A week with the XF105

Jason Adams

Jason Adams

Section Moderator
I just spent a week traveling and shooting with the XF105. Here are some thoughts.


FormFactor:

Its a baby wonder cam. Imagine most of the features of an HPX170 with the sharpness and small size of an HMC40. Really powerful cam for the size. Smart layout. The XF100 is the same cam with no SDI out and goes for $2999. Thats probably the reason its back ordered everywhere. Its also the reason I had to purchase the $3999 105. Amazing cam for the price.


Wow Features:
4:2:2
Variable frame rates. 48 is my favorite overcrank rate. One I have missed shooting in DSLR land from my 170.
Kelvin dial white balance
shutter speed in degrees
Interval record
waveform


Gotchas:
Electronic ND. That engages after F22. A external Variable ND filter was a quick fix.

HDMI output is almost directly under the hand grip. Shooting handheld with an external monitor or recorded attached could be sloppy.

Sloppy Menu - the menu lacks organization. For instance changing the resolution and frame rate is under the "other" setting. Menu could be ,much improved with more headings like "Recording" "Picture Profile" "Card Utility" etc. It takes 3 menu selections to overcrank footage. Not a deal breaker but if you plan to run and gun be prepared to spend some time getting acclimated to the menu. Even headphone volume is a menu choice. The cam has 10 map-able buttons but not every feature can be mapped.

Conclusion:

I am thrilled with this cam. For the price of a Nano flash 4:2:2 recorder you can have a camera that records 4:2:2. If you don't mind menu surfing you can have a cam that is half price of most others with these features.
 
I also just spent some time (4 day shoot) with this cam. I was shooting the us figure skate N.W. regional s and this cam made it a real pleasure. I haven't seen the footage on anything other than the LCD, but the cameras layout and ergonomics/features were great. If this had a bigger chip I'd buy it in a second (although the 1/3" did make focus much easier for constant movement.)
 
OK update.

I posted the project and XF footage needs transcoded in Avid. It is painfully slow and the more clips you get in the timeline the worse it gets. Save yourself the trouble and transcode DNxHD.
 
I didn't really get a chance to do much editing, per se, only checked to see if the AMA linking was working. But I'll try to play around with the edits tomorrow to see how things are on my end.
 
For me the system bogged down with any sequence over 2 minutes. I did in all fairness have 700 clips in the bin. So poor performance was to probably be expected. But it serves as a good warning for anyone embarking on a long form project.

My system specs are 2.5Ghz i5 with 8GB ram and 1Gig Nvidea card.
 
Yes, AMA is a big for RAM. You need to consolidate media (not transcode to DNxHD) to internal Avid MediaFiles, than you can work smooth.
 
Why transcode 4:2:2 jason? I'm on a 305 and try never to transcode, as the footage is beautiful and edits fine. Am i missing something?
 
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