New Canon XA25, XA20 and HF G30 camcorders

[David Johns]

You can also do it even faster with a single button push, if I read the manual correctly, by assigning one of the buttons to be "WB Priority". Then you shoot at one chosen WB setting, hit the button and it switches to your WB Priority setting. Hit again and it goes back to the first WB setting.

Incidentally, I've just uploaded my unbox / first look review to YouTube, for anyone who hasn't ordered one yet. More videos to come soon...

Cheers
Dave

[Jeff Harper]

Thanks David, didn't know about that.

This is what I've found: You can use the WB Priority feature to go from Auto White Balance to the setting of your choice, but you cannot go from a custom setting to custom setting. You have to play with it to understand it, it's very weird.

Basically, when you turn on the WB Priority feature, it goes to whatever WB setting you choose, but when you push the button again, it goes to Auto White Balance. I just spend a few minutes playing with it. It is a worthless and idiotic feature.

You can assign buttons 3 and/or 4 to WB Priority, but they both to the same thing, so when you change one, it changes the setting on the other to match. Completely, totally worthless, unless you use Auto White balance, which I do not.

I've been using Auto WB around the house and it's not worth much. It might be fine for outdoor lighting, haven't tried it yet.

[Byron Jones]

If you find auto WB acceptable for outdoors, then the button could work for you. Set the custom to the indoor shoot and press it when leaving the building to let auto take over outside. This only would work if you find auto acceptable outside. At least there is hope.

[Bryce Comer]

Hi Jeff,
I just had a play too & it looks like you can actually use the WB priority to toggle between two custom WB settings. Go to "Func" then WB settings. Set both your indoor WB say on custom WB 1 & outdoor WB on WB 2, then assign a button to WB priority. From there you need to go into the menu & set the WB priority. This could be set at either custom WB 1 or 2 but lets say you set it to custom WB 2. Exit the menu. Go back to the func. & WB settings. Select custom WB setting 1. Now when you push the Custom button you assigned to WB priority, you can toggle back & forth between the two custom WB settings you set up in the beginning.
No it's certainly not perfect, & you still have to stop recording to do it, but it's a work around.
Hope this helps,
Bryce

[Jeff Harper]

Thanks a ton, Bryce, I will give that a try in a few minutes, sounds nice. Not sure I understand it, but I will read your instructions as I go along. Very encouraging. I have to leave shortly for a mostly indoor shoot, hopefully I'll have time before I leave, kind of rushed now!

[Frank Stearns]

If you stop a recording to change white balance and start a new recording within 3 seconds doesn't the pre record buffer allow you to edit out the pause later?
Just wondering..

[Frank Stearns]

Please correct me if I am wrong but if the 3 second record buffer is enabled and you stop a recording for less then 3 seconds, there is no loss of data whatsoever, just a end of file and start of a new file on the SD card. This would mean that you could stop recording, change white balance and start again and the result would be the same as not stopping at all.

[Bryce Comer]

You're welcome Jeff.
Frank,
Great idea, however, I just gave it a shot, & unless i'm doing something wrong, there still seems to be a small gap in time between the two recordings. What I did to test it was to do a pan and half way through, stop recording & make the switch with the white balance then start recording again. Took a couple of seconds at the most to do it, but there is still a noticeable gap in the pan. The second of the 2 shots has the transition of the white balance a few frames in from the start of the clip, so it has buffered the shot, seemingly just not the full 3 seconds?? Again, maybe it's how i'm going about it, so if anyone else can make it work i'm sure it would help those out in need of such a feature.
Regards,
Bryce

[Frank Stearns]

I just saw in the manual that the pre record function is disabled when pressing the white balance button, etc.

[Luis A. Diaz]

Originally Posted by Paul Rickford

Just a couple of small things, but they are bugging me, the lens hood only stays on with a very small twist of the wrist and has pinged off twice already in the last 5 mins when closing the lens cap lever.

More unforgivable is that the BP-819 and BP-827 battery packs from the XA10 DO NOT work on the XA20, comes up with the message "Battery pack not compatible, turning off the camcorder"

Now bad as the expense of buying extra batteries is, if you are doing a multi shot with the XA-10 the new BP-820 is identical looking and fitting to the BP819, so good luck getting the right battery on the right camcorder if you are in a hurry.

