a workflow for AVCHD and can afford the greater expense of the camera).

But there's nothing stopping you from going tapeless with an XH A1. There are several tapeless recording options available for this camcorder, most of which are *much* less expensive to add on compared to how high the A1's price would have been if tapeless recording had been built in to the camera in the first place.

If you want tapeless, just add it -- such as the nNovia QuickCapture system -- you're still spending less money this way than you would have if Canon had included some tapeless system in the A1 to begin with.

Plus, since there's a tape transport mechanism already built into the XH series, you'll have the best of both worlds: edit-ready tapeless recording with no capture involved, plus simultaneous recording to tape for a backup and permanent archive purposes.

Going tapeless with the A1 is a no-brainer. There's no reason not to enjoy the benefits of tapeless recording with the XH A1 or G1.

only think i don't like about the A1 is the zoom and focus. You can only do only one at a time, not like the HVX. But hey, I can tell you that for the price range. it hard to beat... I kind of regret selling it to go for the EX1. But hey I will buy one again as a B cam if i have the extra $

I bought mine at the end of 2006 and still think it was the best decision.

Originally, I had wanted the HVX200 and went to a rental house and checked one out. I liked the camera, the feel of it, and the main reason I wanted it was the slo-mo capability. However, for the type of work I do (corporate sales/training tapes and lots of documentary shooting), the tapeless workflow wouldn't work. To me, tapeless is a disadvantage, not an advantage. The Sony tapes I use cost about $16 each and I can ten or 20 of them with me on a shoot for an insignificant cost. With tapeless, I'd have to be able to buy enough cards to shoot for 10 hours on the road for a week, or buy a laptop and hard drives and take another person along to do all the data transferring, checking and backing up. Not feasible for the kind of work I do, although for many people (TV news for example) tapeless is the way to go and makes more sense than tape.

So, after considering it for weeks and weeks (I really wanted that camera), I gave up on the HVX and decided to buy the Sony Z1. I had been shooting mostly with a DSR500ws, and a friend with a Z1 shot some spots for a film festival with his Z1 and I shot some other things to go with a trailer loop that played in the theater, and his stuff looked better than my stuff in similar shots lit the same way with the same lights. I decided then that with HDV, I no longer needed a 2/3' chip camera.

I had almost pulled the trigger for the Sony but the XH A1 was announced and I was able to wait until it was available. I never buy a first generation camera, but I considered the XH A1 second generation, since the XL H1 had been out for some time and they used all the same chips and signal processing. The Z1 was similar in that the FX1 was a first generation. So I was comfortable with both cameras.

What sold me on the Canon were three main things: the lens, the 24p capability (Z1 doesn't do that well), and the price. Given the lens and the 24p I still would have bought the Canon if the price had been the same as the Z1. The main issue for me with the lens is that the Canon has a real aperture ring instead of that little thumbwheel the Z1 has. The fact that it has a much bigger zoom range is a bonus. The wide angle end is the same as the Sony, but that 20:1 can be handy sometimes.

I shoot everything 24F HDV, capture in FCP with the HDV1080P24 setting, edit HDV and export with whatever I need. I've had no problems at all with the camera and still consider it the best deal on the market. The balance is not as good as the Sony for hand held work, and if you hold the camera by the handle for a walking "doggiecam" type shot, it wants to tilt to the right. With the Sony you can balance it on your finger and get a smoother shot under those circumstances. The Canon also seems more nose-heavy than the Sony, and the Sony has a bigger LCD screen. I also like the mounting of Sony's screen up on the handle. It's a lot easier for an assistant to see the distance readout for following focus. With the Canon, the assistant has to be on your left side, or if on the right he has to be able to look down through the handle to see the readout. If you don't do a lot of dolly shots, this is probably not a big deal.

Other than balance and LCD position, there are only a couple of other minor negatives I've run across. The big one is the fact that there is no way to program one of the buttons to turn on and off the OIS. You have to go into the menu to do that, which is a pain. And second, if you want to shoot a mixture of line level and mic levels, that's difficult. If you have a camera-mounted mic for recording ambient effects, which I do, and want a line level input on the other channel, you have to run your first mic out to the mixer and back. You can only select line or mic for both channels at once. My second mic is usually a wireless, and mixers I use give me line or mic, so it's not a big deal for me but could be for some.

