We were looking for a file based video camera that can replace our Canon XL1H.

We finally found a dealer who kindly agreed to let us have a Canon XF305 for a couple of days.

The deal is that if we liked it, we would keep it, and buy an additional one.

From what I gather, this is one of the few small camera approved by the BBC for broadcast work, so it must be good.

It uses compact flash cards, two of them, and with 2 64GB cards, can record about 8 hours of full HD video.

The camera is supposed to come in te next day or two.

I will try it and let you know how it performs.

Saeed, I will be very interested to hear your report. I have been using Canon XH-A1 video cameras for about three years. I like them very much, and am used to the operating controls and the various custom menus.

The mini DV tapes they use are old technology and frankly a bit of a pain. I can get separate hard drives for recording but these are kind of bulky and heavy, though maybe still my best option.

I've been thinking of selling the A1s and getting one or two XF300s, though it's a significant expense for me and I'm not really in any great rush.

Best regards and I look forward to your report.

Dave,

We have had good service from our Canon tape camera, but we have also had a few timing problems.

They seem to crop up unnoticed, and we only realize what has happened when we try to capture the tape.

No tape deck would play it, and we have to do the capture on the camera.

This last safari we had we took 10 tapes on this camera.

1 to 7 played perfectly on the tape deck, and we captured them without any problem.

Tapes 8 to 10 refused to play. The deck gave us an error message that they are not the right format!?

Trouble was I am in Dubai, and the camera is in Zimbabwe.

So I had to courrier the tapes to Alan in Zimbabwe, had him capture them off the camera, and send them back to me.

We tried a Sony camera - cannot remember its model number. That could record on both tape and CF cards at the same time a while back.

But we had endless problem with teh footage.

We could not capture the tapes in any NLE software, and the files off the CD cards were awful.

We decided that camera was not for us.

The XF300 is a bit cheaper than the XF305, and I understand the only difference is that the XF305 has more pro connections.

I ordered some 32 GB and 64 GB CF cards, and they have arrived yesterday.

Just waiting for the camera to try it.

We took some Sony CX350 AVCHD video cameras with us this year. And the footage from these is a lot better than from the tapes out of the old Canon.

Sadly, these little one do not offer any sort of manual controls, which one needs for hunting.

I have not had any problems with capturing video, perhaps because I don't use a separate tape deck. I always capture off the camera. I did have a problem with the tape transport on one camera which Canon repaired very quickly under warranty.

I do worry about reliability and long-term durability. Tape technology with transport system and tape heads can't be as reliable or durable as a CF card solid state system.

The reviews I've read of the XF300/305 have mostly been very positive. If I did get one it would be the 300 as I don't need the HD-SDI, genlock and time code capability of the 305.

I do wish the lens of the XF300 had a bit more reach for wildlife photography. According to the specifications I've read the XF300 at its maximum zoom is the equivalent of a 527 mm in 35mm format. The XH-A1 lens is equivalent to a 778 mm in 35mm format.

Of course if image quality is high enough one can always crop in a bit during editing. Quality of the XF300/305 lens is fabulous according to the reviews I have read, as is image processing.

Your thoughts and comments will be most welcome. Although other reviewers comments help, they don't place the same demands on equipment as we do in wildlife and hunting video.

Nice camera, especially if you have two.
When I'm ready to start production on my African Epic ... I know who to call.

I just a call from the shop that our Canon XF305 has arrived.

My driver is on the way to pick it up, and I am hoping to try in the next day or two and see what impression I get.

We live close to Bur Al Arab, and we can see the fireworks they have on the new year. If I get the chance, I am going to set up the camera and to video the whole show.

I have never taken a video of fireworks before, so this is going to be a first for me.

Especially that we are just over a mile from them.

At a niece's wedding a year or so ago some of the groomsmen put on a fireworks show the night before the wedding, after the rehearsal dinner.

I used the manual exposure mode, 30 frames/second rate but I can't recall the aperture, probably f/8. Easy enough to see the results on the camera monitor.

Camera was initially set on autofocus so the first few seconds of the fireworks were out of focus, as the camera was pointed at the night sky and hunting for something on which to focus. Switched to manual focus as I should have done to begin with and focused on infinity, worked fine after that.

This was a fairly modest fireworks show compared to what the show you will be seeing will no doubt be like. But still a lot of fun!

Thanks for the tip Dave.

Well, I got the camera, and tried it for a few minutes out in the garden.

The quality of results is simply outstanding!

