AC130: Can the AC130A replace my Canon XH-A1? Your comments will be welcomed!

Chris and Barry -

Your advice for me to look at the AC90 rather that the AC130 was followed! After twice reading Barry's excellent review of the AC90 "on location in the Dominican Republic," and reading every reply posted, I think the AC90 will meet my needs for equestrian videography. My symphony concert video (only a few times a year) will continue to be shot on my Canon XH-A1 as I need 20x zoom and automatic gain control on the XLR mics.

Since most of my shots will be in decently bright sun, following Barry's advice I will get a 3-stop ND to add when needed. The low-noise gain should really help when the horse moves from sun to shade (the Canon XH-A1 kicks in gain that can result in really grainy video!)

A lot of the time I am in the sun, and I use the rocker zoom (and the EVF), crouching over the camera wearing a wide-brimmed hat. On my XH-A1 the rocker zoom is "variable speed" - push down more to zoom faster. It does not have "smooth start/stop," a really nice feature Canon added in the XH-A1s model, and a feature I see that the AC90 has when using the zoom ring. What is VERY important to me is variable speed zoom when using the rocker. Several comments on this forum seem to indicate the AC90's rocker zoom is not variable-speed. Would you please clear up my confusion?

Thanks again!

John
 
The 130 ND filters are real filters... you are turning a mechanical knob kicking them in. I had an XH-A1 years ago and it is a cool-looking cam for sure.
Problem is, the resulting video never looked good to me. Don't be concerned about tapeless workflow... you'll love it. The AC90 doesn't do SD by the way.
The difference in video quality from the Canon to the Panny is significant. Downside of the 130 is that the stabilizer and auto-focus are not quite as good
as the Canon, but alas you won;t need them. The 3MOS sensor block in the Panny is probably the best out there. The NX-5U and XF100 are not in this league.
It's best to shoot in 1080 and render it as SD 16:9 in your editor. The end product will look better- and you'll have everything is HD in case you need it later.
The 22X zoom is super-clean end to end and it's CA is less than the Canon's. You might be put off by the fit-n-finish of the Panny not being up to the Canon,
but after you shoot your first race with it, that feeling will go away. Two thumbs up... and a safe bet for your work.
 
I shoot hunting videos and picked up the AC 130 early last fall...............It is the ultimate in run and gun style shooting as lighting constantly changes and animals never give you a re-take. That being said, when I started using the AC 130 I tried running in full manual and found that the auto mode for iris and gain worked much better and faster than i could manually adjust the iris in certain situations. As stated earlier in this post the shutter speed is not controlled automatically and has a simple dial for manually adjusting Once set it is locked down until you activate the adjustment setting, same for the ND filter, I set the WB manually, lock down the shutter speed and ND filter and let the iris do it's own thing and it works really well. Personally i would never want my shutter speed nor ND filters to be automatically adjusted as it would ruin certain footage, much the same I do not ever have the gain setting above 12dbs. as it induces way too much grain in the footage. I shoot in 1080 30p and the footage is used for the production of my TV show, I would not want to give up the benefit of the long zoom lens for a few auto lighting issues that can be controlled easily by being "on" the camera. Also I have one question for JB, why wouldn't you want to shoot in HD? Even if you are burning standard DVD's the footage in HD would be much more phenomenal?
 
Sorry if I'm late to this discussion, but as a user of both the XHA1 and the AC160, I would say if the XHA1 is your reference, the AC130 / 160 would more than satisfy you.
 
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