Canon XF100 Camcorder - Black

I bought this camera because I needed a camera that could shoot great 24p HD video, used SD or CF cards, and was as small as light as possible.

Other XF100 reviews will probably tell you most of what you want to know, so I'll talk about what questions I had about this camera before getting my hands on one, and what answers the camera had.

I've only done a quick test shoot on this camera so far, but I've been very impressed. Image quality is great. I was initially concerned about three things: no manual ND filters (automatic or nothing), short-ish throw (10x zoom) and just one control ring instead of three, but they were unfounded. The automatic ND is accurate and more responsive than I could possibly be. You can set the small customisable dial to handle iris, and the grip rocker zoom control is pressure-sensitive anyway. It takes some adjustment if you're used to three control rings, and only time will tell if this setup will cause problems in the field, but at least they're at my fingertips. There's a digital teleconverter at 6x, 3x and 1.5x, too - 6x and 3x are unusable, but 1.5x looks good enough to use in a pinch.

I haven't tested the onboard mics and don't intend to use them, so I can't comment on their quality. The onboard preamps have more noise than the preamps on my mixer, but that's to be expected. Most people won't notice the noise on most speakers. The XF100 has an audio limiter and I haven't managed to make it distort, but the limiter is very audible. I wouldn't rely on it. Put a mixer in the chain.

Ingesting the clips into FCP7 was straightforward, none of the codec issues I've had with some other cameras.

I am loving this camera. It has allowed me to compete with just about any other company out there. I am continually amazed with the picture quality and the ability to hot swap the compact flash cards. I highly recommend this camera to any one who is serious about great quality video.