Hello all! It's been a while since I've been around the boards, but it's good to be back. Since I checked this board religiously prior to purchasing my XL2 i thought I'd post some stills I've used from the camera to hopefully convince some other videographer of its worth.

In re-designing my portfolio site I began to shoot stills of my old 8mm projector with a digital camera, but found it lacked the ability to pull close focus or zoom to the extent I wanted. I pulled out the old XL2 and began shooting, and was highly impressed with the image quality. Here's the link:

http://devin.par-t-com.net

20x lens, 16:9, 30p, cine-gamma / matrix, high knee, pressed blacks, with color saturation up several notches. I of course color corrected the stills in PPro and PS to give them a vintage look. I was highly impressed! BTW, the same stills were used in the intro and outro to my reel. Any feedback on that would be appreciated as well!

I will need stills for promotion during and after my next film project - but as good as the XL series is at taking stills (or any high-end camcorder/movie camera for that matter) the results rarely are good enough for high quality print production (OK for small size jpg on the web, though).
That is why I intend to to take plenty of still shots of the same subjects using an SLR camera - for the purpose of using any photographs needed for future advertising, DVD covers, magazine features etc, and not simply stills taken from a miniDV camera.

Devin, your site is really well done. I've shot stills commercially for years and never would have thought something like the XL2 would give that quality. Nice sepia tone, lighting and overall effect to the site. The detail is excellent. Have you printed any shots to see how well they enlarge?
I just got my XL2 today and will definitely explore the still photo side. Thanks and good luck with the film making.
Rob

What a great site?

Devon, did you scripted and directed that short films too, or where you only on the job as DOP?

Fade Away was maybe a little cliché story (sorry for saying that, it isn't ment bad, because I still think some stories keep working) but it still had me cringing (or how do you say that, my english isn't that well) very well made, and gripping (nice use of the camera-idea!)

Nice use of the Fifth Element Music too ;-)

And I saw Detonate too, very cool begin credits, very funny use of musical, and very beautiful lightning too!

I didn't like Climax that much, but more because of the story that I didn't find really interesting.

But, in general, very very beautiful work, you should be proud!

Rob and Tony - Thanks for the kind words. I haven't blown up the images, nor do I really intend to. As you mentioned Tony, the 720x480 image works fine for web, but as for print - forget it!

Mathieu - I was DP on all those films, that's the role I enjoy the most, and have been pursuing for quite some time now. Thanks for taking the time to check out my work!

It really was great, I mean it!