What's wrong with my XL1s?
 

Hi all.

Can some one tell me what is wrong with my Xl1s and how to prevent it happening again in the future? I brought this camera about a year ago and since the very first day I always record in Frame mode. Everything was fine until the wedding I did last week. Every time I pan, the footage is very choppy and not smooth at all. The footage is fine when the camera didn’t move. I just check my Xl1s again and it does show choppy picture in the viewfinder when I pan the camera but when I switched back to normal mode, it smooth again. What I don’t understand is that everything was fine until last week. Why switching back to normal mode appear normal but not frame mode that I always recorded in

Please help.
AP

Hi Allan,

You have to know what the characteristiscs from Frame Mode are, just like 24P.
One of those is, that if you do a pan that's too fast (and you don't have to go fast to have it 'too fast') that it will appear not that smooth.
It may look choppy, but remember: Every movie you see in the theatre, is 24P, and if you have you have interesting things to shoot, the public won't care, as long as all the rest is fine.

If you really want smoothness, go with 60i or 50i (depending if you work with PAL or NTSC), which is Normal Mode.

For weddings, it maybe (MAYBE, lots of people do it otherwise too) is the best to use Normal Mode. Frame mode is a little bit more approperiate for Narrative stuff (movies and such...)
Good luck!

Also shutter speed is a major factor in smoothness etc. My guess is that you
either panned faster or that you changed the shutter speed.

I would also guess that a lot of wedding people use interlaced (normal mode
on the Canon), but I could be wrong on that.

Perhaps that might even be a choice the wedding couple could make? Like
do you want a more realistic look or a tad filmic (don't say it looks like film,
because that's a whole other ballgame)?

I don't think you can call it a "ballgame", Rob. It doesn't really "look" like a real ballgame. You might want to use "ballgamic" to be more accurate.