Keep up the good work Chris, your efforts are greatly appreciated!

Dan O'Bannon

I dont really know if this wish list work or not, but as far as I know I just one the new XL? to talk to me, when i do a bad shoot and Im depress it should blame itself "Im sorry _____ I should have known that..."

LOL....And then.

Turning it on:

"Good Morning."

Turning it off:

"My mind is going."

While it is recording it whispers:

"I can read lips."

Anyways. good one....LOL.


Rob:D

"The tape door is ajar... the tape door is ajar..."

When is a tape door not a tape door? When it is a jar.

Didn't Chrysler do the talking car in the '80's (and let's not forget the Minolta Talker) and give up after a few years?

hand grip
 

What I really would like to see on the XL2 is a softer underbelly on the hand grip. I'm developing carpal-tunnel syndrome from the rock hard surface of the grip on my XL1. After 10 minutes it really hurts.
Michael

Let's not for get us who aready have Carpel-Tunnel and wrist problems. I would like to see the handgrip just a little smaller for us that don't have large hands, plus it would help have a more natural position to grip it. Even if your hands are on the large side, even a smaller handgrip would mean you could have an even greater and tighter grip. I normally have the strap pulled really tight, so the hand barely gets in, then it gives better support physically holding your hand in place, but still would like it a little smaller grip.

I also would like an updated MA-200 adapter, one with a great or deeper arch that way it would sit on the shoulder a whole lot better than it does now. I still think even with the shoulder mount the XL1s is a tripod camera. Once you have external gear on and the weight goes up it doesnt sit comfortable on your shoulder.

And a better Viewfinder - the one at the moment is pretty bad, even my cheapo Sonys I have used have had clear and sharper EVF. It just seems to 'bleed' a little too much to focus real tight, so all I can do at the moment is turn the colour right down which seems to help, but far from what you would expect from a Lens producing company like Canon.

And more more thing I can think of and doesnt seem to be mentioned is for the Canon Owners Club to be extended to Europe!!! We difinatly have Canons here - just look at my fellow countrymen in 28 Days Later, if thats not a good advert for Canon capabilities I do not know what is. So come on Canon give something to us Euro PALs of yours!!!

rack focus (i think)
 

Since the lenses are servo controlled, I wouldn't think it would take much to put in an electronic focus system (i believe it's called rack) that a person could focus on 2 different points and at the press of a button the camera would focus (and zoom) from the first to the second preset focus. I wouldn't think this is far fetched considering almost everything is already in the camera. I don't know if the IS II lens has a synchro in it or not. Does this seem far fetched? Why not take advantage of a servo controlled lens?

That sounds like a great idea. If you could set zoom points and focus points independantly it would be great. So you could have some great focus pulls and/or zooms when you wanted. I dont think its too far feched from reality. Maybe if you focused on a point - pressed and hold button until its memorised (like WBalance button) and then focused on second point and then pressed a button. Then the camera could just remember the points and switch between the two. Just like WhiteBalance remembers set points. You could just have two buttons like F1 and F2, Z1 and Z2 so select the points for either focus points or zoom points.

I really love your idea now Don!

I don't mean to blow my own horn, but
about 3 years ago I posted that exact
suggestion of being able to set and rack between two focal points
on the DV-L list serve. A year after that
Canon came out with that feature . . . on their "professional"
video lens.

Hey, at least they listened ;)

get a 3D lens for this thing, like the prototype developed for the XL1s, but this time base the shutters on technology that will not disintegrate itself in couple of years, use high quality MPEG2 processors, not like the ones on the JVC, add wireless diversity 2-channel receiver to the body, have full 1280x720 pixel resolution, with 60p and downconverter to 24p, like the Varicam, and straight 24p recording that would have a lot less compression than the 60p footage.

Wow, good luck getting all that! :-)

sounds like a very expensive XL1x
takeshi

OH what the heck, I miss this catagory anyhow.

Here's my NAB 2004 XL-(X) wishlist.

WHile I think that HDV would be fun if you're going to be shooting and down converting to mpeg-2 why not just have a 40gb built in hard drive, heck the ipod has that and it doesn't seem much larger then the tapedrive mechanism.

I would love 1/2" or 2/3" chips and I think it would be silly to not offer progressive scan and 16x9.

I believe they should offer the ground glass alternative to a P+S That they could use with their new 16x9 capable lenses.

I think it would be great to have timecode input/ output along with a couple of xlr inputs.

An Sd slot for storing pictures and scene files would be sweet.

IF they want to ad a LCD monitor I think it should be an optional accessory.

I think that it should offer at least 24p recording and hopefully some other options. I think variable framerate like the varicam would be ideal but It's a cost that might not have to be incurred. It should have at least a firewire 400 and I would prefer a firewire 800 port for exporting your already digitized footage.

I wwould love a standard B+W viewfinder or a HR color VF (but would prefer the former)

I try to do little ENG so I don't care about the straps or shoulder mount but if they want to have a seperate configured one that would be great to.