There is one more thing that probably works to keep this camera out of production houses, and that's the unavailability of decks. You can play back the 60i HDV footage on a Sony HDV deck, but not the 24F or 30F. With so many people wanting to shoot 24p these days, if you do that for a production house, you'd have to let them use your camera to load footage. It's too bad somebody doesn't make an HDV deck that would take JVC, Sony and Canon tapes in all frame rates.

The latest Sony HDV deck, the HVR-M35, now supports Canon 24F and 30F frame mode playback.

Wow, thanks for all of the great info and opinions everyone, especially from those of you who have other cameras. From the comments I can see why the A1 is a winner.

Chris, I understand I could go with nNovia or a Firestore system, but both of those still use actual hard drives with moving parts. I really like the idea of recording to solid state memory and not having issues with moving parts that wear out or break down. Plus I'm using a Merlin and adding a HDD to the camera will put it over the weight limit. At the end of the day, it's not a deal-breaker for me, but it did seem to be the biggest drawback with the camera for me. I would also like a larger LCD screen (especially for my Steadicam work) but again it's not a deal-breaker.

I shoot primarily weddings, and I didn't mention this before because I simply wanted a variety of opinions on why people chose the A1 over another camera regardless of what type of work they shoot. If anyone has any wedding specific comments, I'd be glad to hear them too.

Thanks again so much for all of the informative comments. Very much appreciated!

I was comparing the XH-A1 to the Panasonic HVX-200 when I bought it. The HVX, at about 75% higher price, only had two advantages that I could see over the XH-A1: On-board tapeless workflow, and variable frame rate. You can get tapeless workflow by recording directly to a hard drive if you really want it. And the variable frame rate can be done with video editing software anyway, I think. So for the price, I was very pleased with the XH-A1.

Well, lets see how that new Sony Flash recorder pans out when its released later this year (I thought I heard Sept/Octish??). By all means it should be fully compatable with the XH-A1's HDV output since Sony now uses progressive 24fps HDV recording (just like 24F). I'm really hoping the introduction of the Sony Flash recorder gets some of the other companies in the tapeless business to explore similar devices.

I'll have to keep an eye out for that. That would be cool if it was 100% compatible, although I have my doubts.

So far it appears that its essentially just a firewire based solid state recorder. Not sure if you've seen the thread, but its being discussed here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=116520

I think someone actually tested this with their Canon and it was working. Hopefully the only hurdle will be mounting it, since its designed to specifically attach to a specific model only. If Sony is smart they'll sell this with a hot shoe mounting bracket and move boatloads of them. Assuming its priced competitively, what FX/V1/Z1/XL/XH owner in the market for a tapeless system wouldn't want this over a hard drive based recorder?

I'm mostly afraid of the final pricing on this thing... we *are* talking about Sony after all...

Travis,
I chose the A1 over the FX1 because I plan to use it for more than weddings, and may need up to 4 XLRs. I have used the VX2100 over the last 3 years and was comfortable with Sony, so the move to Canon was a hard one for me. I have found this camera to be very deep, very capable in every situation and feels like a pro cam. I've used the FX1, the Z1 and the HVX for other companies, and find in every case that I miss the A1 alot. The HVX is great and has a great look to the footage and is as tweakable as the A1, but you can only shoot HD to P2 or Hard drive and that would be no good for me. It also has a very grainy gain. The HVX200a does look promising thoug and may be one to consider. I have 2 A1s now and may add an HVX200a as a primary camera. Anyway, I am very pleased and compared to the Z1/FX1 this is a real workhorse, and very worthy of pro work.
Bill

Yeah, I've been keeping tabs on that thread, but it's still a bit of a pipe-dream for me until I hear that it officially is 100% compatible. Like you I'm also a bit worried about the final price for the unit and for cards. Any word on where that might end up at?

Thanks for the thoughts, Bill. Although I shoot primarily weddings, I do shoot other projects so having those other features is nice too. The 3 things I wish it had were solid state recording, overcranking option and a larger LCD screen. But in the grand scheme of things it sounds like those are options I might be willing to live without. Heck, I can always mount a larger screen on the camera and maybe add on a tapeless workflow, so it's really just the overcranking that I wish it had. Certainly not a deal-breaker.

