Which Canon battery are you using? I've run hours on a the BP-945
(from mind) without a problem, or are you still using the small
battery that came with the camera? I bought a cheaper brand
(Lenmar) battery of the highest capacity and if I had two or three
of those (still under $100) I would've been able to easily shoot
for 8 hours for example.

Please do a search on the topic, it has been discussed before.

I am currently using two of the BP930s. Thanks Rob, I will check that out.

So there's no grease or like, lubricant of some kind?

Oh no... *cringes*

Dennis

Using different lenses
 

I recently shot some footage of a friend's wedding. The location of the ceremony was a very dark room and none of my footage of the ceremony itself was useable. Luckily a friend was shooting with another camera so I do have footage of ther wedding. My question is, does anybody have any experience shooting w/a lense adapter using photographic lenses(i.e. Nikon, Canon). If I shoot with a prime lense will I gather more light due to the fact that there is less glass for the light to pass through, hence a brighter picture. I'm shooting with an XL1 w/the stock lense BTW. I also had the gain boosted and the iris wide open.

Re: Using different lenses
 

The CCD block limits the max aprerture to F/1.8.

You might gain about a stop relative to the max zoom end of the standard lens if you use a EF lens adapter and a fast (f/1.8) still camera lens. But due to the CCD size relatively to the still film frame size, you will see an effective 7.2x increase in apparent focal length (based on field of view of the image).

Have you tried to increase the image brigthness gain in post? You may be able to squeeze another 6-12 dB . The image will hve plenty of noise, but is better thtn nothing,

Canon XL-1 Playback Problem
 

Hi,

I've had my XL-1 for 5 years of moderate use without any problems. Just now I find that when I play out to an NTSC monitor through the RCA outs I'm getting these thi, widely separated black lines that slowly drift from the bottom of the monitor to the top like very slow-motion "bad reception".

I've swapped out the RCA cables to no effect, and the problem occurs both when I'm playing back a tape or just playing out from FCP4 through the camera as a deck.

Has anyone experienced this before? I'm trying to identify what I might be facing.

Thanks!

BG

xl to c-mount adapter
 

I could have sworn that I found a small website with this adapter. For the life of me, I cannot remember where I saw it.

If anyone knows, let me know.


Stephen

Stephen, are you taking about this site?

http://www.xl1solutions.com/Adaptor%20Products.htm

I think they hawked a C-mount adaptor a while back, but I don't find it on their site now.

JS

hm...
could be.

I'm going to drop them a line and see if they can give me any info.

Thanks!

stephen

A couple of quick questions. Is the camera close to the monitor or a speaker? Have you tried svhs out? Is the camera powered by batteries or ac adapter?( try battery)
smitty

Field mixer (Shure FP-31) and dual recording
 

Hi guys,
after having learned from this forum for weeks now (it's been amazing, thanks) without posting any questions myself, I thought I'd give it a go. So here's my first one and I hope it is not too vague.

i just bought a second-hand field mixer (shure fp31) to use with my canon xl1s on my first documentary shoot (in 3 weeks) . I will have a sound person with a boom and a shotgun mic, who will feed (and monitor) the signal into the mixer. However, having read that the onboard audio capabilities of the Xl1s may be inferior to other recording media (e.g. dat) I was wondering whether it would make sense to run two outputs from the mixer (same signal): one to my camera (MA-200) and one to a hardisk recorder (uncompressed recording, i.e. wav). The hard disk would be attached to the sound guy.
Now, is this overkill? the hard disk I intend to use takes a stereo signal via a small 3.5mm jack. I have several output alternatives from the FP-31: 2 XLR, one small 3.5mm tape out, and a large phone (6.3mm) jack.

Any thoughts and opinions welcome

Cheers from down under

PS if somebody has any experience with the FP-31, I would appreciate any advice

Extra audio mixer
 

A thought for some shoots it would work great, but we are a two person department covering the entire state of California, (or Kal'Eforn'Ya as our gov likes to say it). We rarely have the luxury of both of us on the same shoot, and still do not have any student or senior volunteers for our unit. For the application I just had, a 55 minute speach, I could go 16bit, with the mixer and be in good shape, but for things like following a hunter and guide thru the woods, this would make it rather sporty at best.

I just spent about 9 days low crawling with various folks thru the Grizzly Island Wildlife area, Scouting, Filming, and generally getting up to my ears in mud, a mixer would have to be really small maybe a beachtek or something. Thanks for the post, it starts me thinking anyway..... Of course then I give up the ability to control my mix in post....... Still, it would be better if adobe just wrote their software correctly.

Thanks,

Matt

Wow! Agreed. A location such as that would make a second audio unit rather impractical.

For the record, I hear your pain. I have laboured over 2 camera shoots in the edit bay when the audio drifts by about 2 seconds on the hour between the 2 sources.

Adding a 3rd cam is even more fun....

But that's boring sh*t ... your locations sound like a blast...

XL1s and Airport Security
 

Hi, just have a (somewhat strange) query.

I travelling abroad and am taking my Canon XL1s with me.

Can I be sure that a device such an airport X-Ray machine won't damage my XL1s in any way (when put through as hand luggage)?

Does anybody have any knowledge on the topic?

May sound like a bizzare question but you can never be so sure!

I don't want to send it to it's death!

Thanks guys!

It won't damage the camera.

Use the forum Search function to turn up other threads on this topic; as I recall this subject has been previously discussed here in some detail.