Is there anything specific you folks want me to try?

Hooray for Kaku! Once again you are my hero!

Please shoot some HDV in the 24F mode, preferably with some movement within the frame and some moving of the camera. As always I will be happy to host your clips here at DV Info Net. Thanks in advance, Kaku!

Wow !
A working model !

Kaku,

If you could shoot some high contrast scenes with different gamma settings (black stretch, knee presets) etc..., it would be very nice.

thanks !

Resolution charts please.

Also can you try some real world harsh conditions. For example midday direct sun (weather allowing!!)

Please shoot something with people in too. Some carefully lit CUs and MCUs, maybe a little scene to give an idea of skin tone :)

If you can do the tests as a side-by-side with another camera, that would be brilliant. Maybe an XL2 or a DVX.

Many thanks, sorry to be so demanding!

A side by side with the Z1 would be great too...

If you can do some testing with the SD lenses (16 X manual, 3X) in SD resolution, but also in HD. I know that theses lenses doesn't resolve enough for HD, but indeed, I would like to see some footages taken with these lenses

It was deliver to me by the person from Canon lense distributor today. I did not even ask for it. It does say that it is preproduction model, but it seems all concrete looking to me.

I only have the HD lense provided. I don't have Z1 but I have FX1 and HC1, I would do my usual comparison test if you know what I did before.

I will do my best to cover as much as possible.

Kaku, your celebrity has made its way into Canon's corporate procedures!

A side by side with the Z1 would be great too...

If you can do some testing with the SD lenses (16 X manual, 3X) in SD resolution, but also in HD. I know that theses lenses doesn't resolve enough for HD, but indeed, I would like to see some footages taken with these lenses

You know, I never thought about the notion of putting the camera in SD mode and then slapping the 16x manual on it. Hmmmm...that could be interesting indeed.

-gb-

Yes, the SD res, coupled with the SDi output could be really usefull IMO

Yes, the SD res, coupled with the SDi output could be really usefull IMO

Exactly Jean-Philippe! And it would help the justification for upgrading if my existing lenses could be implemented, even if for SD mode. I was thinking of the SDI option right after you made that post earlier. That was the 'interesting' part of my comment. :-)

-gb-

I'll add to Greg's suggestion. If possible, put the 16x manual (or 20x auto from the xl2) on and shoot some HD....let's see if there is really an improvement in the new lens...and conversely whether the older lenses will be useful in HD...my guess is they are.

Barry

Kaku :)

I would like to see some tests for chromatic aberration. If you could print out a checkerboard pattern and shoot it at 4 zoom settings from wide to long and please arrange exposure to be 100% zebra on the white squares - that would be great.

Kaku, please verify whether the LCD "flip"/"rotate" feature works with the standard 20x lens attached. I was told yesterday at ResFest that it won't allow flipping unless the standard lens is removed; please verify whether that's true or not.

Moving, high-contrast diagonal lines in miday sun in 24f mode would allow me to sleep at night. Also, someone dancing or moving in harsh lighting conditions would be helpful.

Thanks in advance for anything.

What about aberration (compared with the Fujinon lens delivered with the JVC GY-HD100: http://www.icexpo.com/HD100/old_aberration.html)?

Things to check? hmmmmmmm. How about checking to see how well it fits into a padded shipping case ... addressed to me! <grin>

Kako, looks like you already have enough requests to fill two or three weeks, not just this weekend. But I'll add another one anyway, similar to the 16x request...

If you have a standard 3x lens, I'd be very interested to see what sort of resolution results. Unless Canon is quick to add an HD 3x or similar lens, the standard 3x would have to prove itself to be not so soft as some accuse it of being, so we have a wide angle option. A quick rez chart shot should answer that question for both XL2 and H1 users who need a wide lens.

BTW, I'm VERY jealous! ;-)

Since nobody seem to have asked, a low light test would be nice too. A comparison to the JVC HD100 would be awesome. A mini35 test would be also very useful. All recorded in "real world" HDV.
Thanks.