And surprise surprise, Adobe Premier recognizes the files, and VLC is able to play them.

I converted a small clip of one of our cheetahs to .wmv format, and will post it tonight.

I took a walk in the backyard and videoed some of our animals, ending with a 16.5 minute video.

I converted it into an MP4 Full HD, and it came to 3.9 Gigs!

I played it on our 103 inch plasma display, and it really IS stunning.

I am playing it through a computer connecting through an HDMI. And when I put the clip on pause, it looks as if one is looking at a high resolution photo!

Thanks for the information on your first impressions. The results sound very good indeed!

It sounds as though image quality is considerably superior to those from mini DV HD tapes, even from a camera of comparable quality. Hope to read more about your impressions of the camera's handling and overall quality and usefulness.

I understand Canon will soon have on the market a lower-priced alternative called the XF-100 (and XF-105). These will have only one sensor instead of three as do the XF-300/305 models but will have the same image processing technology.

These might be lighter and handier for traveling and carrying around (not to mention more in my price range!), if image quality is satisfactory.

I certainly appreciate a knowledgeable and skilled photographer such as yourself kind enough to provide this useful information. It really helps in making decisions on what is for me a substantial investment.

As a side note I am reminded again what an amazing tool the internet is. When I posted an earlier message I remarked to my wife, because of the time zone differences I won't hear back from Saeed until tomorrow at the earliest.

Then I thought, this is how spoiled I've become. I'm able to communicate, share photos and video, with someone literally on the other side of the earth; someone I've never met and will likely never meet, but who shares an enthusiasm for hunting, shooting, photography and video.

It's an opportunity which would not even have existed not so long ago. Not forgetting, it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't started this web site.

And I'm complaining I might have to wait a few hours because of time zone differences. Sometimes we (or at least I) need to take time to count our blessings!

Aah the Internet.

It has taken over from amateur radio.

We used to get problems solved by asking who can help with technila problems on the air, and we always found some who could.

Now with Internet one is really spoiled for choice.

I have cut a 2 minute clip from the video I have taken with the Canon XF305, and will upload it hopefully next week.

It is over 800 MB, and currently we are having our house converted to fiber optics. They have promised to finish by next week.

I put the clip on a hard disk and play it on the 103 plasma, people''s jaws drop when they see it.

This camera really is the best I have seen.

Dave,

Here is a clip from the Canon XF305.

It is straight from the camera, only gone through CS5 to conver to MP4.


Sample clip from the Canon XF305

Just returned to the farm after spending New Years Eve and day with my wife's family, and have been watching your video.

While I don't have a 103" monitor I do have a good sharp 27" HD monitor, color-corrected for the appearance I like when editing prints and video.

Color and image quality of your video is fabulous! I'm glad you included some video of your birds as they have a variety of colors to compare. Image sharpness is amazing (you can see every whisker and hair on the cheetah, for example).

It appears you were shooting handheld so either you have a steady hand or the image stabilization system works well (or maybe both).

This video gave me precisely the information I was looking for on the new Canon. Thanks so much for posting it.

Incidentally you have a nice "back yard", it looks especially nice from my perspective as here in the North American west it is currently -25C with two or three feet of snow.

We don't have cheetahs on our farm though we've seen elk and moose within a half-mile of the house, and a herd of whitetail deer usually beds down for the night a few feet from the house, where they are safe from coyotes.

They are very nocturnal so I don't get a lot of photos of them unless the snow gets really deep and they have to forage for spilled grain in the yard. One bad winter several years ago we counted 112 deer within a hundred yards of the house.

Thanks again and best wishes to you and your family for every happiness in the new year.

Dave,

Yes, I was shooting hand held, and by the looks of things, I had the camera set on the wrong stabilization setting.

I had set on STANDARD, and after reading the book, I discovered that I should have set it on DYNAMIC.

Now I am in the process of putting together a server that will handle HD editing better than the one we have.

We currently use an HP with dual Xeon 5482 CPUs and 32 GB of RAM.

The 5400 series Xeons are old technology, and I seem to be getting much faster processing on a single i7 CPU.

Trouble is one is very limited to the motherboards that are available that can support dual processors, and still have all the ports one requires for editing.

Super Micro makes excellent motherboards, but, they lack firewire and USB 3.0 ports.

It seems the only one available right now is from EVGA It is called the CLASSIFIED SR-2 SUPER RECORD.

So we have that one on order, as well as two Intel Xeon X5680 processors.