I chose the XH-A1 for it's CCD's, I do a lot of events where flash is constant and I was not pleased with how the CMOS handles flash. The price tag is also very attractive and so is image quality. The camera is plastic though and the tapes don't always feed perfectly, this camera will break if you drop it however professional features make up for the built quality issues. Built in light meter(!) auto zoom to a set point, total image control, blah, blah.

The CMOS is the big thing that is keeping me away from other cameras. I shoot a lot of weddings and so there are flashes going off constantly, and I think a CMOS would look pretty bad. I suppose the plastic design keeps the weight down, but I would like a more rugged build. I have that complaint with my GL2's, but then again they haven't ever failed me so I shouldn't complain about the plastic.

I didn't realize the A1 had a built-in light meter. Interesting.

Overcranking is more possible than you might think. I can get great results in Vegas by taking 60i footage shot with a 1/180 shutter and slowing it down to 24p with the resampling feature. It is smooth, very cool looking. That's a universal trick, by the way, not limited to the A1. I shot my first feature with my former camera, a Z1U, and utilized that trick for a few shots that came out beautifully crisp, smooth, and ever so slow. :)

Well, that's not really overcranking, but it achieves a similar effect. True overcranking, however, gives you many more options. For example, you could shoot at 48fps and reduce to 50% speed and have perfect slow-motion footage, or you could reduce the speed even more and follow your workflow and have REALLY slow slo-mo footage that still looks good. If you try to reduce footage to a very slow speed (say 10%) and you haven't overcranked it's not going to look nearly as good no matter how much software you run it through, as far as I know.

I use FCP, but I just recently discovered that Motion has a resampling option and supposedly gives great results for slo-mo footage. I haven't tried it yet myself, though.

In the end, it's not a feature that will keep me from buying a camera. It's on my dream list, but not my must-have list. Thanks for the tip for Vegas, though.

Chris--I didn't know about the HVR-M35! Thanks for that, it's great news. Now there's no reason smaller production houses can't go with the XL or XH series.

Travis,
The A1 may be plastic but it's not plastic the way the GL2 is plastic. This thing is a piece of machinery and it feels like it.
Bill

Well, Evan King (in the aformentioned thread) was told by Sony that it would be around $1,000 in Canada. Looking at some of Sony's Canadian vs US pricing I'd guess that would translate into around $800-850 US. If they can get this out for an $800 MSRP with online sale prices in the $700 range I think this thing will sell like hot cakes.

Well, that's good. The GL2's aren't bad, but I would like something that feels a bit more rugged.

Yeah, for a true solid state recording device I would pay $700-800 for sure.

Hey Travis,

I purchased my A1 for the following reasons:

1. 2 years or so using the XL2 - I liked the familiarity of the A1's controls etc ...

2. I couldn't justify the cost of an XL-H1 - I now own two A1s for the same price

3. I wanted a camera to use with the Merlin - and the A1 flies beautifully on it

4. The spectacular footage I saw produced by guys on this forum - i.e. Steven Dempsey, Patrick from StillMotion etc ...

All the best with your decision. I couldn't recommend the A1 more - it's an awesome camera.

Cheers,

Matthew.

Thanks for the post, Matthew!

I think that the A1 is much more ruggedly built than the GL2. While I wouldn't want to drop either of them, the A1 would fare much better in a drop test.

The Canon A1 seems to be okay for Hollywood !

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/new...th-crank-2.php

Well guys, I unwillingly gave my A1 the drop test from 5 feet high the other day and it passed with flying colours.

Pretty cool. I guess I'll have to check out the movie.

Why did I choose Canon A1?
-the price
-ccd
-fluorite lens
-20x zoom
-wide lens
-tape
-HDV well established workflow
-did I mention the price?
-possibility to work 4:3, 16:9, dv and hdv
-so many exemples of great work by users
-possibility to upgrade to pal if needed (and pay only if needed)
-possibility to add firestore if wanted to go tapeless with the safety of tape backup
-Canon comitment to optic and pro images
-ergonomy of the camera
-so many options for customization
-great support on this site
-and let's not forget the price..

Thanks, Robert!