i just filmed some spots for use on cable television with the XL1 and it was horrible in low light. we were on a street in downtown new york with little light (only from the few street lamps above) and i could not get a good shot at all. i boosted the gain, shutter speed and iris and got nothing that i could use. why was it so bad? the camera was great in the studio but when we hit the street, it became a $3000 paperweight. we ended up using our sony tvr20, which was great.

anyone know what i was doing wrong?

-- kiffer keegan (kkeegan@comedycentral.com), June 18, 2001

Answers

The XL-1 is very good in low light, except that it only has 12dbs of gain increase maximum. Most consumer cameras have much more gain than this so they boost the image to make it visible, but it's usually considered to grainy to be broadcast quality.

Mila Aung-Thwin

-- mila aung-thwin (mila@cam.org), July 13, 2001.

That's strange.

Canon has even enlarged the pixels on the CCD-chips so that it would exceed the competition when it comes to low-light shooting. There are more competition in the market now. But the xl-1 should really be better than any consumer-cameras... That's strange... Maybe it's the progressive scan? I don't know, but my trv-900 is about one F-stop darker in progressive scan mode.

-- Andreas Ursin Hellebust (ursa81@email.com), August 02, 2001.