Hi everyone,

Thanks to the priceless info and advice gotten from this forum, I took the dive and bought a new XH-A1s on Sunday.

I decided that no camera in my price range - $3000-3500 - was going to be perfect. But with your help I decided the Canon would be the best overall. Plus, I've been working with the HV30 which is a long shot from the XH but at least there are a lot of things that are similarly done on the two cameras. So learning the XH won't be as foreign if I had started out with Sonys or something else.

This afternoon I'll be going out during lunch to shoot some random stuff to start learning the ins and outs of this camera. I look forward to seeing what it can do, and what I can do with it.

Thanks again!

having fun with your new cam? :)

Hi Daniel,

Just used it for my first event. Here's a few observations.

1. Size - People seem to respect this more than my HV30s. When I used those I would have people constantly stroll in front of me - even with a light glowing off the top of it. The strolling problems is considerably less with the XH.

2. Usabilty - Great. Enough said.

3. Daylight and Low-light - Used a couple of the great presets found on this site - TrueColor and PFVision - and they were great. PFVision was a godsend during the dark moments. Also, took my camera out onto the balcony of the location to shoot the Queensboro Bridge in NYC. It was late dusk and the XH nailed it. Great colors, no gain. I spent most of the evening at 0 gain but used +3 a couple of times.

4. Cons - That crazy LCD screen. Why put a crappy one on there if the camera is Hi-Def??!!
I'm not sure how much, if anything, was out of focus because I couldn't tell especially in low-ligt.

Overall, I'm really happy with the purchase. It was great to crank the iris all the way open and nail low light. It lived up to my expectations.

Peaking helps some with judging focus on the lcd, but it's not always enough. Probably 95% of the time peaking does the trick. I leave the zebra stripes on and then press the peaking button on and off to check focus, then exposure, then back to focus. This is much nicer than having to use the menus on my HV-30s.

However, whenever practical, I set up my 21" Samsung widescreen lcd monitor that also accepts component in.

I'm glad you are enjoying your new cam =]

Yea, coming from an HV20 body, the custom presets are awesome. It's really a remarkable and wonderful tool!

Also, I'm sure you already have but have you tried to press the Magnify button to help you focus? Peaking helps too.

G'luck!

Hi Daniel,

Yes, I've used the magnify option for focusing. Unfortunately, in my shooting there are a lot of situations where I can't stop to do it that way and have to focus on the go. That's when the problem raises its head.