As Peter said, test the 3X lens, but both in SD and HD :).

with all of your expectation.

This time, I did not get any extra lenses, so I can't do any testing with other lenses, but I will ask Canon for another opportunity to test with the other lenses. I believe they would appreciate all of your inputs here.

The camera is little too heavy to carry around with my mountainbike so I will do the chart testing and FX1 comparison in front of my office first.

I did not see any problem with "flip & rotate" the LCD thing at this moment, but I will change the position and check.

One thing that me and my staff are talking is to test the HDSDI input with Kona 2 and Decklink HD.

Now, we are all fortunate and the sun is out. I'm off to shooting.

Kaku, please verify whether the LCD "flip"/"rotate" feature works with the standard 20x lens attached. I was told yesterday at ResFest that it won't allow flipping unless the standard lens is removed; please verify whether that's true or not.

Barry,

I'm not quite understanding the situation.
Is there any parameter to adjust this? It does not do anything electronically when I'm moving the LCD.

Just like someones have said before, It would be really nice to hear something about the low light behaving and the sensitivity of this camera and if you could compare it to your HDR-FX1 ...

I went to shoot some things at the park near by, shooting dogs and few people mainly facing the sun going down to see what kind of dynamic range and the control this camera has. I had owned XL1 before, also tested XL2 briefly when it was available. I was dissapointed with Knee and Blackstreatch features on XL2, so I was not really expecting anthing fabulous.

BUT, this is a big BUT to me, the black streatch feature made a big difference in the facing light and low light situation. This feature is working very good.

I'm still out at my garage typing this using Airport on my PBG5, it is very dark now, and using the minimum lights here and compared FX1 and XLH1 in the low light situation. BBBBiiiiig difference. By setting the F stop and shutter speed the same (full open and shutter to be 60), XLH1's picture at no extra gain looks like FX1's plus 9db. XLH1 seems to be very enable in the low light situation. I went to a sandwitch shop near by (Frederic has visted there before when he was there, if you are staying at Cerullean Tower in Shibuya, it is the place to go for the real Italian coffee and Japanese sytle sandwitches), I shot the guy making coffee in the shop, I was experiencing the ease of shooting video because this cam is very good with low light.

Me and my wife are used to shooting with Sony cams and we noticed significant difference in the auto focus speed. It seems to be Sony is not normal (good), XLH1 was slow to find the right focus, sometimes ended up not getting the right focus, so in many situation, I had to override and adjust manually. So, this cam is certainly not for amatures.

Zooming is smooth but the response in not as quick as FX1's manual zoom ring. I thought FX1's zoom ring is heavy comparing to AG-DVC30 (my favorite zoom ring) but XLH1 is worse. But since the manual zoom ring is working all the time (FX1 has to be switched to use, so if you are using a remote or rocker, you can't use the manual zoom ring), so it is very nice and you can utalize this for quick and flexible zoom job when you set each zoom controller the way you like.


Another thing I noticed was the battery charging time. I'm so used to Sony's lithium Ion batteries and they charge fast and last for a long time. The battery they provided me (they only provided me one) took a long time to charge (at least comparing to Sony). The battery life seems to be reasonable, but the comment could be premature to mention. I will be out to shoot tomorrow with myh bike friends with the battery full-charge, so I will find out how they perform.

I maybe did enough for today and go upstairs and start capturing the footage using LumiereHD.

Kaku, your celebrity has made its way into Canon's corporate procedures!

Christopher,

It is important to note that they value my association with HDVinfo on top of my mountainbiking videograph work and article writing on few magazines.
Because by handing over this cam to me for the weekend, they are getting veru quick and thorough, demanding and very wide variety of test and situation from members here.

I never forget about all of you here and the inputs.

The BBBBiiiiig difference sounds very important atleast to me. It will be very interesting to hear if you can tell something about the differences of the lenses when you shoot the aperture wide open. Can you notice any differences in terms of sharpness, contrast or chromatic aberration immediately?

