My brand new XL-H1, broken out of the box! Please help me diagnose... (includes vid)

[Ed Moore]

Hi all, bit distraught, hope you can help! I just turned on my new H1 for the first time and the following happened:

1. It seemed okay
2. Weird pink horizontal lines flashed all over the viewfinder. The status text and symbols were fine
3. The picture eventually came up but the colour is totally distorted: it looks like the red CCD is unaligned or something as there is a red ghost of everything to one side and the rest of the picture looks very blue-green. The red image is not as sharp though and blurs heavily towards the top and bottom.

I have checked:

1. The viewfinder setup and cabling: menus in VCR mode are full colour and look fine
2. The mechanics of the lens including the state of the join between lens and camera: all looks fine. Zoom/focus/iris/ND etc all work okay.
3. The backfocus
4. Any weird settings in any of the menus, including custom presets
5. All the various format/frame rate modes
6. Recording to tape then playing back/capturing - still see the distortion

I have upload a quick sample of the footage to http://www.fullrange.co.uk/brokenh1.mov (184KB, QuickTime 7) for you to take a look at.

Has anyone come across this? Is there anything I can do, or is it straight back to the shop for it?

Many thanks,

Ed :( Moore

[Chris Hurd]

Hi Ed,

Straight back to the shop. You must return this camera to your dealer immediately. There's nothing you can do for it; your dealer should exchange it on the spot with a different XL H1.

[Ed Moore]

I thought that might be the case; drat. Was looking forward to shooting some beautiful sunset shots this evening as well.

Thanks for your help in any case.

[Chris Hurd]

Best of luck with this and do let us know how it goes for you. The nice thing about sunsets is that sooner or later, you're pretty much guaranteed a repeat (albeit different) performance. There's always another one coming around. Be sure to share those shots here when you get them!

[Ed Moore]

Thanks, I will do. This place is great: I've already learnt some fantastic tips about capturing to the PhotoJPEG codec rather than HDV and I have some mini35+H1 footage downloading - yummy :)

Let's hope my supplier has another (working) H1 right there on the shelf when I go in, it would be really annoying to have to wait for boxes to get shipped from Canon...

Ed

[Meryem Ersoz]

i had to return my first XL2 which was broken out of the box. the box was damaged on arrival, and none of the playback functions worked at all. so don't be afraid to return something which isn't working perfectly.

it's such a big letdown when you've worked up a head of steam about getting to play with a new camera!

[Ed Moore]

Woo! I got a new camera from the suppliers. I can thoroughly recommend Creative Video (www.creativevideo.co.uk) in the Midlands, UK - they were profusely apologetic about the failure and had another H1 box ready and waiting when we took the duff one back. None of this 'we're waiting on a shipment' rubbish you get from lesser resellers.

Anyway the camera looks great, have bolted a few accessories on already and waiting for our Vocas mattebox to arrive shortly, along with a Century Optics wide angle adaptor once Creative Video have worked out which one's the best for the H1.

Will post some pretty pictures up once I've used it on a shoot for the first time tomorrow.

[Chris Hurd]

Great, glad to hear it Ed -- that's the way things should work!