The cover of the July 2002 issue of 'Government Video' magazine shows a XL1s in the hands of a Navy combat cameraman. It is one of the various camcorders they use.

First it was the Canon L1 (or L2) on the NASA shuttle missions... now the Navy & the XL1s... Canon must have an easy-to-use purchase order system setup for the government. ;-)

I'm just glad my tax dollars are being wisely spent. hehehe

What kind of lens does he have on?

Not enough detail for me to tell, from the front end it looked like the standard lens shade and mayhave been the standard lens.

I would have thought that a combat cameraman would at least have a higher zoom lens.

We just shipped our first MARzPAK™ to the army.

The perfect weapon platform to carry an XL1 into battle.

I was covering a Marine beach landing exercise and the Navy combat guys were using XL1's. That was a couple years ago. The standard lens was being used but one of the shooters said they also had the 3:1 wide lens for interior work.

Later, I took an XL1 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. While other video crews wrapped their video gear in foil to protect them from the powerful surveillance radar of the carrier (it wreaks havoc with video cameras) I left mine uncovered as I didn't have time to wrap it up. Images looked bad in the viewfinder as I shot planes landing and launching. But the resulting video came out clean.

Check out both reports online at www.starbulletin.com

Marine beach landing at Bellows:
http://starbulletin.com/2000/06/21/news/story5.html

Carrier fuel:
http://starbulletin.com/2000/07/03/news/story3.html