100b vs A1 on 24p .other info

[jimstamos]

just saw this canon mentioned on the forum.
a few questions,
how much is the A1 going for and other than the interchangeable lens on the XLH1, which i could care less about, what major features worth knowing about does it not have that the H1 has.

on the 24p end, how does it fair compared to the 100b and how is the lowlight on the A1.

 

[Huy Vu]

A1 is worse in lowlight because it's an HD camera and you have more pixels occupying the same CCD surface.

The 24p cadence is identical on both cameras. A1 looks sharper in 16:9 because of its native chip.

The A1 is going for $3500 with a $250 rebate making the price $3250. It has everything that the H1 does except for interchangable lenses; actually it has instant AF autofocus and iris ring, which isn't really a big deal. H1 has HD-SDI output and GenLock which the A1 lacks.

 

[Elton]

Actually the A1's Iris ring is a huge bonus. It's very smooth in exposure ramping--actually useable in a live shot if you don't want to cut.

Something little known about lowlight in HD on an A1 vs. SD and the 100B: The A1's noise is very fine--meaning the particles dance, but they are very small and so aren't necessarily bothersome enough to be a hindrance. Many find it to be relatively filmlike and somewhat pleasing--adds a bit of grit that gives texture to the image.

You can add gain to the A1's image without necessarily killing the footage...sometimes all the way up to 12 dB, depending on your individual tolerance for noise. This is where the NR features of the A1 can actually pay off because using the low settings can take the edge off the noise without softening the image much, if at all. (but only the low settings, and in particular NR2 works best)

It can effectively take a +12dB-gained image back down to about +6, which makes a difference.

Now, all this noise decreases dramatically when downconverted to SD. It doesn't mean the converted footae will look noiseless, but if it wasn't too bothersome in HD, then it will be even less noticeable in SD with good software downconversion.

So lowlight isn't necessarily *perceptually* worse if you know how to take advantage of the A1's features.