The BBBBiiiiig difference sounds very important atleast to me. It will be very interesting to hear if you can tell something about the differences of the lenses when you shoot the aperture wide open. Can you notice any differences in terms of sharpness, contrast or chromatic aberration immediately?

The difference between FX1 and XLH1 in the low light situation will make XLH1 the choice for filmmakers for sure.

I will find out on the details as soon as I go upstairs and start capturing. I had to go get my eats that I realized I did not eat anything because I was shooting.

Can you explain about aberration and how I should test for that?

All this sounds good and I highly recommend to eat,rest, think and move slowly when testing what ever. It is very time taking and you should be as accurate as possible.
I am not a master in this chromatic aberration thing myself either but to put it simply if the lense is very bad in that sense it creates unwanted coloreffects to the picture.
The problem is normally more visible when the aperture is wide open.
I'll try to find a link for you where you could see this phenomenom with your eyes.
Or if somebody else remembers where it is here at DVinfo, please help Kaku to get an idea of it.
John Jay says about it on this thread: I would like to see some tests for chromatic aberration. If you could print out a checkerboard pattern and shoot it at 4 zoom settings from wide to long and please arrange exposure to be 100% zebra on the white squares - that would be great.

Take it easy and all the best

I have to take a bath, too.

Oh yes, I was going to do that test anyway, but can anyone help me to make the file with Illustrator or Photoshop to print that out? I have relatively professional printers like Konica-minolta postscript printer for our internal press purpose. That goes for resolution chart, too. If my printer is good enough (800dpi I guess) to print the resolution chart, I will print them out, so please someone play the part for me to prepare the files.

I did notice some green flare on the facing sun shooting. Is this a kind of aberration?

The green flare sounds like normal behaving for the lense, it depends...
But if you shoot from the tripod two exactly equal shots with these two cameras (if I were you I would concentrate my tests on two cameras), and there is a lamp, sun or whatever hotspot or "mainlight source" in the shot. The cameras will very likely create a different flare. It would be interesting to hear (and to see later) more of them.

It would be great to see a similar picture from a pan in three different versions: 60i, 30f and 24f.

Oh yes, I was going to do that test anyway, but can anyone help me to make the file with Illustrator or Photoshop to print that out?

Kaku

an A4 landscape checkerboard jpeg can be found here:


http://s40.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0UYK71GOK01050ZD7Y7Q5YPJOA

Barry,

I'm not quite understanding the situation.
Is there any parameter to adjust this? It does not do anything electronically when I'm moving the LCD.
There's an option in the menus to "flip" the LCD. If you enable that option, does it make everything upside-down in the LCD/Viewfinder?

One more thing about this checkerboard test that John is suggesting and you are going to do:

If you have time, you could shoot these 4 zoom setting with three different aperture settings:
1. T: Wide open
2. T: 5.6
3. T: 11

To do this as neutrally as possible I would change the shutterspeed to compensate the exposure so that whites are 100%.

Maybe this is obvius but...
It is easier to deal with these 12 Checkerboards if you have previously printed small notes that you put forexample in the middle of the one black square (make them as small as possible but big enough that you can see them in your edit).
For example:
Canon XL-H1 5.4mm T: 1.6
Canon XL-H1 5.4mm T: 5.6
Canon XL-H1 5.4mm T: 11
Canon XL-H1 25 mm T: 1.6
Canon XL-H1 25 mm T: 5,6
Canon XL-H1 25 mm T: 11
Canon XL-H1 60 mm T: ?
Canon XL-H1 60 mm T: 5,6
Canon XL-H1 60 mm T: 11
Canon XL-H1 108 mm T: 3.5
Canon XL-H1 108 mm T: 5.6
Canon XL-H1 108 mm T: 11

If yu can do equivalent to Sony it makes life easier....

