EF Adapter with XL H1

[Ron Armstrong]

Great Lauri; Thats what we've been waiting for. Nice of you to step up!!!

[Don DesJardin]

I should have said "Standard EOS Lenses", sorry about that. Ron is correct in that EF-S lenses are only compatiable within specified models of Canon's Digital SLR's. Next time I'll try and be a bit more alert before posting.

[Lauri Kettunen]

For those who wants to see something immediately, on my webpages:

www.luontovideo.net -> Special

you can now download two files. CNSL0002.MPEG is taken with XL H1 + EF adapter and Canon EF 70-200mm/f2.8 lens. CNSL0003.MPEG is taken with the new 20x lens. But, don't make too strong conclusion yet. I unpacked the camera, installed the Console program and took these two shots in the manual mode.

There was not enough light, and thus, had to add +3db gain. Shutter speed was 1/15s in both cases. CNSL0002.MPEG taken with the EF-adapter is still bit dark.

More will follow once have a chance to do the tests properly.

[Ron Pfister]

Hmmm... Was the aperture the same on both lenses? From the provided samples, it's darn clear to me who's the winner. EF loses, and badly at that! Now, I wonder if the EF-Adapter is degrading the quality, or whether the EF-glass is at fault (or both). Thanks for these tests, Lauri! Looking forward to more!

In the meantime, Hyvää Joulua ja Onnellista Uutta Vuotta!

[Lauri Kettunen]

There's now results of a reliable test made with the EF-adapter. The files can be downloaded from www.luontovideo.net -> Special

The image is the backside of the sticker inside the box of Sony DigitalMaster HDV/DV tape. The text is deliberately slightly tilted.

The shots were taken with the 20X, Canon EF70-200mm/f.28, and Canon EF400/f2.8 lenses in PAL 50i mode with factory default settings. For each lens I carefully aligned the H1 perpedicular to the target, and had enough light to set reasonable apertures. In case of 20x it was f=6.2 (a value which still produces about the sharpest images with XL2), in case of EF400mm and EF70-200mm the aperture was set to f=9.0. The shots were recorded directly on the hard disk with the Console program.

At the first glance the results seems promising. So, at least there seem to be some material for which the EF-adapter works just fine. But, more tests are proper analysis is needed. There is a significant difference between something which works fine for some material and which works for all material. You know, the Christmas morning is not the best time for these matters.

(Canon, do you hear us? Why the company does not provide us with all this information? Why do we -the customers- have to find out these things ourselves? This modern economics behind engineering is really strange.)

Ron, you sentence in Finnish created a feel a joy. How come you've learned some Finnish?

[Ron Pfister]

Lauri, my wife and I spent some time in Finland in the summer of 2004. We arrived in Helsinki from Talinn, headed East towards the Russian border (after a stop in Porkkala and the University Bookstore in Helsinki), thereafter turned North and followed more or less along the border all the way in to northern Norway. Fantastic trip!

I have yet to see a people in the World living up to the way you Finns care for your environment and infrastructure in the public domain. Truly awe-inspiring!

To get my Holiday wishes right, I had to consult my dictionary, though ;)

Cheers, and thanks for posting your footage! I very much appreciate it!

Ron

[Ronan Fournier]

Thank you very much Lauri !
It seems that there are less color aberations at the edge of the letters, with the EF-adapter and 70-200 & 400 lenses.
Is there any case where the standard 20x is better than the EF adapter ? I'm wondering if the definition of the 20x is not a bit sharper than the EF solution ?

[Carl Ny]

Originally Posted by Lauri Kettunen

For those who wants to see something immediately, on my webpages:

www.luontovideo.net -> Special

you can now download two files. CNSL0002.MPEG is taken with XL H1 + EF adapter and Canon EF 70-200mm/f2.8 lens. CNSL0003.MPEG is taken with the new 20x lens. But, don't make too strong conclusion yet. I unpacked the camera, installed the Console program and took these two shots in the manual mode.

There was not enough light, and thus, had to add +3db gain. Shutter speed was 1/15s in both cases. CNSL0002.MPEG taken with the EF-adapter is still bit dark.

More will follow once have a chance to do the tests properly.

Nice to see different lens EF options! Thanks!
The winter landscapes seems to be have much aliasing.
Maybe it´s my VLC player on a Cinema HD 23" Apple screen?

All the best

Carl

[Meryem Ersoz]

thank you for posting the footage, lauri. i'm wondering what your own conclusions are about your testing, to date. i thought the 400 looked fairly sharp compared with the stock 20x, but the 70-200 looked a bit soft to me. definitely the VLC player does not do justice to the footage, i think.

how do you compare it to your existing XL2? the little bird, while nice, did not seem necessarily an improvement over XL2 with a 35mm mount, which is quite sharp. but again, i'm pretty sure the VLC player which i downloaded is not the best delivery, so i'm finding it impossible to judge. i'd be interested in hearing your analysis as a result of having spent some time with the camera and in hearing your thoughts on how the 35mm lenses perform. thanks!

[Lauri Kettunen]

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

i thought the 400 looked fairly sharp compared with the stock 20x, but the 70-200 looked a bit soft to me. definitely the VLC player does not do justice to the footage, i think.

The VLC player does not show footages in 100% size. For this reason, I downloaded MPLayer from

http://mplayer.sunset-utopia.homeip.net/

to see the footages without scaling. A 100% footage does not fit into an ordinary display, but still, it's much easier to evaluate the quality, once you see even a part of the footage without any sort of scaling.

