Lonnie, you have repeatable focus and distance readouts, but they're in the viewfinder, not on the lens. Same thing basically.

hi all,

I think Reason for Canon made small incerements over H1 is they are working on new camera has AVHC codec for tapeless recording option. now they are gaining time with this upgrade.

Alkim

The cost of tapeless archiving point mentioned a few post prior makes no sense to me. Harddrives are so cheap now that they are actually less expensive to store on than high quality mini DV tapes. And yes, harddrives fail, but tapes break as well. In truth, I've had tapes break, but can't recall *knock on wood* ever having a harddrive fail.

As for the Red costing $40K to $80K, that's also misleading to me. I think a lot of Red users don't pimp out their Red and get great results. They even post on the Red forum, if this statement is doubted.

Well, I had XL1 to XL H1 cameras and now a RED, so feel able to comment this. First of all, I would say the real cost of RED comparable to XL H1 package is about $23.000 -$25.000 including the Birger EF-adapter (which starts to ship in the near future) BUT without any lens. However, if one has Canon EF-lenses, the Birger EF-adapter should be a fine solution.

In my case starting to shoot with RED was easier than with the XL H1. Still, other people may have found it the other way around. When I got the XL H1, I spent a lot of time --several days-- fine tuning the CPs to get neutral colors. The usei interface of RED is rather intelligent and easy to learn. To get great images ... well ... with any camera it takes time to learn to push the best out of the equipment.

I think Lauri has a great point. While by all means there is somethig to fine tuning a custom preset to get a desired look, it's equally as great if not better to be able to simply record in raw and get whatever look you want.

Again, if you only plan on buying a camera to shoot movies then you should buy a Red. On the other hand if you only plan on shooting movies you probably should just rent a camera because you can get a pimped out package for a month or so for less then the cost of buying the red body alone. I don't think red is practical for running and gunning (maybe scarlet will be, whatever it ends up being) but for ENG I've had great results with the canon and obviously it can shoot a movie.

So while I think it's a fair comparison as far as strictly cine-style shooting goes When I buy a camera I want something that I can use for as many different things as possible, with the xl-series I've had that. If I shoot another movie with a budget over 50k I'll start looking at other options but until then the canon has been a great tool and a great investment for me. Hopefully one day I'll only shoot movies and never do another Doc, or event shoot or anything and then I'll buy a red (or whatever the equivalent is) but if I'm going to still try and cover all my bases the canon is the better choice.

But yeah the updates are still pretty week.

note: if someone wants to trade me a red with lenses and storage for THE xl-h1 that shot "the signal" I will retract all of my above comments and say how I love shooting ENG with the red ;)

If I may speculate, my guess is that Canon introduced this update to keep the XL-series product alive bit longer. If I remeber well it was one of Chris' wisdom that Canon never introduces new products in NAB. If so, this is an exception and may reveal they have made a strategic change. Such as extending the life of XL-series to win some time in developing a new approach, which I suspect will be with CMOS-sensor and EF-lenses. Who knows, maybe it's not that far way that the next generation of cameras will a fusion between a DSLR and a video camera. In fact, Nikon is not that far from it. Furthermore, the Canon Ixus series pocket cameras have already such a video feature. Just put a SD video taken with these new Ixus camera aside with the old XL1/XL1s footages and get surprised.

Ixus in Europe = Elph in the Americas. Agree with the point about VGA movie mode quality of those pocket cameras. Plus the new ones do time-lapse, which is a lot of fun.

The SONY EX-3 will be introduced by SONY soon. It looks like the Canon series as far as being shoulder mounted. Wait till NAB...you heard it here fiirst.

Sony EX3 discussion already underway at http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=119185

OOPS.....never go there that much. I know some of the particulars which I will keep to myself till the introduction.

Just uploaded thirty-plus photos of the H1S / H1A and menu displays... somewhat rough quality as they're only snapshots taken without any real planning. I had an opportunity to shoot these and wanted to post 'em up right away, since the next several days are gonna be really busy here in Las Vegas...

http://www.dvinfo.net/gallery/browseimages.php?c=55

In my view this is an incremental upgrade, and that's fine, but . . .

My expectations are that flaws are supposed to be addressed in an incremental upgrade and the biggest flaw in ALL XL series has been the stock viewfinder.
Yes, I know, there is an expensive and power sucking B&W option, but Sony
has come out with a stock LCD that works. This major problem should have been addressed and a suitable answer provided for Canon fans by now.

Off topic: hey Jacques, I'm not sure I have a current email address from you. Please contact me, chris at dvinfo dot net. Hope to see you Monday morning at NAB.

At the very lease you can buy the mrc1 for your canon in a few months.

I hope that we (current XL-H1 owners) are also entitled to get this firmware update. I am sure many of the feature of this camera can also be added to the current XL-H1 through a firmware upate. I would appreciate that.

People who will buy the new model will still get a better and improved lens, while loyal customers will get some benefits as well.

So Canon, please let us join the fun.