I don't get it either !

Floris - on October 21st you said you had placed your order for an XH-A1 :
Honestly, it seems at the moment that you're changing your mind every 2 or 3 days on what machine you are buying! As lots of people have advised, i would wait until all these machines are in the stores (will be approx. one month until they are - V1 is now scheduled in Europe for 3rd or 4th week of November, and XH-A1 etc will be out there too by then) and then go try them out.

You say that there is no store near you with these machines. Even if the capital city of Holland doesn't have them (it should..) then buy a cheap plane ticket to London and go to a store there. Plenty of specialist photo retailers there. Plenty of cheap flights in Europe. I went London to Prague for GBP35 return a coupla years ago. Easyjet, Go + other airlines. Or go on Eurostar train direct to London Waterloo International. A day trip or a w/e in London is a very cheap price to pay for 'making the right choice for you' for your new machine, especially if your spending Eur5000++ for the cam and accessories.

Many people on this great board, including Tony, Chuck, Jay, Heath and Eric, have advised to go to a dealer to try them out before making a final decision.

Here are some of their comments on making a decision on a new cam :

Excellent advice, Stu... a roundtrip ticket from Schiphol to Gatwick and back on EasyJet is less than 100 Euros, no overnight stay required, just a day trip to do some hands-on research. Floris, it's the best money you can spend and the best way to approach an expensive camera purchase. The "right" camera for you is the one which *feels best* in your hands. If you're serious about buying, take then please take Stu's advice. It's a little confusing trying to keep up with your rapidly changing decisions around here...

To yank this thread back to the subject.... B&H had the 6x listed for pre-order with a price of $2,699.95 Yikes, that's seems almost too cheap for an HD lens.

link? i cant find it.

Here is your link for the Canon XL H1 6x wide angle zoom.

It is my understanding that this could also be used on other Canon XL series cameras.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ughType=search

The pricing is excellent. Particularly when you take into consideration the difficulties of building a quality wide-angle zoom rated for HD resolution.

But that still won't prevent people from griping about the lens.

Do I read that right 3.4mm - 20mm. So effectively x7.2 = 20mm - 140mm.
Right now the 20x is 5.4 - 108mm or (x7.2) = 35 - 750mm (approximately)
So the 6x is covering just the 20-35mm range? Or am I missing something?

I know there are advantages re: lesser weight smaller size.

3.4*7.2 = 24.5 and 20*7.2 = 144 so the effective range of the 6x in 35 mm terms is 24.5 to 144 mm. The stock lens at 5.4 to 108 scales to 39 - 778 mm so what the 6x gives you that the 20x doesn't is the 24.5 to 39 mm range. Doesn't seem like much on paper but it implies a field of view 1.6 times larger than the 20x at it's mimimum setting and that can make a big difference when shooting, for example, in a tight space.

not to mention that zoom lenses like the 20x have a good bit of distortion at the wide end so you would likely achieve much less barrel distortion with the 6x in the 39mm-80mm range that you would on the 20x.

awesome. that price looks so cheap and makes me worry about the quality of the lens. but I'll have to try it out before i pass judgment. woohoo i was expecting it to be around $4000

The 6X was reported as arriving first week of Nov....

Anyone got their mits on this lense yet?

Hope Chris gets one for testing and reporting back.

Chris (hopefully :), we are eagerly awaiting for the first report on this lens as soon as its out or you can get your hands on a demo sample. I am very tempted to finally buy the HL-H1 (body + the 6X Wide Angle Lens as a pack). Also (and I may be pushing the envelope here) will there be any fish-eye or wider-angle adapter that could be used with this lens (as its so wide to start-with unless a very high-quality larger diameter wide attachment is used I'd count on severe vignetting, barrel distortion and chroma aberration issues).

Anyway, I cannot wait to see some footage and a user review. This is one sweet looking piece of optics. Go Canon! :)

Everybody is talking about a kit with the 6x wide. But as far as I know, Canon has not confirmed that there will be one. Some may think it is likely, but the Canon XL-H1 is modular and like the JVC GY-HD110, it's up to you to buy another lens for it. There are no different kits to say so.

Anyway, I am also interested in how this lens will perform. If it is good, this will be a no-brainer. Perfect wide-angle and an iris ring on the lens.

0If Canon does not sell the XL-H1 as body only option to match the new 6X Wide Angle Lens, they will lossse a lot of potential new sales. It is unrealistic in having to buy the 20x Zoom forcefully just for the body. That would put the whole kit (XL-H1 + 20x lens + 6X Wide Angle Lens) close to the $15K rpice range and that would make positively no sense as far as economics. For one thing for example, it would be out of my shopping lists instantly.

$8999 + $2999 = $11,998 which really isn't very close to $15K

B&H lists the 6x at $2699 so it's a bit cheaper than that