Must retain interchangable lenses. I think it would be great to have a program for adjusting the look that the CCD's (or CMOS? LMOS? LMAO's) have in camera give it a painting option like the f900. But that might be a little much. I don't know.

But I'd relaly just like to see something with at least half of those options from canon in a month.

Brain behind the Ipod.
 

For some reason. Nick hit it on the head. Ipod and its hard drive. I don't think the ipod's HD is fast enough to encode real-time DV footage, but if so then all they at apple need next is a device controler for the Ipod to plug into. Then from that you just stick it to the back of your camera with a short 6 to 4 pin firewire cable and press record on the controler. just an interesting thought.


Rob

"Must retain interchangable lenses...."

true, but I question some of the comments made that it should be backward compatible with existing XL1 lenses. In my opinion all this does is LIMIT the potential XL2....I would rather have an XL2 that takes REAL lenses or better improved XL2 lenses than being limited to only using average XL1 type lenses.... I would rather have the XL2 be more "revolutionary" than just "evolutionary"...

Why should it get an firewire 800 port? It is not even fully using
the 400 port. It is only doing around 40 mbps instead of the 400
firewire supports. True, if you would get a harddisk in there it
could be used for faster transport of the footage, but I'd be okay
with a 400 interface then as well. If it is going to be compatible
with DV (why wouldn't it be?) then I don't think they can do
variable framerate since the DV specs don't allow for it.

Harddisk recording is first on my list. But it should still support
tape I think (record to both) for storage and support of reading
tapes. 16x9 and true progressive would be very neat to have
as well, indeed.

Touch screen focus.

24p and HD and I'll be sound as a pound, baby, yeah.

I agree that new lenses would need to be made, especially if one were to take advantage of the HD recording capability but I also believe that in order for the next XL model to stay revolutionary it will have to have lenses that are interchangable (on a prosumer camcorder). I also agree that it would probably be backwards compatable (not neccisarily SHOULD be) I mena you can through an SD lens on an f900 but I don't think it would be the smartest thing to do. I think that they'll probably retain the mount that they have but it would be super cool if they switched over to a pro (bayonet) style mount, so we could go out and rent some digiprimes to see what real HD lenses are capable of!

The only reason i'd like to see firewire 800 is if there were a 30 or 40 gig diskdrive or two 20 gigs raided so that you could use the small ipod like disk drives, I would like to not sit there for 40 minutes transfering over my already rendered footage. (hmm I guess I just want to sit there for 20 minutes...) oh well.

If I where to build a harddisk system in a camera I would build it
easy removable. Because it might be feasible to purchase a
harddisk for a client and give that to them. Or you might want to
shoot certain things on a certain harddisk. Or you might want to
swap harddisks.

Better yet, with such a system you could mount it directly into
your NLE system (without the need for the camera to be there,
and so someone else might shoot something else on another disk).
In a multi person company you could even have a dedicated
harddisk for each person which also contains his or hers presets
and other shooting preferences.

Now that WOULD be neat. We'll have to wait and see I guess...

I totally agree... oh I can't wait for these days to come...

XL2 Wish List
 

Audio 1 needs separate level control for the 2 Channels. Existing system is impossible to juggle unless you use 2 identical Mics. With Radio mic & a shotgun mic the levels are different & of course levels change dramatically if lapel mic is 30 feet from the shotgun. I gave up & now use a 2nd XL1 to record 2nd line of Audio. Much easier & I end up with 2 completely useable Audio tracks. Nothing 1 extra control dial would'nt fix.
Underscan flipout LCD could be useful, but really the B/W viewfinder is brilliant.
Hard disc recording & HDV would be great.
Have been watching existing footage on a High Definition TV & must say the old XL1s does do a great job.
Like the guy @ cahnnel 9 here said to me one day, "Why do they bugger round with those huge Betacam cameras. This quality is more than good enough for Broadcast".
I gave them up years ago.
Besides TV systems in 99.9% of households can't even reproduce VHS quality.
How many people do you know with a wide screen, Hi Def digital Telly.
Well done Canon. I will never go anywhere else. PC in OZ

I'd like the camera to tell me the color temperature it settles on when it white balances! Also, a photo button override/disable option to avoid those accidental bumps.

Well, as long as we're talking about color temperature... I'll go you one further.

One thing I've always wanted to be able to do is manually control my white balance - (yes I know how to white balance a camera) - What I mean by that is, not only have the camera give you the color temp that it chose, but allow you to then dial it up or down from there. There are few things I find more frustrating than having to rewhitebalance 4 or 5 times to get the temp that I'm looking for.

I know this is possible in higher end cams (as is the option to see your color temp). It would be great to see this at a 'prosumer' level.

