Japanese VideoAlfa Magazine with G1 reviews

[Kaku Ito]

There were a couple of reviews on October issue of Video Alpha magazine, one by the same person who did the resolution test on HVX200.

Hiromi Miyata mentions;

Unlike XLH1, A1/G1 is normally shaped camcorder which is requested to broadcast users (as second camera) in Japan. Canon seems to think 1440 x 1080 pixel CCDs instead of their newly developed full resolution (1920 x 1080) CMOS for more sensitivities as prosumer camcorder. As 1/3 CCD equipped camcorder, G1 holds the highest resolution in the market. Horizontal resolution falls to over 800 lines and even displaying on BVM-D24, the resolution is assured.
Some smear on headlights of cars in the night appearing but not as bad as earlier HDV camcorders. The wide angle is achieved at 4.5 mm and 72mm threaded wide conversion lens will be available.

The autofocus and auto iris features are migrated from Canon’s popular digital cameras and they work very smoothly. It cleverly holds its brightness even with some spotted lights coming in at night shooting, resulting very subtle atmosphere.

The stabilizer is optical which is Canon’s forte, taking the theory to take full advantage of 1440 x1080 resolution. Also, two ND filters are equipped to achieve high frequency MTF for expressing the depth of the air (sorry, this part is beyond my knowledge).

The overall operation feel is improved over XLH1, but the manual zoom ring could be improved more.

The viewfinder is improved over XLH1, The resolution of the panel is close to the full resolution, which is leading other brands, the peaking scheme works better, it works great in outdoor and the addition of the magnification switch make the whole thing improved a lot. But wether it is set to display fully or safety display, the left/right area is little cut off so be cautioned.

Gradation:
very nicely curved. The auto mode seems to be set to shoot hair darker to avoid clipping white. Knee curve seems to be very smooth and natural.

Color:
Very good because of 3CCD prism. Similar to camcorders’ current trend, green is especially good, and it expresses leaves’ subtle color differences very well. It seems to be shfted a little to magenta, making the red looking little yellowish.

Resolution:
It appears that the resolution is brashed up from XLH1. But the resolution on the optical portion is high, ND filters should be used for outdoor shooting otherwise it ends up loosing the sharpness. and stay around F2.8 to F5.6.

[Gabriel Yeager]

Thanks for the update!

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Kaku Ito

The viewfinder is improved over XLH1, The resolution of the panel is close to the full resolution, which is leading other brands

Do you think this is really true (1920x1080)? If so, then that's very impressive!

[Chris Hurd]

Hmmm... the XH camera specs show 207,000 pixels for the flip-out LCD screen and 269,000 pixels for the EVF display. If either were 1920x1080, wouldn't that be 2,073,600 pixels?

[Boyd Ostroff]

Looks like either Canon or that reviewer are missing a zero somewhere ;-)

[Kaku Ito]

maybe it is not resolution, he could have meant ratio.

[Tim Le]

Sounds like he meant the LCD is close to showing 100% of the frame instead of overscanning a lot as in other brands.

[Kaku Ito]

Right, that must be it.

[Mark Fry]

I'm interested in the reviewer's comments about Gradation, Colour and Resolution. To what extent are these parameters fixed in the XH cameras? Is he commenting just on factory default settings, or something more fundamental? I've seen comments about a number of variables that the user can alter to change the "look" of the camera, and that these settings can be saved to memory stick (?) and recalled as user presets. So if one didn't like the slight magenta shift, or hair-tones being a little darker than natural, how difficult would it be for the user to adjust this to suit themselves? For example, can these presets be selected when working in auto-focus/auto-exposure mode, or only when using manual control? Maybe this is the sort of question that will have to wait for a road-test?

I imagine that there could be quite a lot of swaping of presets amongst XH owners. Maybe "experts" will charge for special presents that match existing cameras (e.g. XM1, XL2 etc.) or that mimic a favourite film or TV programme? Does this already happen for the XH-H1 or Sony Z1 cameras?

Which raises another question... when would you use a distinctive "look" in the camera and when would you set the camera to be as "neutral" or "acurate" as possible and change the "look" in post-production? What sort of presets would people normally use?