Excellent article

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Robert Lane

And as far as Barry's journalistic integrity I've never considered anything he has shared to be blindly brand-loyal; he openly shares both strengths and weaknesses of anything he reviews - something I'm mindful of myself.

I want to make clear that I am not attacking Barry and that I have utmost respect for his knowledge. I was only wanting to point out to Barry that many readers might come away with the perception of bias, given the venue where the review appeared.

I brought up the 'vs' thing Robert, cause after the Texas HD Shootout, we ran into the same thing. People expected some type of last camera standing after the smoke cleared. But we found out there was no clear winner amongst the sub $10K HD cameras. They all had strengths and weaknesses. In retrospect, we should have called it a Round Up instead of a Shootout cause we really ended up with each camera having unique differences that will appeal to a certain end-user and their needs.

I agree about the vivid color of Panasonic. That's one trait that I love about my little 953. The color on that thing is gorgeous!

regards,

-gb-

[Dennis Hingsberg]

These out of the box shoot-outs are always so objective anyway.. I mean color is always subject to preference and obviously could be tweaked in camera or post if desired.

I'm sure the A1 is no exception.

I do think 20x zoom is better than 13x though...

[John Jencks]

Barry, another great article, infact of all the stuff that I've seen you put out (and its alot) the only critical comment I have is on choice of music for the HVX bootcamp DVD. That is horrid. But this article is yet another informative piece and even as an HVX user I can see where an A1 would be more useful.

I am in agreement with Greg on the "Vs.". I think it makes people look for a winner and occasionally leads to agression if the one the writers subjective statements is viewed as being negative. Maybe in the future it would be better if these types of articles were labeled "&".

I think owners of a particular camera get bent out of shape, because they are worried that a producer is just going to skim over an article and see a comment that says "the X camera can look soft in certain conditions" or "Y camera has trouble with focus" and write off that camera for production even if any inteligent owner of that camera knows how to work around that particular camera's idiosyncrasies.

God, I think I've just written a horribly long winded version of Robert Lane's signature.

[Timothy Harry]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Here's an incorrect statement I found almost immediately..

The XL2 was the only XL series to have the 'clicky iris switch'. The XL1/s had a wheel. The XL2 had the toggle switch and people complained loudly so Canon brought back the wheel for the XLH1, contradictory to Barry's statement.

-gb-

The above statement in my experience is untrue

I currently have an XL1 as well as the HVX. The XL1 does indeed have a clicky iris control device. Whether we call it a switch or a wheel is completely irrelevent. The clicks in the wheel can most definitely be heard ove the camera microphone, as I have had this happen before. My church has an XL2, and I believe the iris control even though different has the exact problem the XL1 has. There is definite room for improvement in this regard on the Canon cameras.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Timothy Harry

The above statement in my experience is untrue

I currently have an XL1 as well as the HVX. The XL1 does indeed have a clicky iris control device. Whether we call it a switch or a wheel is completely irrelevent. The clicks in the wheel can most definitely be heard ove the camera microphone, as I have had this happen before. My church has an XL2, and I believe the iris control even though different has the exact problem the XL1 has. There is definite room for improvement in this regard on the Canon cameras.

There are indeed discrete steps in the iris wheel control on the original XL1/s but with the toggle type control of the XL2, it made a less than perfect solution even worse. You can't quickly roll the iris from one spot to the other since you have to toggle to each setting with the XL2. I don't recall feeling or hearing a tactile click when moving the wheel on the XL1, but the visual image had distinctive steps from one setting to the next. Certainly not loud enough to be picked up by the onboard mic.

The main thing I was pointing out in Barry's review was that the toggle is not present on the XLH1 as it was on the XL2, even though it's still inferior to the iris ring found on the new XH cameras. It's a minor issue in the overall scheme of things.

-gb-