When you look at my examples, please take into account that I live on a latitude which is about 100 miles north from the south tip of Greenland. Thus, the footages were taken in very low light, and since it was cloudy, everything appears almost in black and white to the eyes. The "Great tit" footage was taken about 7-8 meters away, and thus, the depth of focus is almost nothing. But, when viewing the footage with MPlayer, in my eyes, the tit is amazingly sharp when it is in the focal plane.

I noticed already with the XL2 that the 70-200mm does not produce as sharp images as the 400mm or 600mm lens. With the XL H1 the same seems to apply.

The largest values of the iris make focusing difficult with all EF-lenses I've tested. It seems better to add some gain to get below say f8-f10, and then the outcome is just fine. So far, the amount of chromatic abberration has also been lower with the EF lenses compared to the standard 20x lens. (This is my first impression.)

If you look at the "Standard 20x lens" on my webpages, notice the magenta and green outlines on the trees on the left. In the "Wideangle 3x lens" footage the background snow is tinted to magenta whereas the snow on front is biased to green. This makes me bit hesitant to use the 3x lens.

Summing up, I find at least the fixed length EF lenses just fine. Likely, the 70-200mm is also useful in many cases. Compared to XL2 (PAL mode progressive 25P image with 576 horizontal lines) the XL H1 image is clearly sharper. I bought the XL H1, for in wildlife filming there are so often "once in life chances" and while filming you often know that likely you'll not be able to take the same again ever. So, I rather have the material on HDV than SD tape. The TV-stations also appreciate the HD material, for it has a longer lifespan. Second, in the past I've subconsiously avoided taking footages of birds showing simultaneously a larger portion of their natural landscape. After so many disappoiments, I was forced to the conclusion that the resolution of SD format is simply not high enough to show details. Now, HDV yields more latitude in thise sense and it should show up in editing.

The XL H1 is in wildlife filming a very good compromize. It's portable, one can shoot in HDV right now, SD is there if HDV will not work out, and one has also the advantage of EF lenses. Furthermore, in the future, most likely one will able to avoid the HDV by taking the shots directly to a portable system via the HD-SDI.

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

Thank you very much for your informative posts. Now I am beginning to have much more confidence in using the Nikkor 300mm & 600mm ED-IF lenses on the XL-H1.

Have you tried the 'old' Canon black 16X manual-focus lens on the H1? It would be interesting to see how (well or badly) it worked (in the real world - not on a test board) for wildlife etc, compared to the HD 20X lens.

It is such a pity that the 3X lens doesn't fare so well. I wonder how well the Optex .7X lens and Red eye .7X lens works on the HD 20X lens.

[Bill Taka]

Thanks Lauri,

Finally someone has actually performed real world tests with EF lenses. You're an XL1/2 user, you film wildlife and you edit so your opinion is really appreciated. Thanks for taking the time. Interesting that you found the longer primes to be noticeably sharper than with the XL2. What have you decided on for a deck? Unfortunately you might have just set me back $9,000.

[Meryem Ersoz]

certainly, the primes are almost always sharper than the zoom lenses, although in shooting wildlife, especially, sometimes the zoom is a big help in simply getting the shot. there's always compromises to take into account....

thanks again for the info, lauri, it's great that you're taking the time to help us all...i had to laugh at your previous post where you were complaining about how these big companies depend on consumers willing to shell out big bucks to test their products for them. it's a bit ridiculous. at least quyen of letus35 adapter fame is discounting his product to beta testers. why aren't the big companies showing this degree of integrity? we pay them more and expect less than we do of the little guy.


now, do i or don't i?? hmmmmm.

[Lauri Kettunen]

Originally Posted by Bill Taka

Interesting that you found the longer primes to be noticeably sharper than with the XL2. What have you decided on for a deck?

The avoid misunderstadings, I meant, the HDV image is obviously sharper than the SD signal of XL2. To get an idea of the difference, download the test or the Great tit footage taken with the EF 400mm lens and export a tif image to Photoshop or equiv. Then interpolate the resolution to 576 x 720 (PAL) or to 720x480 (NTSC), and compare the images. I haven't tried to figure out the difference between XL2 and XL H1 in SD mode using EF-lenses. There should be no big difference.

No definite ideas of the deck yet. If some prortable tapeless recorded for the HD-SDI pops up, not sure if I'll ever get a HDV deck.

Originally Posted by Meryem Ersoz

these big companies depend on consumers willing to shell out big bucks to test their products for them

Another akward thing is the minimal information of technical specifications, which is why I started a new thread on custom presets. I suspect, there is literally no single user who knows what the custom presets really mean, and wonder, whether even the Canon USA representatives are able to define the custom presets. This is a ridiculous situation, and possible only because almost everybody thinks the problem is in them not in the manufacturer. I've invested rather much in Canon equipments over the years, and eventually feel justified to exploit the publicity of DVInfo to make this message to Canon. They should realize that the situation is reallly silly; how come they sell the XL H1 and market its properties without giving an informal content to their own jargon.

[Paul Doherty]

I saw another thread where Steve Rosen said that with a non-HD lens "you have to endure that annoying little 10 second prompt that warns you that it is not an HD COMPATABLE LENS"

Can any of you guys confirm whether you get the same warning message with the EF adaptor on the XL H1.

If you do then a little information would be appreciated - the key point would be do you have to wait 10 secs for the message to disappear before you can start recording.

No-one has mentioned it so far in this thread, so I'm guessing (and hoping) that it's not an issue, but it would be nice to have that confirmed.

Thanks in advance!