New camera, (2 weeks). Can't talk with my Mac. The connection at the camera has play. While it worked the first few times, I've been suspicious about it. Is it normal? Thanks...Peter

How much play is rather subjective. There may be a little play but that would be somewhat difficult to quantify.

A better way is to look carefully at the pins and see if they are damaged. They can be damaged so it is important to take care whenever you use your firewire port. If you do not know what normal ones look like, you can go to the store and look at the ones on other cameras. That will give you a good idea what normal ones look like.

Thanks for the reply, Nathan. In my 3 digital SLR's and my sony DV, the connection is firm, no play at all. In my GL-1X, there is play. So, if there is any play in yours, or others, it suggests that's how canon mounts it, perhaps to avoid stress fractures, otherwise, it's probably a problem. Anyway, it ain't working, so it's going in.....Peter

Be sure and send the cable along with the camera. Bad cables are the most frequent cause of communication problems (at least with Macs). Have you tried hooking up the camera to different Mac?

Yea Jeff- After decades in the music business and now phography, my mantra is "it's always the cables". first thing I'll do back home is check a fresh cable. Best....Peter

Just wanted to chime in with my loose cable stories. I've have had the worst problem with loose connections with Firewire and the XL1s. I thought I had bumped my connection and "broken" the pins in the camera, but really it just turned out to be that the cable itself was not fitting in snug, not the camera itself. I think the Canon firewire port is a bit on the loose side though. At first I tried making the tip of my firewire cable bigger by expanding the little metal part so it wouldn't slop around in the Canon port. That didn't seem to work, so I went the other way, I crimped the metal part, and it grabbed the center pins in the Canon port more - it was still loose in terms of snugging into the socket, but WinXP would recognize the camera immediately. So, anways, if that is any help to ya.. then great! Good luck.

-Brad

Thanks Brad. as it turned out, I had a bum cable, and it's working fine with a new one. But...I don't like the loose feel of the connection, sounds like it's inherent to the XL-1s. Best....Peter