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Canon
XL1 Field Report
08/10/98
A
filmmaker reports on this
semi-professional
Digital Video camera
by
Kent
C. Williamson
<kcw3e@virginia.edu>
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I just finished 26 days of shooting a dramatic
feature motion picture....
The Title:
When Love
Walks In
The Camera:
The Canon XL1.
The "look" of
the images in a feature is crucial and overall I'm
VERY pleased with the results. The XL1 did it's job
and when combined with the talents of our DP (David
Oulashian from LA <david_o@juno.com>) we got
great results.
The key to
the great footage was the lighting. You wouldn't
believe the number of times I'd ask David "How much
longer?" and he'd give his standard response, "5
more minutes!" But let me tell you, those "five"
more minutes made all the difference in the
world.
By the way,
when a DP says "five more minutes" the Director
interprets it as "fifteen more minutes, if your
lucky, Bud".... when the Director says "five more
minutes" the Actors interpret that as "Go to
Starbucks, be back in thirty."
Anyhow - XL1
performance....
FOLLOW FOCUS
was ruled out from the get go. Without lens
markings we knew not to even attempt it. We had to
block all of our scenes around this. Or use a large
enough depth of field that it didn't matter. This
obviously effected our approaches to dolly shots
and hand-held stuff. Speaking of FOCUS... we did
notice some softness on occasion. A shot looked
soft (on our 1985 field monitor), but we'd just
double check the focus and press on.
DOLLY SHOTS,
TRIPODS, HIGH-HATS, HAND-HELD, Etc. The XL1 worked
well with each of these set-ups. We ran into some
snags with a Bogen 3166 Head, but that's not the
XL1's fault. We also managed to drive the Moho over
our Bogen sticks (IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP: Don't try
this at home!). But once again, this was not the
XL1's fault... even though we desperately needed
someone or something to blame.
AUDIO - We
ran a Sennheiser MKH 416 shotgun into a Shure FP33
Field Mixer which fed the XL1 (16bit via the XLR
adapter). Overall I'm very pleased with the sound.
There are some rough spots, but rough spots and
some dialogue replacement are to be expected when
editing a feature. I'm disappointed with the XLR
adapter... not in performance, but in design. A few
days into shooting we snapped off the little
plastic nub thingy that slides into the tail of the
XL1 ($250 plus overnight Fed-Ex later we had a new
one -- Thanks to Promax!)
INTERIOR -
DAY, EXTERIOR - DAY, INTERIOR - NIGHT, EXTERIOR -
NIGHT. All types of shooting conditions and the XL1
performed well. Dolly shots at night in the rain?
No problem. Hot, humid, Virginia summer days? No
problem.
POWER SUPPLY
- The cheesy standard XL1 power supply had to go.
After 10 days of abuse it developed a short and so
we put it on the disabled list as "Charger only". I
found a great power solution from NRG. A much more
rugged, four-pin power supply with XL1 adapter for
somewhere around $300. (Boy did this make our DP's
day).
WIDE ANGLE
ADAPTER - Prior to shooting I knew we would need a
wide angle option for our tight interiors, so I
sunk $400 into a Century Optics .6X beauty. It
worked great, but I discovered that we used it FAR
LESS than I originally thought we would. The
standard 16X XL1 glass lensed probably 98% of this
film.
FILTERS -
Along with great lighting, filters made our images
look fabulous. We used a 1/2 Promist, a Promist 1,
a Polarizer, and a .6 Neutral Density. If I would
have had more money I would have bought the 1/8 and
1/4 Promist as well as the .3 & .9 ND. The
standard built-in Neutral Density Filter on the
lens of the XL1 was WAY TO MUCH for the most
part.
As I
mentioned before, I've been very pleased with the
XL1. The images rival that of the $50,000 Beta SP
cameras I've worked with in my day jobs over the
last 9 years.
Now we enter
post production... hopefully we'll be done by the
end of September 1998.
Copyright
1998, Paladin Pictures.
Reprinted with permission
<poe.acc.virginia.edu/~kcw3e/home.html>
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