hi - im going to indonesia filming a surfing expedition based from a live a board boat for 12 days in august 08. I have Canon xl1 and manfrotto tripod which I have owned for 3 months. I will be filming land and boat based. A novice - frantically learning as quick as possible b4 the trip. I have on order a EWA MARINE CAPE, SPIDER BRACE AND REMOTE LANC.

Advice needed in the areas of: battery requirements. I have 1 std canon charger and 2 batteries - what options do I have we regards to larger battery capacity (8 hrs shooting daily possible). On a boat with gensets for power - worried about the slow charging times with these type of batteries ie. bp941 etc..???

Is it a bad idea buying cheap after market chargers and batteries ie. made in China? What remote batteries packs are available? I am filming on manual mode, adjusting iris and shutter speed manually - shld I shoot surf films in the movie mode as appsed to normal for still capture or will this effect picture quality adversly. Any advice wld b grateful - thanks Dave

Hi Dave, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know and more about XL1 batteries by reading this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=1702

On the XL1s, I use Frame mode (maybe what you meant by "movie") and 16x9 mode which makes your video squeezed in the VF but normal in a widescreen TV. The 16x9 mode is called anamorphic and is supported by all the NLEs.

Since you are new to the camera, I would recommend picking a shutter speed for the scene and manually varying the aperture. If you have enough light, set the gain to -3db and add ND to suit. For nightime shots, back off the -3db gain to 0 (not auto), don't go below 30 fps and add lighting as necessary.

My favorite color settings are:
Setup -2
Gain +1
Phase +1

I'd think for the tight quarters of a boat, a wide angle lens would be needed. for shipboard scenes. YMMV.