We will put 48 GB of RAM on it, and an Nvidia Quatro 4000 graphic card.

We have been quoted 3-4 weeks for the delivery of the parts, so hopefully I can finish it by mid next month.

I will let you know how it works.

You should have plenty of computer horsepower, though it seems no matter how much we have we always want more. Fast is good! 48 GB of RAM is rather amazing.

I began using Apple computers seven or eight years ago. For video I use an eight-core Mac Pro with Final Cut, it has been a reliable workhorse. Not the biggest Mac by any means but within my budget and it has been more than adequate for my purposes.

Obviously you are happy with the PC system and video editing programs you have, I was just wondering if you have tried Macs and what your views on them are.

Many years ago, in fact my first computer was an Apple.

It was in the early 80's.

Ever since then I have been using a PC, from DOS days to the present time.

I think there is very little differences between teh two systems, when used by people who know how to use them.

I will give you an example.

I have a friend who is an Apple man. He swears by everything Apple makes.

He insisted that a Mac is much easier to use than a PC, so my wife asked for a Mac.

I got her teh top of the line Mac laptop, and told her I will get my friend to come and shoe here how operate it, as I am not too familiar with it.

He turned up here with his IT man. I thought it might be fun to sit on the conversation.

He started off by saying "Macs start much faster than PCs".

I demonstrated to them that my Sony Vaio Z series with an SSD started faster!

Everything went down hill from there.

Anytime he showed us what a Mac can do, I countered that I can do that on a PC too.

The end results was my wife went back to her old laptop, and we gave the Mac to a friends son as a present!

The sad part about computers is that they are very similar to cars.

Everyone knows how to drive them, but if anything goes wrong, they are totally stuck.

I had to lear to operate a computer the hard way.

I remember I bought my first desktop, an IBM XT compatible.

I got it home and turned it on.

All I could see was a flashing C:/.

I called te shop and asked what was wrong.

He told me there was nothing wrong, I just need to insdtall the programs on it that I wanted to use.

In those days one could buy any program for the price of the floppies it will fit on.

Each floppy used to cost about US$2.6.

My first program was Wordstar 2000.

Those were the days, but I really don't miss them.

As I can do an awful lot more on a computer than I ever could then.

Very interesting. From other posts I had surmised you were building your own computers. Very useful knowledge to have.

I used PCs in the past, don't recall much about them but remember there were processors numbered 8088, 286, 486 (I think?). Had no complaints with them as I mainly used them for word processing.

Personally I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the computer and digital camera age. In fact I used a Smith-Corona typewriter and manual film cameras long after everyone else in the world was using word processors and digital cameras.

When I finally did get a computer one of my publishers had an old computer they kept just for my copy, as I was the only person still sending in 5.25" floppy disks.

A few years ago the perception in the publishing world was Macs had better programs for graphics and photos. I don't know if that was true or if it is still true, but at any rate most publishers use Macs.

An editor put his foot down and said in effect "change to digital cameras or you'll never work in this town again, and by the way get a Mac because that's what we use".

So I did, and while I'm not one of those smug Mac geeks I've gotten used to them and haven't found any need to change. I do use some Microsoft software such as Microsoft Word.

Regarding getting stuck, I was raised on a farm and farmed myself for some years, so I know how to get a car, truck, or tractor unstuck. I also know how to fix a computer. I take it to a computer shop, say "It's broken, fix it please." They fix it and I give them money. Fortunately my Macs haven't given much trouble.

Your comment about turning the computer on and seeing a black screen with C:/ flashing brought back memories and made me laugh. I remember that feeling.

I don't really miss the old days either, certainly not my old Smith-Corona typewriter. Last fall I got feeling nostalgic about the end of Kodachrome, dug around and found two rolls, got a couple film cameras out of storage and took them to Arches National Park in Utah.

I remember clicking the shutter and reflexively looking at the back of the camera to see what the exposure was like, and then recalling I wouldn't know until the slides came back from the lab some weeks later. I love Kodachrome but in all honesty I don't miss it.

Sorry for the late post.

I think the canon will serve you well for years to come and won't become obsolete anytime in the near future, despite the price tag, its performance and usability is without peer.

Footage taken from that new canon is awesome.

My main vid cam is a GH1 Lumix. To be honest it really doesn't belong on this board as little about it is practical.

I've been working with it for the last year and a half and I think for the money it's an amazing tool.

I've basically been working on replicating a cinematic look with it, and I believe it comes damn close!

What I like about it is the interchangeable lens format. The rub is that all my lenses are manual focus...

