Lens Question

[Dale Guthormsen]

Good evening,

Today I was out on a shoot (wildlife) I had both my xl2 and my xlh1. I had the telephoto and rail system on the H1 and I had the xl2 with the standard lens.

I was wondering if I could put my HD lens on the xl2 to be used manually?? If it is truly an HD quality lens with morre lines than the standard, then it would seem I could get a little better image even if on standard definition.


Any thoughts??

[Chris Hurd]

Hi Dale, you can certainly mount the XL HD lens on your XL2... as far as whether the results will be better, I think you're the one who is in the best position to determine that, since you have all of the components. Can you test it out and report back?

[Dale Guthormsen]

Chris,

I will go out on a shoot tomarrow morning and do some comparisons and will post some stills as well as some video on vimeo.

[Dale Guthormsen]

I did some frame grabs in DV using both lenses using the straight xl2 and then an xl2 with the H1 lens.

I also did a shot of the h1 with the xl lens and the h1 on the H1 both in DV and there is no noticable difference there either.


of course in hd it may be different, but that was not what i wanted to know. there is no advantage putting the supposed hd lens on the xl2.


Frame grabs of the xl2.

I would say that there is not a noticable difference.

[Chris Hurd]

Great -- thanks for doing this test Dale! Much appreciated,

[Pete Bauer]

Have to agree. The SD lenses for the XL2 hold up pretty well. When I first got the XL H1, I did a quick and dirty comparison using the H1 and have never bothered to update this very old page:

Scratchpad! (Scroll down to the rez charts)

I wouldn't see it being worth the cost for an XL2 shooter to get the HD lenses for SD work. The HD lenses are definitely better paired with the HD cameras, though.

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by Dale Guthormsen

I did some frame grabs in DV using both lenses using the straight xl2 and then an xl2 with the H1 lens.

I also did a shot of the h1 with the xl lens and the h1 on the H1 both in DV and there is no noticable difference there either.


of course in hd it may be different, but that was not what i wanted to know. there is no advantage putting the supposed hd lens on the xl2.


Frame grabs of the xl2.

I would say that there is not a noticable difference.

...Sorry gents but I disagree. Although the original XL2 lens clips and the H1 HD lens clips are very close, there is a slight difference in resolution and contrast in favor of the H1 stock lens. If you look at the banana and nuts in the basket, then you can see increased detail in the grain structure of the nuts taken with the H1 HD lens. I suspect it is harder to see due to the roughly 512 lines of resolution limit inherent with the DV format. I also notice a slight shift in slightly deeper blacks in the shadow areas with the H1 lens. However, I don't think there is enough of a difference to justify the purchase, or general use of the 20 X II stock HD Zoom on an XL2 body. I bet you would see a more noticeable diiference if a 25, 38, or 50 mm F series prime Nikon lens was used with an adaptor onto the XL2. As long as you could colimate and adjust the backfocus of such a lens to the XL2, but this is seriously more expensive glass. I would think some of the high end Canon still primes would also be quite noticeably superior on your XL2.