X-Graham
Imported Account
Jun 14, 2001, 8:05 AM
Post #2 of 4
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Re: XL1 in low light situations
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When Canon launched the XL1 it's competitor was Sony’s VX1000. At that stage it kicked butt in low light, but (and there's always a but) with development and Sony’s newest camera in this range, the PD150, the XL1 now lags behind in lowlight comparisons. When I bought my XL1 I was fortunate enough to be able to do side by side comparisons, (between the PD150 and the XL1), and eventually I settled on the XL1 as I felt more comfortable with it.
Back to your question; I've noticed that when the 'auto’ or 'semi-auto' modes are selected, the XL1 does some strange things in low light. Lots of grain or even the slow shutter speeds that smear or blur the picture. Most of these situations can be over come in full manual mode, given your picture will then be a whole whack 'artistic' but if that’s the best one can do in the given situation then so be it.
The other option is to light the subject – my experience is that the client will rather have lights than no picture. Even when shooting with the high end broadcast cameras I drag my lights around and end up using then 9 out of 10 times.
I'll leave you with a final thought. Even though the PD150 ‘sees’ more in low light it doesn’t (and please note that this is my personal opinion) give the quality of picture that's offered with the Canon XL1.
If you want to research this further try the following links:-
http://www.dvinfo.net/xl1.htm - The Canon XL1 Watchdog
http://www.usa.canon.com/support/faq/digcamcfaq.html - Canon USA Q&A
http://www.canondv.com/xl1/prodinfo/prodinfo.html - Canon USA info page
: Can anybody tell me if the XL1 is a good choice for low light situations like weddings and social events. I've only tried it once and didn't quite like it because it was too grainy and dark but maybe it's just the way I handled it because I don't know much about the camera.
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