Hi
A week ago I spontaniously bought the Canon XA20 because it was on sale. In my daily life I work as a cameraman for television, and I wanted a small portable camera for a) doing small jobs on the side b) filming my family. I new Canon marketed it as a "professional" camera, and also it received a bunch of great reviews, so I went for it. I can`t understand why everyone is shouting halleluja about this camera. Its a great consumercamera, but this was aimed at professionals. Based upon that I am really disappointed. Here is why:
HANDLING:
Well, it has two wheels to work with and thats good. But the image adjustments you can do are really limiting. Its impossible to change white-balance while recording. The small customizable wheel must be re-customized if your changing rec program, too many things must be operated on the touch screen, the remote control is very un-intuitive in playback mode (I dont care about that though, its just annoying) and so on
SOUND:
The internal mics, that I planned to use when I rig the camera down for "a walk in the park" with my kids, are useless. No matter what setting I used there is too much noise, and the built in compressor is a disaster, pumping the volume like it was some kind of a radio-commercial. In some situations the xa20 was outperformed soundwise by my iphone. Can you believe that? Worst of all is the delay, its the first camera I have used that has a delay when using the headphones during recording, I guess its about 3-400 milliseconds, resulting in having to listen at echo constantly when filming. When mounting an external mic in the xlr-input the sound is ok though.
NOISE/GRAIN:
I written about this in another post but here is a summary. The image is very noisy/grainy, even with the gain deactivated. I just cant understand what this noise is. Look here at my example, the gain is set to 0. Grain is crawling all over the image. Has Canon put some "hidden gain" in the image just to make it get good test results in low light? Or is it due to the small sensor? I just wonder because this is really bad.
ND-FILTER:
The camera lacks an ND filter, it has an electronic one but it is automatic and I cant use it as I want. On a sunny day, this means the camera has to use way to fast shutter if you want to stay a bit low on the iris. This is resulting in a very harsh "fast-shutter-image", like my iphone produces for instance. Rolling shutter issues increases also because of this.
BOKEH:
If you want to get shallow dept of field, well keep your expectations low and get happily surprised if it turns out like you want. Sometimes the bokeh is nice and smooth, but because the lens is fairly cheap, the bokeh also sometimes looks really ugly. Especially when there are lots of small details in the background. Hard to explain what it looks like when its bad, its just not able to smoothen out the background.
STABILIZER:
Canon states correctly the XA20 has got an optical stabilizer, but it also has got an electronic one, like the Smooth Cam in final cut for instance. The stabiliser works sometimes great, but way to often it acts really disturbing. Like sudden hard notches in the image, especially when filming while walking.
I have decided to keep the camera for a while though, just to see if I can learn to love it a bit more. As I stated earlier, its a very very good consumer camera. My complaints are based upon Canon telling me its for professionals. I have now bought myself a variable ND-filter which dramatically increases the overall handling of the camera for me. The variable ND also allows me to get shallow dept of field outside in daylight, though it sometimes looks horrible.
The camera also is very portable which is a good thing. So I hope I find ways to make it more lovable as I get used to it. It might also be that I am a bit spoiled image-wise since I am working with shouldercameras and c300 every day. I know for shure that my TV-channel wouldnt accept the video this camera produces.
Sorry for sounding like such an angry man. Just a bit disappointed
A week ago I spontaniously bought the Canon XA20 because it was on sale. In my daily life I work as a cameraman for television, and I wanted a small portable camera for a) doing small jobs on the side b) filming my family. I new Canon marketed it as a "professional" camera, and also it received a bunch of great reviews, so I went for it. I can`t understand why everyone is shouting halleluja about this camera. Its a great consumercamera, but this was aimed at professionals. Based upon that I am really disappointed. Here is why:
HANDLING:
Well, it has two wheels to work with and thats good. But the image adjustments you can do are really limiting. Its impossible to change white-balance while recording. The small customizable wheel must be re-customized if your changing rec program, too many things must be operated on the touch screen, the remote control is very un-intuitive in playback mode (I dont care about that though, its just annoying) and so on
SOUND:
The internal mics, that I planned to use when I rig the camera down for "a walk in the park" with my kids, are useless. No matter what setting I used there is too much noise, and the built in compressor is a disaster, pumping the volume like it was some kind of a radio-commercial. In some situations the xa20 was outperformed soundwise by my iphone. Can you believe that? Worst of all is the delay, its the first camera I have used that has a delay when using the headphones during recording, I guess its about 3-400 milliseconds, resulting in having to listen at echo constantly when filming. When mounting an external mic in the xlr-input the sound is ok though.
NOISE/GRAIN:
I written about this in another post but here is a summary. The image is very noisy/grainy, even with the gain deactivated. I just cant understand what this noise is. Look here at my example, the gain is set to 0. Grain is crawling all over the image. Has Canon put some "hidden gain" in the image just to make it get good test results in low light? Or is it due to the small sensor? I just wonder because this is really bad.
ND-FILTER:
The camera lacks an ND filter, it has an electronic one but it is automatic and I cant use it as I want. On a sunny day, this means the camera has to use way to fast shutter if you want to stay a bit low on the iris. This is resulting in a very harsh "fast-shutter-image", like my iphone produces for instance. Rolling shutter issues increases also because of this.
BOKEH:
If you want to get shallow dept of field, well keep your expectations low and get happily surprised if it turns out like you want. Sometimes the bokeh is nice and smooth, but because the lens is fairly cheap, the bokeh also sometimes looks really ugly. Especially when there are lots of small details in the background. Hard to explain what it looks like when its bad, its just not able to smoothen out the background.
STABILIZER:
Canon states correctly the XA20 has got an optical stabilizer, but it also has got an electronic one, like the Smooth Cam in final cut for instance. The stabiliser works sometimes great, but way to often it acts really disturbing. Like sudden hard notches in the image, especially when filming while walking.
I have decided to keep the camera for a while though, just to see if I can learn to love it a bit more. As I stated earlier, its a very very good consumer camera. My complaints are based upon Canon telling me its for professionals. I have now bought myself a variable ND-filter which dramatically increases the overall handling of the camera for me. The variable ND also allows me to get shallow dept of field outside in daylight, though it sometimes looks horrible.
The camera also is very portable which is a good thing. So I hope I find ways to make it more lovable as I get used to it. It might also be that I am a bit spoiled image-wise since I am working with shouldercameras and c300 every day. I know for shure that my TV-channel wouldnt accept the video this camera produces.Sorry for sounding like such an angry man.
Just a bit disappointed
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