Canon XH series -- various sample clips

[Steven Dempsey]

Nice stuff...I liked the band. Did you take an audio feed from the mixer?

[Noel Evans]

Originally Posted by Steven Dempsey

Nice stuff...I liked the band. Did you take an audio feed from the mixer?

Hi Stephen. Glad you liked it. Sound was recorded on an 8 track mixer plus an additional ambient track from A cam using a premixer. When you hear the applause at the end, thats almost entirely inaudible on from the 8 track recording.

[Noel Evans]

Originally Posted by Jerome Marot

Is that a multirig for camera b? I found that using a camera on such rigs for live concerts is not very convenient, because you can't adjust much since you must keep both hands on the rig.

As to camera a, maybe the operator could have zoomed in from time to time for some close-ups. Of course, this needs that both operators know each other very well and decide what they will film beforehand, but it allows a more lively cut.

(Just my 2 cents...)

Yeah jerome I dont entirely disagree with your opinion. But have found in my two cam shoots, you often get caught mid zoom on one cam and then are stuck with a half zoom in edit. This coming from a person who doesnt like straight on zooms (in or out) from a static cam. Youll notice I dont have any problem with the handheld pulling out or in on pans. But I find this a more pro look, as it takes a lot of practice to master doing it for the right composition and knowing what you will end up doing in edit. And happier clients.

I recently directed a four cam shoot. We had right and left rear tripod mounted cams, with the explicit order if one is in zoom the other isnt to be (they could both be zoomed in - but not actually going through zoom at the same time. One cam was handheld similar to this set up other was on a dolly in front of the stage.

Problem with venues in Tokyo, unless your doing 10,000 people is they are all dinky little places with no room to move and needless to say all big gigs are taken up by the big Japanese production companies. Im doing a lot of the smaller foreign stuff, because they dont like the two static cam shoots they usually get when they hire the smaller Japanese production companies.

[Toenis Liivamaegi]

OK, I`ll shine some light on my first duty assignment with A1 for a subsidiary company of ours.
It was back in December 2006. I`ve had my hands on my A1 for only three hours, for just as much time as it takes to read and almost understand the manual.

1 minute corporate clip in SD, not yet CCd (sorry for the softening compression)

This isn`t a creative clip by any means but shows the lowest end of the A1 capabilities when used as a tool in corporate environment. It was mostly filmed with out of the box settings and with available office lights, AGC off and gain at "0". In about half the shots I used a polarizer to get rid of screen glares etc.

Cheers,
T

[Adam Reuter]

Thanks for posting this "worst-case scenario" footage. I appreciate seeing how this camera holds up (or doesn't, I'm still downloading) in the ugliest of conditions.

[Toenis Liivamaegi]

Any comments, maybe on content?

T

[Adam Reuter]

I enjoyed the video. It definitely was not boring and your shots were nicely done. If that's the worse this camera can do...wow!

[Mark Harmer]

Really useful to see this to see what the A1 can do in SD in an office environment. It gives a good benchmark - particularly knowing it was used with "out of the box" settings. I guess this was actually shot in SD rather than down-converted in camera / in editing?

I did a bit of video level tweaking and subtle sharpening just out of interest, and I can see that the video is going to look really vibrant. I appreciate deeply having some footage to play with before deciding to purchase this camera. A lot of footage posted on this site has had a considerable degree of post-production or is shot in unusual conditions (because you'd want to see the absolute best it can do) so it's great to see what the camera might do in a "typical" situation with available light, and in SD (I've got a pretty good idea what its HD performance is like!).

The only thing I'd at all fault is nothing to do with the pictures or sound: it's the commentary, which uses passive language throughout - putting a bit of a downer on the whole thing. It took me a few minutes to work this out. I know it's nothing to do with sound and pictures, but funnily enough, it does affect the overall impact of the thing. Hope that's useful feedback to give to whoever wrote the narration. Great to see all the technology in the business, by the way - and it would have been fun to see samples of the complete game creation process rather than just bits of it (but appreciate you're confined to what's actually happening in the duration of that shoot, and I thought you presented a great sequence).

[Emil Habouri]

Very Nice video especially the first shots

[Brian Brown]

I've been shooting hours of footage for my kids' basketball league with my new A1. I'm presenting a short video for the awards ceremony next week, and presently trying to come up with a way to cull all of that footage down to 5 minutes of screen time.

Today I played around with rotoscoping some A1 footage. I first down-rezzed to 1280x720, and worked with the square pixels in After Effects to roto a few dozen frames. Details on the process (and low-rez Flash version) are on my blog site here: http://www.brownland.org/blog/2007/0...after-effects/

Here's the 720p WMV file (22 seconds, 15MB): http://www.brownland.org/video/roto1.wmv

Enjoy,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions

[Larry Chapman]

My first footage with the A1. Shot in 1080 60i, most with factory defaults. Boosted contrast a bit in post.

http://www.ftcvideo.com/VIDEOSAMPLES/HD.wmv

[Chris Barcellos]

Originally Posted by Larry Chapman

My first footage with the A1. Shot in 1080 60i, most with factory defaults. Boosted contrast a bit in post.

http://www.ftcvideo.com/VIDEOSAMPLES/HD.wmv

Looks a lot nicer than my footage from my Digital 8 taken just after 9/11...

[Doug Davis]

How did the A1 hold up in the middle of no where? Any issues in the field? I have been really impressed with the battery life so far... Any things you learned that do work or don't work? Was it as rural as the footage looked? Very nice footage btw...

[Larry Chapman]

Originally Posted by Doug Davis

How did the A1 hold up in the middle of no where? Any issues in the field? I have been really impressed with the battery life so far... Any things you learned that do work or don't work? Was it as rural as the footage looked? Very nice footage btw...

Well, from my perspective Yellowstone is not "the middle of no where". I've had my VX-2000s on the top of 16K' mountains with no way out but an airplane! :-)

The shoot was really very tame. The hot springs were shot right from a tourist walkway (although I did drop the durn lens cap there!). We did a couple hikes on snow and pulled the camera gear in a mountaineering sled. I like that a lot better than a backpack. Less load on my back and typically easier/quicker access to the gear. The temps were mild with lows in the mornings around 20F and highs during the day in the mid 40s.

What did I learn? Not much really because I've done so much shooting with other cameras in similar, or worse, environments. The A1 didn't have a single issue the entire trip. We reviewed the footage at night on a portable DVD player and my laptop (once it was captured).

Ah, there was one thing . . . I can't reliably hand-hold the A1 at full zoom without ending up with too much motion (at least for my eye). I can hand-hold my VX-2000s at full zoom. There are probably several reasons for this:

1) Longer zoom on the A1.
2) HD vs. SD
3) It seems to me that the OIS on the Sonys is better than the A1.

[Deke Ryland]

I'm really impressed with the quality of footage you were able to get of the fast action with HDV. May I ask what camera settings you had? Interlaced or Progressive, etc? Would love to hear? Great example of rotoscoping.. I'll have to experiment on my own! Thanks.