I guess I'll start with a question that probably noone will be able to answer. Does anyone know what the zoom/focus rings are like on the standard lens? Just wanting to know if they'll have markings, and repeatability for focus pulling etc?

Aaron

The only thing different that I could see in the announcement is:

" Zoom present position; Focus preset position "

(I assume zoom preseNt must be read as preset)

This sounds like you can save and recall positions or something.
I'm not sure how compatible it would be with focus pulling (that
would be a bummer) since the article says:

" Electronic focus ring; Electronic zoom ring; "

But it seems you can still use the 14x and 16x manual lenses.
So you should still be able to have it that way I guess.

Rob, that's the feeling I got too from looking at that announcement. Guess it's manual lens time which bumps up the cost even more I guess.

Aaron

Aaron, I believe it comes with the 20X lens but I'm not sure if its the "L" series lens mentioned in the description. Heck if that 4999 price is just for the body then this small chipped DV cam is going to be awfully pricey.

They claim you can do a focus pull with this lens in the latest
information page from Canon.

See: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...277#post199277 (latest line under lens)

It looks like you can set a point, then go to another point, set
the speed and have the lens do the focus pulling for you. If this
works it might be pretty fantastic if you need linear pulls since
you can't beat a motor in accuracy.

I think it will "lack" a non-linear pull and the touch of an operator
when everything is not going exactly as planned.

David, the included 20x lens is indeed an "L" series lens.

See my Guide to XL2 Lenses for more info.

Rob, that sounds weird and a bit out of left field to me to do focus pulling this way. You'd have to fiddle a lot if you wanted to change it from shot to shot, and what about multiple position focus pulls for a long scene. Sounds like a half arsed attempt at first glance. One thing that might help though is that programmability. I wonder if you could hook it to a PDA or laptop and control the cameras settings, focus, zoom etc real time with it? Now that might be nice - but yeah an operators realtime adjustment seems to be the better choice.

Aaron