Kaku: PLEASE try digitizing some 24F footage directly from the XL H1. You cannot digitize using your Sony, as 24F footage will not play in the Sony. The only hope we have of seeing 24F footage is if you can successfully digitize directly from the XL H1. So please don't let the XL H1 out of your hands before you digitize some 24F footage for us! :)

Chromatic Aberration what to look for....look at the purple fringe in the leaves
on the upper left....

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canong1/Samples/Fringing/001001-1330-26.jpg

Chromatic Aberration what to look for....look at the purple fringe in the leaves
on the upper left....

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canong1/Samples/Fringing/001001-1330-26.jpg

Robert,

gotcha.

Kaku

There's an option in the menus to "flip" the LCD. If you enable that option, does it make everything upside-down in the LCD/Viewfinder?

I could not find that in the menu!! There's a parameter says "FB" under the camera setting, but it is not selectible even I take off the lense.

I saw it in the menu on the XL H1 at ResFest, but I don't remember where it was...

I'm pretty sure it said "flip", might have been named "EVF FLIP" or "LCD FLIP" or something like that...

Kaku

an A4 landscape checkerboard jpeg can be found here:


http://s40.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0UYK71GOK01050ZD7Y7Q5YPJOA

Thanks John Jay.

Kaku

Kaku,
as a response to your,
"I could not find that in the menu!! There's a parameter says "FB" under the camera setting, but it is not selectible even I take off the lense."
Today 12:32 PM
Kaku Ito

I have got few days ago a following message about this matter:

"With DV compatible XL lenses, the EVF reverse function will be deactivated while displaying the menu screens.
EVF Reverse can only be operated with the custom key settings."

I hope it helps you to find it.

Sorry I am late to this... "EVF Flip" is a function which can be assigned to one of the two user-defined Custom Keys on the XL H1.

"FB" is the Flange-Back function, which is a back-focus adjustment for the stock 20x HD lens. You have a choice of Automatic, where the camera goes through a process of finding its own correct backfocus, or Manual, where you set the backfocus yourself. Hope this helps,

Sorry I am late to this... "EVF Flip" is a function which can be assigned to one of the two user-defined Custom Keys on the XL H1.

"FB" is the Flange-Back function, which is a back-focus adjustment for the stock 20x HD lens. You have a choice of Automatic, where the camera goes through a process of finding its own correct backfocus, or Manual, where you set the backfocus yourself. Hope this helps,

I did not look into the custom keys section. I will do that tomorrow morning.
It's 1:16am after a busy day and the battery of XLH1 went off.
Many files are being upload right now (it says it will finsih in about an hour), so afte Chris process them, you will be able to download the files. Remember that me or my wife are not professional cameraperson. We just do enough for making video for mountainbiking. Also, we are very spoiled with auto-focus feature of Sony FX1 and HC1 and our manual focusing ability was very rusty. I had little rough time adjusting the focus after zooming up on this prototype, I have to override and adjust the focus on every zooming in (you can see that on the cappuccinomaking clip).

Once again, I want to express my appreciation to Frederic Haubrich for use of LumiereHD beta version. As some of you guess it, XLH1 did not work with Final Cut Pro 5 at this point. LumiereHD beta did not have any problem capturing from XLH1.

Good night for today to all.

Kaku Ito
xtream.ne.jp

Just in case you want to compare the bikeseq file shot with HC1 and FX1, here (http://www.xtream.ne.jp/content/blogcategory/48/62/) is the door to the download section. You have to register at the site to go to the download section.

Regarding the links to the XL H1 versions of the "bikeseq" files that Kaku refers to above, those will be posted here in just a few minutes... under a new topic though. We'll start a new thread for the download clips. Hang on for a minute and I'll have those posted.

Regarding the links to the XL H1 versions of the "bikeseq" files that Kaku refers to above, those will be posted here in just a few minutes... under a new topic though. We'll start a new thread for the download clips. Hang on for a minute and I'll have those posted.

More files are being uploaded but I sent them as a batch so it will take long time to complete the transmission.

Good night.

Transferring is done on my side. Good luck Chris and I'm off to bed.
Hope you can get good use of my footage.

Best,

Kaku