Hi Paul:
That is not nice at all presumably they both have the same milliamp rating of 1750 or so.
I wonder if the wide angle adapter (the genuine Canon Wide Angle) adapter the WA-H58W for the XA-10 will be able to be used on the XA-20 as you may know this piece of glass does not cost pennies.
The one for the XA-20 is the WA-H58 with a 0.8x magnification.
The one for the XA-10 is the WA-H58W with a 0.7x magnification.
Presumably they are both 58mm thread but I wonder about vignetting,

If anyone, has any opinion on this or knows any test done with the XA-20 and the wide angle adapter for the XA-10 your input will be appreciated as I am considering the upgrade to the XA-20.

Thank You
Luis

[Jeff Harper]

RE: battery pack confusion, I suggest using stickers and color coding. I put round, yellow stickers on my
XA20 and it's batteries, it's the only way to avoid confusion during a shoot.

[Dennis Freeman]

I just saw on the B&H website that the HF G30 is now available.
Denny

[Martin Cowan]

Hi folks. Well we took delivery last week of our long awaited XA25 and now that we have had a real good play with it there are a few things that bother us.

For the record we shoot news on a Sony PMW350, but needed a small HD cam for in car stuff and the like, so we bought into the XA10 two years ago. It was OK but lacked a few refinements, which the XA25 seemed to address. ie 20x Zoom with a more controllable rocker and an SDI output.

So what did we discover.

Well the notorious CMOS wobble effect is pretty bad when mounted in a car. The image stabiliser settings don't appear to help out with the rolling shutter issues on the XA25. Next we noticed some really bad colour aberration in high contrast situations when zoomed in over 50% of its range ( never saw much with the XA10 ) This may be due to the new 20x lens fitted to the XA25. Then we looked at the AF options. The results were not fabulous to say the least. We tried to shoot a piece to camera without an operator behind the camera, ie how a video journalist would work. The AF face detect mechanism struggled to stay on the face of the presenter who was pretty much static and well lit at the time. When we looked at the footage in FCP at 100%, it was difficult to say where the focus was but it certainly wasn't the subjects face.

Now I can here most of you saying " well what do you expect for the money" Thing is, it's like someone else said earlier on this site. Canon are marketing this as a "professional" product, so I kind of expected better. Then there is the annoying little battery situation as mentioned recently. We also have a XA10 and 4 BP-819 batts with a charger. These of course will not work in the XA25 because Canon wants you to buy some more batteries from them. Whats really annoying here is the fact that physically there is no difference whatsoever with a BP-819 (XA10) and a new BP-820 (XA25). Shame on you Canon !

Oh and our final moan of the day is the 35mb MP4 files don't import too well into Final Cut 7 unlike JVC's 35mb XDCAM EX files. So we still have to transcode the stuff like AVCHD.

Listen, this is just our humble opinion. But I would not be recommending this new Canon baby right now.

[Neil Preston]

Hi everyone, I've been following this thread with great interest, as I'm considering buying an XA20. They arn't available in South Africa yet, so before I finally commit I'd like to benefit as much as possible from those of you who have already bought and are sharing your experiences here.

What has been the general feeling about the image quality? I'm just a hobbyist doing mainly wildlife stuff, so the 20x zoom is a big appeal. I've just sold my Panasonic HPX174 mainly because of the bulk and inconvenience of the tele converter I had to use to get a better zoom. A smaller more compact cam would also be an advantage, but I dont want to go backwards in terms of image quality. It will also be nice to get away from the cost of P2 cards. The 174 is a great camera and I really enjoyed the DVCPro system, so not so sure how AVCHD will compare.

The Sony PMW-100 sounds like a better cam than the XA20, but only has a 10x zoom. I'm not as technicaly knowedgable as you guys, so any thoughts on a comparison would be very helpful.

I will continue watching this thread with great interest.

[Jeff Harper]

Martin, my experience with Autofocus and auto face detection was much different than yours I found it to work very very well, I was much impressed with it, way better than xa10.

The MP4 thing you mention issue is not a camera issue, but a FCP issue.

You also mention rolling shutter and image stabilization. The two are not connected are they? How would rolling shutter be lessened by using IS? It cannot be, unless you are referring to another phenomenon or I don't understand something.

Neil, you can always buy the camera and try it out, return it if you don't like it. You say the Sony is a better camera but if it lacks the features you need, such as a 20x zoom, then how is it better? The lens is, arguably, the most important part of the camera!

I used the zoom extensively on a shoot and the freedom of having a 20X zoom is exhilarating. It made such a huge difference on my shoot. I cannot believe I've shot for over two years without a 20X zoom.