New Owner's First Impressions: Dennis John
submitted by e-mail 3/18/98 -- reprinted with permission

"Aside from using Beta SP, I own both the XL1 & VX1000 and use either, depending on the occasion involved. The Canon is big & very flashy (big white body), so I hardly use it for TV documentaries where I'm traveling around a lot. Also, if I'm in the city I don't use it because it's very noticable (this may not matter to some). I do like the Canon because of the interchangable lenses but must say that I don't even own any extra lenses and probably never will. I mostly use this camera on a tripod indoors for both studio work & on-camera interviews. It is a pretty big camera that makes lugging it around no fun at all. This camera can also record audio on four seperate channels and can even output each signal seperately also (the VX1000 only has two channels). I've never found a real good use for these extra channels as we can add extra ones in post production & editing (over 100 tracks using Premiere). These tracks can be handy, don't get me wrong. Actually once I used them to record a couple of minutes of ambient sound for each scene I had shot just as a backup! Very cool!

"The VX1000 I own I use mostly for traveling and TV docs. I must admit that I use it a lot more then the XL1 partially because of it's compact size and un-obvious presence. It's pretty durable because I've banged it around alot and it still works. The VX1000 has everything for professional results. Color bar generator (not in the manual), zebra stripes and the amazing 'super steady shot'. The Canon has all of these but again, having both I'd rather haul around a VX1000 then a Canon. What I wish the VX1000 had was a better optical zoom, but again...It has never prevented me from getting any of the footage I needed.

"From experience, I think the Sony has a better auto white balancing the one on the XL1. Both do have their 'color' problems, so you will unfortunately have to learn real videography techniques and lighting. NEITHER is a good low light camera. I use a $2000 S-VHS compact JVC camera for that. Both VX1000 & XL1 produce undesirable 'effects' in low light conditions. Don't expect good color from ANY camera at one candle light of power! Who are we trying to kid here?

"Sony could of made the VX1000 a little better in ways but for being the first 3-CCD digital camera, its a real WINNER. I think Canon is trying to sell the XL1 to photographers by marketing it this way. I myself, or others I know have never been in a situation where it is absolutely neccesary to have had different lenses for the video camera. Because the lack of need for this feature I had, it hardly made any sense to spend the extra cash! If used properly, they both can produce really high quality video and I love them both.

"All the rest of their features are very similar if not the same. One thing Sony does have that Canon does not is offer, is miniDV tapes with memory for use with Sony digital cameras. These tapes will act like a 'flight data recorder' and recorder every setting of the camera at the time of recording. This comes in very handy for matching scene shots taken over a couple of days or weeks. Especially for recording outdoor nature docs. The memory stores exposure levels, gain, zoom, etc... It's very useful if you think about it.

"Well, that's it...but still no toasted bread huh? If I knew what I knew now, I would of probably bought two VX1000's instead of the Canon. Don't get me wrong, I just can't justify the extra coin for features you will hardly ever need or use."

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Written by Dennis John
Thrown together by Chris Hurd