(then again, if we got everything we wanted, i guess it would no longer be a 'prosumer' level cam, and would cost about 20K)

-Luis

Hear hear! Luis, I forgot about that one! I wish the XL-next and my DVC-Pro camera had a manual color temperature dial. At least a "plus .2 and minus .2" switch like AE shift has.

of course, the XL2 will have an inbuilt hard drive. Why wouldn't it? Canon will really want to rock the cradle surely.

Canon, please add an audible beep once for Record & twice for Pause like some Sony cameras run. I often miss the buttom & record the floor cos I always watch focus & framing but not the tally light up the top right hand corner. I like that Sony warning system.

<<<-- Originally posted by Pete Constable : Canon, please add an audible beep once for Record & twice for Pause like some Sony cameras run. I often miss the buttom & record the floor cos I always watch focus & framing but not the tally light up the top right hand corner. I like that Sony warning system. -->>>

Sure, as long as there is a button to disable it!

>>>Canon, please add an audible beep once for Record & twice for Pause like some Sony cameras run. I often miss the buttom & record the floor....<<<

ROTFL, I'm glad I'm not the only one. It's not an issue unless I'm having to start/pause recording a LOT, but it invariably happens when I'm shooting for sports highlights (especially frustrating when recording the floor/ground and then hitting pause thinking you're hitting record...and then a homerun, touchdown, or 3 pointer occurs....arrrrgh, man do I feel like an idiot!). However, I also agree with Dylan in that, you'd have to be able to disable it in certain scenarios.
Randy

Hard disk recording would be sweet. Slap in the IDE drive of your choice, I'd be in heaven. Heck, even direct firewire to HD recording would be nice. I'm so sick of using DV tapes.

But seriously folks, Canon's really doing us a disservice by leaving us in limbo for so long. We haven't had a decent new video camera for them in almost two years. The XL1S is practically ancient. And we don't even hear a peep out of them. This thing had better blow us away, or else I will be seriously disappointed in Canon.

I'm with Peter...it is a shame Canon won't even give us a possible release date....I hate to say it, but in spite of what I have invested in my 3 XL1s, I may dump them and move to the pany DX100a(s) soon....

Not sure if anyone added this to the list yet, but hey...since we're dreaming... how about an SDI out that grabs the signal prior to the DV compression?

Even better, an HDV/DV model with an HD-SDI out.

That way you could record HDV to tape, 10bit Uncompressed HD out HD-SDI, DV to tape, or Uncompressed 10bit SD out SDI.

Hey, like I said, we're dreaming right?


Speaking of dreaming, if Canon dares to renew this XL1s rebate one more time this will become a nightmare.

My guess - rebate ends June 30th, and we hear something at DV Expo East in mid July.

(then again, I said the same thing about NAB. Hey, I'll be right eventually)

-Luis

Well I haven't pitched anything into this eternal thread for over a year. So here are a few ideas.

1. Maintain the modular architecture of the XL system. It's an excellent architecture that's yet to be exploited fully.

2. 16:9 native CCD's would be nice, particularly if accompanied by optional 16:9 high-res monochrome CRT viewfinder and good-res 16:9 color viewfinder.

3. Switchable frame rates of 30 and 24 with true progressive imaging would be just ducky.

4. Those P+S Technik folks have made enough cash off of the XL1 system. Time for Canon to flick them off the table. Introduce a Mini-15-like adapter for the "XL2". Or make P+S an offer they can't refuse. This would provide a segue to...

5. Introduction of a set of reasonably affordable prime lenses for the "XL2", well-matched for the camera's resolution. Lenses are Canon's strength and few can match their design and production techniques in this segment. This, coupled with #4, would seem to be a very good strategic move for Canon. Good synergy with their other professional lines without alienating their big broadcast customers.

In the end, the "XL2" system should become truly expandable within the Canon line, from the basic $4,000 setup up to a fully-equipped filmmaking rig weighing in at perhaps 10x that figure.

Such a big splash would instantly demote the DVX100A to a weenie-cam. (Not that I'd cheer this, since I also own one!)

Howdy from Texas,

Ah, but perhaps they have given you a possible release date. All you need to do is study your history.

Quick everyone search!

A reference that might, or might not, be handy for searchers.

Either way it's an interesting place to browse.

getting OT:16:9
 

Ken said >>" 16:9 native CCD's would be nice, particularly if accompanied by optional 16:9 high-res.... "<<

So does native mean that it wouldn't compress (squash) the image if played on a 4:3 screen (as stated will happen in the manual if shot in "16:9") ? Is there an anamorphic lens out there that does this well with the XL1S now?
Thanks for listening,
Randy

I think the native in that sentence was meant to indicate the
"XL2" should support 16:9 out of the box without any extra
equipment or quality cuts.

Yes. It would be nice if the "XL2" shot 16:9 without any squishing or manipulation such as cameras like Sony's DSR-570 or Panasonic's SDX900. It should also be able to produce 4:3 by only sampling the center portion of the CCD, just as those cameras do.