XL-1 Focus Issues
Last Update: 9 September 1998

There's been a bit of a dogfight going on lately about the focus performance of the Canon XL1 3-chip DV camcorder. Several issues have been discussed, including a tendancy of the camera to spontaniously leap out of focus (even in fully manual mode), and a failure to hold focus when zooming out.

One issue has been particularly fraught though, with some users insisting that their camera, or indeed the model generally, is unusable while others say there's nothing wrong at all. Several users have reported that getting sharp images at wide angles was IMPOSSIBLE, particularly in middling-to-poor lighting conditions. In an attempt to balm this angry rash, William Dodenhoff and I decided to call for some examples of the phenomenon (or lack thereof), an post them here.

With the assistance of the good people at DV-L, I developed a standard testing protocol and invited submissions. As more images arrive I'll add them.

Tony Sutorius

 

Images 1 & 2 from Scott Aronian (read what Scott says here)

 

Images 3, 4 & 5 from Karl Kroeber (read what Karl says here)

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