Canon XH A1 1.67MP 3CCD High-Definition Camcorder with 20x Optical Zoom

So with pretty much a whole year in research and reading forums,reviews, watching test footage, and more I was stuck on every question any film or video enthusiast comes across. "What camera do i buy?" To be honest...i was sold on the HVX200. I couldn't believe how good it looked and all the frame rates and recording on cards! Kicked the crap out of minidv tapes right?!
Well, i got my hands on the hvx200 and found out the hype didn't live to my expectations. Too much grain, expensive P2, too bulky (personally), the menus were like a labyrinth, and i just didn't like it. It's a good cam don't get me wrong but not my choice. Now i was previously a HV20 owner (still am) and am very pleased with Canon. I've been eying the XH-A1 for a while too and read so many reviews and watched some much footage that made it look absolutely amazing! I love Canon and trusted my extinct...Just received this monster today! Seriously a gorgeous design, sleek black, amazing footage, not a consumer camera but when your familiar with pro cameras this was very easy going to me but still had some curves to learn. The footage looked just as good as the HVX, i think. To my eye i like the look of the XH-A1 100X better with color adjustments in camera of course. Overall, this camera was probably the best investment for my budget. I would highly highly recommend this to any indie filmmaker, documentarian, videographer, or any serious film person. This camera lived beyond it's expectation from me. I mean a camera half the price of one of the best camera's on the market (HVX200) and looks just as good as it does, why wouldn't you choose it?! This is my personal view on it. I could go on about the features about the camera but there is too many good things about this camera. Only negative is i wish it had more shutter speeds. But all in all, best camera i have ever used and the only camera i will need for the next 5 years until Red develops the Scarlet to truly be $3k and under.

Don't believe the Canon brochure. The software doesn't come with the camcorder. You have to download the trial version, and then they try to sell it to you. Don't bother with it. It's poorly written and has drivers untested with Windows. But you can use it to do a "Preformance Test" of your hard drive. The camcorder is great, but I'm giving it 1 star because Canon lied, though Amazon didn't.

I think this is a great camera. I don't have anything to add to what others have said about its video performance, but can share some advice about getting the best stills. I use the camera for photographing orchestral performances, and value it for its silent shutter when making stills.

First, set the recording device to tape, even though you're recording the stills to the SD card. When the recording device is set to card, the camera has an annoying (to the photographer and to the musicians) fake shutter sound. Second, turn off AGC and set gain to 0; that will keep the noise down. Turn on the zebras, set the trigger level to 95, and give it as much exposure as you can without blowing important highlights. You can use the lens wide open at the shorter focal lengths, but stop down a stop at the longest, if there's enough light.

Used this way, you'll get good mid-tones, and minimal noise in the shadows.

While the XH A1 does have its drawbacks (4:2:0 color space of HDV, etc), the price, light sensitivity, great picture quality, and light weight more than make up for them.

I use the camera on a daily basis filming run and gun "man on the street" style interviews and sequences and I couldn't be happier with the choice. While a tapeless workflow is being touted as the future, and no doubt is, there's something nice about being able to label and file away your original tapes and rest assured that your footage is backed up regardless of what happens on the workstation.

Highly recommend this camera over the competition in this relative price arena, especially for individuals who do a lot of run and gun with only available light.

I own it. I use it a lot. 9 months now and it's still working fine. No drop outs on the tapes and I've put it through some challenging climates as well as racking up significant hours shooting and digitizing.

I like that it shoots tape, as that's what my clients demand from me (it's the reason I had to buy this particular HDV cam in the first place) and I can buy stock anywhere in the world (and have). However, with the cost of digital storage these days, the cams that offer recording field footage on advanced flash cards start looking like a really nice option as it bypasses the issue of tape mechanism breakdown as the hours usage starts to add up.

My first week of shooting with this cam in Beijing I suffered through a chinese dude stumbling into my gear and basically sitting on my XH. The mic broke right off. It's not attached with a sturdy mount, just internal plastic with a lot of play, so if you're doing extensive run and gun you might want to consider that. It sticks out there and is vulnerable. I use an external shotgun anyway, so while I was sad to see the mic break off, it doesn't affect my work.

I don't really like the image chip presets/defaults on the camera, very bland, but they're easily changed and one can do endless tweaks for the settings that work best for you and your style. I do a fair amount of work for live music acts, and the ability of this camera to counter-balance the heavy red light typical of live venues has been a blessing. Also, there are plenty of users out there that share their chip settings and downloading them from the net and putting them on your own XH A1 is pretty easy. Many many things are user programmable on this camera. Color settings, gain settings, focal ring sensitivity, zoom speed, etc. I use the camera exclusively in manual mode, so these controls are ideal.

I find that editing HDV on my FCP system has been almost as fluid as my DV projects. It's ever so slightly bogged down by the necessity to do on-the-fly time-code calculations due to the nature of the codec, but it's very negligible. In fact, because of HDV, FCP defaults to a nice real-time capture process that I like --where it grabs clips individually rather than consolidated (as on DV). So that's a nice bonus!

As far as the limitations of HDV, Yes, they exist. Big deal. I don't understand the logic of folks that bash the codec/format. If you don't know what the HDV format is all about, then chances are you're not shooting as a true pro, and you're working the middle ground in some way (and there's lots of work in that part of the market) so what's the worry? The color sampling is highly compressed. Yeah? And if you were doing a real shoot that required serious green-screen or some such, something tells me you'd have the budget for gear north of 3k. Sheesh. Otherwise, your gonna get a cam that has the capability of creating really nice motion picture images that's ridiculously affordable. And, if you're an aspiring pro or a motivated enthusiast, you're going to find that your skills and ambitions will allow you to push this camera to really high levels of image quality.

Basically if you know what you're doing the camera will deliver. Keep in mind that ANY camera in the same budget can and will accomplish the same.