So I'm doing a little movie which will have a bunch of super-ultra-extreme close-ups of the tip of a ball point pen, a drop of blood drying/coagulating, a moth's wing, etc., and I've been checking out this little "lipstick/bullet" type camera with a fixed iris which isn't quite what I need, but still pretty cool. I've seen microscopic lenses with SLR mounts which seem like they'd work with the exception of not knowing if SLR's can be mounted to my XL1s. I'm shooting this with the gain cranked up for graininess and can't get that with the fixed-iris bullet cams and would rather not do it in post for fear of shots not matching. So.. .can SLRs mount to XL1's? Can I get the bullet cam footage to be recorded "grainily" and with settings I choose on the XL1? Basically, how do I record extreme close-up shots tweaked the way I want with the camera's functionlity?
An example of what I want: the ball in the tip of a ball-point pen: I want it to fill the entire frame. Thanx everybody! garth

Do a search for EF adaptor in this forum. This enables you to mount EF EOS SLR lenses, some of which are appropriate for this kind of focus range.

Just along the topic of grain, I wanted to throw in my $.02 and suggest that you don't shoot with gain. The XL-1's "gain" does not show up as film grain. In fact, most cameras don't. More often, the "grain" you get will show up in the form of blue streaks or motion artifiacts - not good-looking, film-like grain. Many cameras do have a film grain option, but it's different from gain. Gain isn't grain, it's just digitally brightening the image, which is generally bad and often produces very odd and random results.

Just mount a magnifying glass in a stand and shoot through it for your closeups. Depending on the glass size & strength, you can get some interesting effects.