Focusing with a CANON XH-A1S

julesmctrainspotter

Thanks very much for this, greatly appreciated! It is HD.

sound idea

I used to use an XH-A1 and never had any sharpness issues using autofocus.

I suspect the clue to your lack of sharpness may be in the words 'strongly illuminated ... in current strong sunshine', which depending on your camera settings may be causing the lens to stop down to small apertures. When this happens diffraction effects causes lack of sharpness in the image. Try dialing in some neutral density filter and check that you don't have the camera set to a high gain setting.

Check that your aperture is around f/8 or less  - this will keep diffraction effects at bay and hopefully lead to sharper pictures.

Hope that helps.

(By the way there is a BBC paper by Alan Roberts giving detailed test results and recommended settings for this camera available at this link .)

julesmctrainspotter

This is excellent advice, many thanks, I am going to a big outdoor event on Sunday and will set the aperture as you suggested, it is supposed to be a very sunny and bright day. Best to put it in Manual Mode and I can then select the the f number and shutter speed (I will be shooting fairly slow moving vintage buses and coaches).
Anything from a BBC cameraman is always welcome, will save this paper for study.
Many thanks again, much appreciated!

sound idea

I'm pleased you found this helpful, but I do feel I should just put the record straight regarding Alan Robert's paper on the Canon cameras. Alan Roberts is not a BBC cameraman but is a world-renowned colour scientist and researcher, now retired from the BBC but continuing work as a consultant. He used to participate in another now-defunct forum where he freely gave the most valuable advice and guidance. The paper in that link I gave is a legacy of his work and contributions to that forum and represents his recommendations and findings for using the camera for BBC work. (You might want to check his recommendations for sharpness and coring settings by the way.)

I hope your shoot goes well. You could always set the camera to shutter priority mode with a shutter speed of, say, 1/50 and adjust gain and ND settings on the fly to keep the aperture at f/8 or wider open. If I remember the low/medium/high values of the gain switch can be preset through the menu system to values you find most appropriate.

I think you would be wise to do some test shots with the camera to see if the soft results are indeed a result of using small apertures and diffraction. There might well be some other mechanism causing your problems not related to this suggestion at all!

Once again hope all goes well.

julesmctrainspotter

Once again many thanks. I took the camcorder out yesterday, but by the time I had set it up on a tripod the weather was so hot that I could not concentrate in shooting video. I got a couple of minutes and then called it quits. I had set it up in manual mode however. When we get more civilised weather I will venture out and try some different footage. Also noted about setting the gain, thanks for this too.

12harry

Presently it is rather hot in the UK - this can't be good for Tests, -or- either Operator, or camcorders. It's quite understandable you gave up.
Perhaps you can do some Garden-Tests, as the sun drops, = late evening - I don't really understand why you can't use Auto-Mode - this should be able to cope with most weather situations ( although not as posted earlier, if there is rogue light getting into the lens )- but that is easily sorted: it's common photo-practice to use lens-shade, or get under trees / umbrella / tent .....to be away from direct sun. Most Operators will do this naturally, for their own benefit.

Where I believe the Auto-setting might be wrong-footed is if you have included a degree of over-exposure - useful in dark caverns - but in general I underexpose - by 0.7  EV I think it is.... this gives some latitude for highlights to be preserved ( you correct in the EDIT ).... since once pixels are overloaded, you can't recover the detail.  It's true you squash the shadows, but normally these are of little interest ( otherwise you'd be lighting them ).

Other tests might be indoors, using domestic lights...perhaps with some LED-boosting.  Test-film newspaper text .... this should come out with a white background ( set Colour Balance ) - and crisp-ish text.... it should be a lot cooler indoors and easy to replicate conditions, even into the Winter months. You may have to keep to the WA zoom-settings, to have the largest aperture available - this also helps match Test Conditions, should you want to check later in the year. A piece of paper with marker-pen can provide on-file note of the Set-up and  other details.

Hope that helps

julesmctrainspotter

I ventured out into the garden this morning and shot some footage. I have not yet transferred it onto my PC.
But many thanks for all your suggestions, I will put these into place and see what happens.
Many thanks again, much appreciated.
PS I dug out my Sony HDR-FX1E and shot some footage this morning, really impressive and rich punchy colours, and very sharp (on autofocus).

julesmctrainspotter

Just to update from my 19th July post. I shot some more video in my garden this morning, and transferred it all onto a PC. I was using it in Av Mode, aperture setting f 6.7. I think in future Manual will be best, with this aperture, and set the shutter speed to hopefully avoid the need to switch on or off the ND filter mid shooting. The results show a marked improvement, everything sharp and focused, so a great relief! Big thanks to "sound idea" and "12harry" for their very valuable advice!

julesmctrainspotter

I recently bought on eBay what was advertised as a Canon XH A1, but looking at the photos it was actually a XH A1S! The seller did not have much of a clue, and when I got it I found out that it is NTSC, not PAL. Having said that, the footage I have shot on Av at f6.7 has been bang on, razor sharp and better than anything shot on the PAL model. No idea why this should be so, but for £300 I got a cracker of a camcorder! The only negative thing is that it does not like Sony cassettes, and when recording pauses for a fraction of a second. Panasonic and JVC are fine, and I have plenty of these.