Tony Davies-Patrick
February 21st, 2005, 06:47 AM
I've just bought a Canon XL1s for a film project in USA. The main filming will begin in May and cover a 3-month period, with follow up filming if needed during later parts of the year. This will give me between now and late May to get fully acquainted with the camera, lenses and other equipment.
After a great deal of study and thought (as well as reading a lot of info on Watchdog), I finally went for the Canon X16 Manual lens (the 'black' lens). I almost bought the 14X Manual lens, but the servo on the 16X is very useful. I would have liked for it to be able to adjust the speed of the 'zoom' (although this can be done manually of course) but the 16 X servo is extremely useful for zooming in tight, adjusting focus, zooming back out to wide, and then begin filming with a finger on the rocker button - knowing that the lens will maintain focus and not constantly go in & out of focus like the 'white' 16 auto focus model.
All in all, I'm impressed with the 16X manual lens, although I’ve still got to do plenty of more filming to test just how sharp it really is (first impressions are very positive).
I've got a complete system of Nikkor lenses for my F5 SLR bodies, so I obviously wanted to use the lenses on the XL1s. A quick phone call to Les Bosher in UK (an engineer who makes a lot of extra equipment to fit the Canon XL1 system and most pro-movie cameras as well, such as the Arri system etc) and he sent me a Nikon to Canon XL1s adapter (arrived following morning in the post!).
To cut a long story short, I tested the Nikkor 300mm f/2.8 ED-IF & 600mm f/5.6 ED-If lenses on the XL1s and was very impressed with the captured footage. I also tried a long list of other Nikkor lenses ranging from 24mm wide angle and various zooms, although the superior sharpness of the fixed 300mm ED-IF against something like the 75-300mm lens could be even seen in the viewfinder.
Regarding the colour viewfinder, I was a little worried that this would not be good enough and may need the expensive B/W viewfinder, but so far I’ve not had any focus problems using the colour viewfinder with the 16X Canon or any Nikon lens. Even the 600mm Nikkor is easy to focus, although good tripod technique is needed to maintain sharpness.
Another thought was "would I need a heavier, more robust tripod than the one I use currently with my Nikon F5 system?" (I use mainly the Manfrotto 190 Pro Nat - green wildlife tripod with a large Pro ball head). To answer that question, I tried all the lenses on the XL1s with the Manfrotto tripod, and it worked a treat. By adjusting the ballhead lever quite tightly so it 'just-moved' with steady pressure, I was able to make smooth pans without any judder.
I noticed that touching the "on" switch of the XL1s would cause the whole set up to 'judder' in the viewfinder for a few seconds before settling down. Using the start & stop buttons on the WL-D3000 obviously help prevent this.
What about using the XL1s with these big lenses at times when you need to adjust controls on the XL1s with your hands? The 300mm and 600mm lenses are fairly heavy, and their tripod mounts are extremely robust, so they sit rock solid on the tripod. The main problem is the flimsy structure of the XL1s, plus the slight wobble from the mount itself. I tried to use an added monopod screwed to the XL1s, and the lens itself screwed to the tripod, but this didn't help at all due to sideways movement of the XL1s, and of course this set-up would prevent you from adjusting framing the shot if a subject moved.
I found that if I used normal long-lens SLR technique - wrapping my hand over the lens barrel, and at the same time bracing my inner arm and cheek against the XL1s body, this absorbed sideways movement and vastly improved stability.
I'm going to be doing a lot of filming in boats, and although the 16X manual goes quite wide, it doesn't really pull far back enough. The Optex Wide-angle adapter provides a better view, but even looking through the viewfinder I notice a marked difference in sharpness and contrast compared to the 16X manual alone. I'll need to do more testing, but I'm strongly thinking about buying the Canon AF 3X lens. The only questions in my mind are: will it make a marked difference in sharpness compared to the adapter? - (Because I know the 3X lens is already soft compared to the 16X manual) - and will the 16X image stabilizer+ adapter be more stable on a boat than the 3 X alone? I have a feeling that the 3X lens would be easier to keep steady, even without the IS mode.
