All you beautiful people who shared your information and love towards the Camera.
I have had it for a few days now and am getting used to it. I didn't want to post any statement until I started to have a feeling for it...

The footage is INSANELY BEAUTIFUL !
What little noise there may be is tweakable, and in some cases I choose to put the Gain up to get a film like effect.

Really getting to know this Camera is a glorious thing. The myriad ways to tweak color are going to take some time.
-to alter the colors on the fly - I can use the white balance button and the dial the change the basic tone of everything in Kalvin.

I have yet to really use 24f mode - I don't really like the hacks of getting the footage in to Final Cut (the DVHSCap and streamclip options haven't rendered great results for me, but I will try again)
(evidently there is a way to stream 24f footage into Final Cut with the Apple intermediate Codec, but it hasn't worked for me yet.
I was able to use Cinema tools once and it looked great, but I forgot how I did it...ha!)

I'd like to share a few settings I love (reposting this from my other post)

- I like the detail/sharpness turned up, but not too much, around 3 or so, depending on the light and other settings. It is so intense, it can create detail where there isn't any = noise
- I love the coring turned to -4 or so, because that makes what little grain there might be into tiny grain and therefor unnoticable in motion, even in stills. More like film grain.
- I like the noise reduction 2 (on skin tone that you can alter in the settings) on low, or medium (too much and it is like the smart blur in photoshop - can be really nice). But a little is unnoticable except smooths some things out. Sweet.
-- The noise reduction1 is Great, but you can't have too much motion or there is ghosting.

And there are many menu items I have yet to figure out...

-- I can't wait to get a wide angle adapter ( I really like the 16:9 Co. wide lens, I think it is .7 -- It has enough of a slight curve to it which I really like)

--It'll be great to try the HD-SDI out into a G5 with two 500gid RAIDS daisychained (thanks Elton !)...that's about a 1500$ Uncompressed HD solution for me, though I'd be tethered to a G5, and have no pressing need for it...in time, in time

-- The G35mm adapter (with a Relay Lens) will be interesting on this, to say the least. In theory it'll the best and least expensive 35mm option,
...in theory.

I will post footage soon. I just wanted to say a big Thank You to this forum (and also dvxuser). it was Very hard for me to make a camera decision, and it was hard to kick out 9k in a fell swoop.
But you folks are so helpfull and enabled me to make the best purchasing decision for myself.

Muchos Gracias !
John

John,
Congratulations. Where did you end up buying it?
bruce Yarock

good question -
It was 1000$ cheaper at Adorama then it was at AbelCinetech.
So I was super tempted - but it was grey market and I wanted all Canon's support. Plus the guys at Able were great and I got to thouroughly play with each cam. I know that I can go there with any questions or complaints. The guys at Adorama are great too, but in terms of fixing things in house, well...
It was a tough decision, but the guysa at Abel had 1000$ deposit I had put down for an HVX anyway...
Again, it was the advice of members of this forum thatt was instrumental in making that decision as well.
Thanks, Bruce,

J

John,
Welcome to the club. I have been researching the wide angle thing for a while with no firm positive reports. I actually called up Century Optics to ask what was going on with them and they actually volunteered to do some research as to what is acceptable. They told me they are working on an HVX-200 adapter and other potential adaptations for the XLH1 after that.

Congrats John,

Been in SoCal with Mike Pappas for a few days and have had a chance to check out not only the .6 non-zoom through WA for the XL2 manual lens, but said adapter on top of the XL2 16x manual...on an H1.

In a word: fanstastic. It looks great even in HD so I'm sketchy as to what actual improvements an "official" WA for the H1 would offer. I've been watching footage from this combo on the very unforgiving Dell 1080p LCD and it's passing with flying colors--literally. I now most definitely think the 16x XL2 manual lens is more than adequate for the XL-H1...and it brings a very interesting look to the footage to boot. It seems to render a richer contrast to the Cinegamma 2 settings, which I tweaked for different looks also.

To tell you the truth, I've found some of the cine matrix controls to be overly conservative. In my experience, coring and horizontal/vertical detail control--to the eye--seem to be fairly ineffectual, but maybe those kinds of things are so subtle they only really show up on scopes and not on the monitor so easily. Still, I'm reasonably satisified with the overall control of the image...and most importantly, the images themselves.

I really think the H1 gets such a strong core image by default that it seems like a bad idea to push things too much in camera. Again, in my experience, the H1 footage (HDV or otherwise) cc's very well, and that's where you can tweak to your hearts' content...without regrets.

Again, welcome to the club and please share your experiences and any insights you can offer.