Canon XH-A1 vs. Sony HDR-FX1

tommetass

tommetass

Well-known member
Hi there.
I've been looking into these two cameras a lot lately. At first my choice was the XH-A1 cause of the "fake" progressive shooting; 25f. But I've seen a lot of footage from it and I just can't see how good it is otherwise. The colors seem off, and I've noticed a big amount of chromatic aberration. Now.. the FX1 has that as well but I personally feel that it has a lot better colors.

Now.. the only thing I sort of stumble on is:

The 50i that the FX1 shoots... Is de-interlacing enough to make it "filmlike"?
Enough to beat the XH-A1'a 25f?

Or is there another way to do this other than de-interlacing..?


-Tomas
 
tommetass said:
At first my choice was the XH-A1 cause of the "fake" progressive shooting; 25f. But I've seen a lot of footage from it and I just can't see how good it is otherwise.
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If I hear one more person calling 24/25F "fake" I'm going to lose it. If it looks like a duck and acts like a duck it is a duck. There's no noticeable difference between the modes. Deinterlacing 50i to 25p costs you nearly half your vertical resolution and extra time in post; makes absolutely no sense.
 
I just purchased a full M2 setup for my Fx1 over buying a new A1, so I guess you could say I love my Fx1, it's a great camera when used properly.
 
Knocking the A1 for bad color is a bit dumb. The amount of tweaking you can do means any "bad" color is probably not the camera's fault, but the user's. Even if you didn't want to shoot flat and color grade in post, the camera is still very capable of some amazing things. Just look at some stuff shot with the VividRGB preset.
 
jade8472 said:
If I hear one more person calling 24/25F "fake" I'm going to lose it. If it looks like a duck and acts like a duck it is a duck. There's no noticeable difference between the modes. Deinterlacing 50i to 25p costs you nearly half your vertical resolution and extra time in post; makes absolutely no sense.
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Lol.. I know that it's great.. It's like shooting 25p. I just said "fake" because that's what it actually is. But I didn't mean it in a negative way.. I love the 25f images:)



The vertical resolution suffers? Hmm.. But what I rally meant was: Will the movements look "filmlike" when you de-interlace?
 
tommetass said:
Lol.. I know that it's great.. It's like shooting 25p. I just said "fake" because that's what it actually is. But I didn't mean it in a negative way.. I love the 25f images:)



The vertical resolution suffers? Hmm.. But what I rally meant was: Will the movements look "filmlike" when you de-interlace?
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Actually no it isnt fake. Its true 25fps progressive output that originates via a very technical and extremely well created process from Canon that can extract a full frame progressive image from an interlaced chip.

So to clarify - the chips are interlaced, the output extracted from the chips is full frame progressive.

Extracting a 25p stream from a FX1 in post is absolutely laughable compared to the footage shot straight out of an A1, not only on time consumption, but on results.
 
It seems like Canon gets penalized for having a default that gives you more options. The minute I saw it on my footage, I thought of the latitude I used to have working in film colorspace.

If you are doing your own editing, I would shoot 'flat' (canon default) to have more options in post. All you have to do is drop the blacks about 5% in a color corrector and the colors will pop. In that approach, you have tons of options when your footage is more challenging.

If you are a cameraman for hire who needs to hand over tapes at the end of the day that wont be color corrected, you can use at VivdRGB setting.

You can check this article.

"Canon XH A1’s video performance is excellent. From a consumer standpoint (and let’s face it, this is going to tempt a lot of consumers) the colors appear flat. This is only because most consumer camcorders, even those approaching $2000, tend to oversaturate. This camcorder gives a steady, even-tone in auto mode. This is ideal for professionals, of course, because the XH A1’s extensive color control settings in the Custom Preset menu (see the Other Manual Controls section below) allows you to dial in pretty much any color tone you could want. A relatively flat saturation also gives you more freedom in post-production for color correction."
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I hear this concern all of the time about the A1. Canon needs to do better PR about the default color setting, or have a switch on top that say 'consumer/professional' and the consumer setting will look like a bag of Skittles so everyone is happy.
 
Color? I went to a CC specialist with Raw m2t files shot at 25f on vividrgb. At first he said "this stuff has been cc'd eh?" nope. "Oh its a canon camera then".

bam in ya face!
nah but it can produce wicked picture.
 
personaly,i try to shoot as flat as possible to give me more room to color my footage in post.even though i loved the colors on my dvx,i'm able to use my a1 as an hd dvx and what ever other look i want to do.and for arguments sake,even if the 24 progressive was fake what difference does it make if it still renders the same goal and thats sharp filmic images without the hassle of excessive rendering and massive quality loss.it all comes down to what your needs are.if one is likes color out the box without putting any effort into creating your look then i would say one of the other pre colored cameras are for you.but if one wants the control and freedom to create looks without the added noise that alot of the precolored cameras add then the a1 is definitly for you.
 
hey how do i download all these presets on my card without a laptop?is there anyway someone can post the settings of all the presets without having to download them?thanks.
 
Actually the biggest problem you will have will be refraining from using all of the setting options the A1 offers! You can pretty much adjust anything except the black color of camera housing and lens!!!!!!

S Cannon
 
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