After a great deal of study and thought (as well as reading a lot of info on Watchdog), I finally went for the Canon X16 Manual lens (the 'black' lens). I almost bought the 14X Manual lens, but the servo on the 16X is very useful. I would have liked for it to be able to adjust the speed of the 'zoom' (although this can be done manually of course) but the 16 X servo is extremely useful for zooming in tight, adjusting focus, zooming back out to wide, and then begin filming with a finger on the rocker button - knowing that the lens will maintain focus and not constantly go in & out of focus like the 'white' 16 auto focus model.
All in all, I'm impressed with the 16X manual lens, although I’ve still got to do plenty of more filming to test just how sharp it really is (first impressions are very positive).
I've got a complete system of Nikkor lenses for my F5 SLR bodies, so I obviously wanted to use the lenses on the XL1s. A quick phone call to Les Bosher in UK (an engineer who makes a lot of extra equipment to fit the Canon XL1 system and most pro-movie cameras as well, such as the Arri system etc) and he sent me a Nikon to Canon XL1s adapter (arrived following morning in the post!).
To cut a long story short, I tested the Nikkor 300mm f/2.8 ED-IF & 600mm f/5.6 ED-If lenses on the XL1s and was very impressed with the captured footage. I also tried a long list of other Nikkor lenses ranging from 24mm wide angle and various zooms, although the superior sharpness of the fixed 300mm ED-IF against something like the 75-300mm lens could be even seen in the viewfinder.
Regarding the colour viewfinder, I was a little worried that this would not be good enough and may need the expensive B/W viewfinder, but so far I’ve not had any focus problems using the colour viewfinder with the 16X Canon or any Nikon lens. Even the 600mm Nikkor is easy to focus, although good tripod technique is needed to maintain sharpness.
Another thought was "would I need a heavier, more robust tripod than the one I use currently with my Nikon F5 system?" (I use mainly the Manfrotto 190 Pro Nat - green wildlife tripod with a large Pro ball head). To answer that question, I tried all the lenses on the XL1s with the Manfrotto tripod, and it worked a treat. By adjusting the ballhead lever quite tightly so it 'just-moved' with steady pressure, I was able to make smooth pans without any judder.
I noticed that touching the "on" switch of the XL1s would cause the whole set up to 'judder' in the viewfinder for a few seconds before settling down. Using the start & stop buttons on the WL-D3000 obviously help prevent this.
What about using the XL1s with these big lenses at times when you need to adjust controls on the XL1s with your hands? The 300mm and 600mm lenses are fairly heavy, and their tripod mounts are extremely robust, so they sit rock solid on the tripod. The main problem is the flimsy structure of the XL1s, plus the slight wobble from the mount itself. I tried to use an added monopod screwed to the XL1s, and the lens itself screwed to the tripod, but this didn't help at all due to sideways movement of the XL1s, and of course this set-up would prevent you from adjusting framing the shot if a subject moved.
I found that if I used normal long-lens SLR technique - wrapping my hand over the lens barrel, and at the same time bracing my inner arm and cheek against the XL1s body, this absorbed sideways movement and vastly improved stability.
I'm going to be doing a lot of filming in boats, and although the 16X manual goes quite wide, it doesn't really pull far back enough. The Optex Wide-angle adapter provides a better view, but even looking through the viewfinder I notice a marked difference in sharpness and contrast compared to the 16X manual alone. I'll need to do more testing, but I'm strongly thinking about buying the Canon AF 3X lens. The only questions in my mind are: will it make a marked difference in sharpness compared to the adapter? - (Because I know the 3X lens is already soft compared to the 16X manual) - and will the 16X image stabilizer+ adapter be more stable on a boat than the 3 X alone? I have a feeling that the 3X lens would be easier to keep steady, even without the IS mode.