PAL A1 arrived / Thank you
 

Sorry for the "no information thread", but I just wanted to thank you all for your time in this A1/G1 forum. All these posted clips and user reviews have been very helpful for me. So, thank you!

There's plenty of information in your post -- hopefully its that your a happy new A1 owner and will share your experiences with the rest of us.

Congratulations...

This far it has been great. I really think I will like this camcorder a lot. The lens is great, even if it has quite much barrel distortion. It's very easy to learn where manual controls are (only the record review button, beside magnification seems to be in wrong place, or should I say in dangerous place). All in all controls seem to be in right places. And like the others have said, camera is very well balanced for its size and doesn't feel heavy at all.
Low light is far better than in my previous cam Sony HVR-A1. Of course when I filmed candles, I did miss CMOS a little (there's some vertical smearing in XH, which HVR doesn't have). For me the noise of XH looks much nicer than one of HVR. Day light footage is.. what can I say - fantastic.
But I really have to dig this thing more, until I can say anything else.

So why didn't I wait for V1 and chose A1?
- Wider lens. Don't always have to use wide converter.
- Even if Sony's gain doesn't probably add as much noise as XH's, I like Canon's noise more.. Well, I don't like it, but it doesn't bother me as much as CMOS's noise. I'm sure someone would think vice versa.
- A1's picture controls are thrilling (customized functions).
- Onboard stereo mic. Even though I don't use it much, sometimes it's very important to have an option to record stereo material easily.

Hey Pope, how is 25F doing it for you? Too bad we don't have 24F in Pal's land. I'm crossing my fingers to receive my A1 this week! All these weeks of waiting looking at all the cool footage being posted are killing me.

Congrats! it would be nice to see some PAl footage. Would i be correct in thinking that we have a better image (if ever so slightly) due to having less Frames per second at the same resolution and bitrate of HDV? Would be good to have someone test that to see. :)

Rafael: I don't think it really matters much that PAL doesn't do 24F. If you need to do film transfer, it can be done easily from 25F, too. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of video camcorder's progressive 24/25. But 25F doesn't look bad at all. I have only tested F-mode very shortly, so I must test it more before I can say anything else.
It's raining heavily here. I hope it will stop soon, I want to get out and shoot :D

What is the price of the PAL version ? Where did you buy it from?

I bought it from a local Canon dealer (Rajala Pro Shop). VAT free price is here about 3300 euros.

wow, that's really cheap. In the Netherlands it ranges from 4000 to 4200 euro.
Edit: oh sorry, it's 4000 here inc. VAT, so probably the same price as in Finland.

You can find it for about 3300-3400 inc VAT in Germany. I'm not allowed to post specific stores, but look around and thou will find...

Thanks Steven, but what about the firmware language? Is it also English?

I bought mine for 3194€ with all taxes and shipping included. It's supposed to arrive in 1 or 2 days. I'm freaking out with excitement!

Just got it today. I think that for people who live in Europe in countries where the A1's price is like 3700€ it's worth it to hop on a plane, buy the camera and leave. You can find flights withing Europe for 30€.

Raf, where did you get the cam for that price in EU with that fast delivery?
Please, post some guidelines.
IBAN bank transactions and EU postage could be even faster than real life flight across EU.

Thanks in advance,
T

Yeah, but it's certainly much nicer to fly to a european city over weekends and call it a business trip :)