If you have time to set up shots it produces uncanny results. It's really not a camera to hit record and run down a ravine with (did that antelope hunting and no footage was usable!).

That said, if anyone's looking to monkey around with something modern and antiquated at the same time, for $600 you can't go wrong!

Of all the lenses I've got, a Zeiss 45mm F2 is king. It's a useless old lens for most DSLRs and cost me 200 bucks but there are very few lenses that can touch it...

All my lenses I sometimes screw onto an anamorphic lens setup, but it's really more trouble than it's worth, but on a 16:9 1920x1080 with a 14mm lens on it gets pretty panoramic!

My workload isn't terrible on it. A 7 second clip runs about 42MB or so... I do all my work on Sony Vegas. I do alot of work at 720P as I can get 60 frames per second and use slo-motion well, and I honestly can't tell much difference!

I don't tend to beat the hell out of my camera, but in my neck of the woods it regularly gets treatment in below zero farenheit and does fine battery wise if I wrap a heat pack around it. -25 and I don't mess about too much, I wrap another heat pack on the LCD for fear the damn screen will freeze!

Anyways, sorry to ramble, just another option out there, especially if you have some older film lenses layin' around. It's really a lego set!

I've been saving up for about 4 years to bite the bullet and get a Red Epic in the near future mainly for the instant autofocus with any canon L lenses, though I doubt the resolution will matter to me, it fixes the limitations of my Lumix!

PS,

I love the cheetah! Let's not forget the sound! It records sound very nice and crisp!

The zoom and image stabilization looks to be great, too. That's one thing I miss about my current set up... auto focus and zoom!

It would take me two follow focus knobs on my zoom and a tripod to pull that off and even then it would be stilted after practicing even!

Still think video quality wise, I wager to bet a Lumix GH1 leaves most cameras in the dust.

If anybody insists on auto focus, then by all means get a $5000-15,000 camera, but the Lumix will still match it, and it won't look like crispy video, it looks like super 16 film and rivals 35mm.

I think the problem with video is that it looks like video... personally, it's too clear. The GH1 works the fine line of understated quality that High Definition output lacks.

It's not overly contrasted, just right. Find the right lenses and it looks unbelievable.

Here's a vid still from the GH1...

and another...

and another...

This one does it for me. It's really when I realized what this thing was capable of...

Watch it on an 8 foot screen and it looks just as good as any film you could imagine. Think Badlands by Terrence Malick... this cam will replicate those shots all day and won't look like hi-res Jack Bauer 24 shots or Budweiser commercials or the Office. It will look like film.

I don't sell them. I just use it and stick by it. I'd get a better cam for the money if I wanted to spend $10K, but there's no reason...

You basically gotta test what lenses look best for what you want. If you want the shots to pop go with canon for vid, if you want stuff to look like they looked when you peered over the cam go with the Lumix.

I didn't bother getting the kit lens. It's fine but $200-600 lenses will blow your mind if you know what to look for and you want it to look like film and not video...

And as far as macro goes... I get by with a plastic housed 75-300mm Canon EF F4 that was $150 new from best buy and max it out at minimum focus distance and get by...

It's kinda the ace in the hole...

Side note, I use the Lumix for stills, and it does just fine, but it doesn't have the megapixel count of even the newer point and shoots... think it's 12MP or something, though I don't blow up many pics up as 4-6 foot square prints so it doesn't concern me.

A Canon T1i adds the edge for that category for me... I think the newer T2i does everything the 7D does for all but the more semi-pro photographers.


Either way, all of us are blessed with technology that allows us to use obsolete but excellent vintage lenses!

Kinda like shooting a muzzleloader at times, but it's worth the time and patience in my eyes...

I was told the Lumix GH1 is so good at Video because it was designed with Video in mind, unlike the DSLRs where Video is an upgrade to an existing camera.

Those stills are almost unbelievable, if you didn't know they were frames from a Video you wouldn't even think they were not just good photos.

Specialist. That's very true. It does have more manual features than most DSLRs, but now I think the T2i and 7D give you similar control.

That said, using DSLRs as dedicated vid machines is by no means practical, but virtually any old lens you can find will work on the GH1.

The biggest hurdle is camera shake. I had to make a mount that eliminates any direct contact with the camera and that helps a lot, but a monopod or tripod is almost essential, unless you want that Bourne Identity/Saving Private Ryan shakey look!

check out DIY steady cam on you tube
This one is beautifully built,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwmfGDntQmc