Canon XA20 Camcorder
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
3,377 words · ~16 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of my new camera and I call this my new camera because uh
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not because other people won't be allowed to use it but because they don't
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want to I'm the only one who works here who actually cares that we just got
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ourselves a Canon xa2 so the xa2 is the upgrade from the
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XA 10 the the old formerly only camera
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that we really had that was better than like a pocket point and shoot so it
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comes with a massive user manual which I think most people probably won't look at
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as well as a data import utility but quite frankly if you're using like
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canons included you know Zoom browser equivalent or whatever it is that they
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have these days you should probably just go find a new line of work um so let's
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just put all of that aside and have a look at all the goodies that are
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included in inside the box of the xa20 so in front of us we have the Fairly
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large accessory package that comes with the xa20 first is a full four pole
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adapter to composite video out as well as left and right audio next we've got
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an AC power cable that goes with the DC
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brick right there that we can use to power the camera for longer shoots in
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the studio for example this is an interesting inclusion so they now
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include an HDMI to Mini HDMI cable which
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is great because it has a mini HDMI output I really wish they would have
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upgraded that to full HDMI it includes one of their new even more intelligent
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batteries and I'm going to take a moment to kind of rant about this because um
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you can't use XA 10 compatible batteries with the xa2 Canon has basically
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implemented a system whereby if you install an older battery into the newer
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camera it'll say oh sorry it powers on right and shows you an image oh sorry
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this battery is not compatible with this camera and it just turns off Canon dick
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move you guys dick move uh because being able to reuse your older batteries and
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upgrade your equipment is a very good thing and it could have just said hey
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look the uh the the the level readings aren't going to be accurate with this
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older type of battery but instead you just had it turn off um So currently
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there aren't any cheap thirdparty alternatives to the Canon batteries
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which are like a 100 bucks for an extended battery so once again dick move
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Canon uh they've got one of those uh magnetic sort of or iron or whatever
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they are anyway the theory is they reduce interference on cables uh in
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practice I suspect your USB cable doesn't care if you install one of those
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they've also got a USB a to Mini cable
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for pulling data directly off the camera but that's not your only option more on
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that in a moment a lens Hood which is really cool because it's got this little
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flip out dudad right here that allows you to instead of installing a lens cap
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just have a flip of the switch protected or ready to rock sort
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of functionality which I think is fantastic they include a shotgun mic
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shock mount however it's really nothing special that's very hard rubber as well
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as a couple of screws to install it and finally a remote that allows you to well
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remotely control the camera but that's not your only option for that either so
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okay things you have more than one option for data transfer all of a sudden
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Boom the xa20 has Wi-Fi I'm going to start pulling the camera up Canon also
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almost got uh great points for environmentally friendly packaging but
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they did include a little bit of plastic so it has Wi-Fi now which supports data
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transfer even to an FTP which is
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incredibly cool so being able to just kind of go look here's my FTP login
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credal IAL automatically throw all my footage on there absolutely huge thumbs
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up you can also use Wi-Fi to control the camera using a smartphone which is very
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cool as well so you can adjust your focus or start and stop recording using
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a supported phone it just says supported phones on their apps but I'm going to go
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ahead and try a couple of different devices with it over the next little while here so that's in addition to the
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remote not only that but it has a lan C connector so you can also use that to
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control it using supported uh using supported accessories as well I haven't
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actually found it yet but you can see I pulled out the body of the camera as well as
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the handle so we're going to take a much closer look at them once I go ahead and
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show you guys so that just slides into the shoe Mount right there the two
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built-in screws at the back go here and I really don't recommend using the xa20
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without the handle because it includes not only a handle for holding on to the
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camera but also some pretty important functionality so right here it's got
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your control for your microphone so you can either have phantom power or not
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have phantom power you can switch the two different inputs on or off just like
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that and then you can also switch to recording using the built-in stereo
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microphones here and here but uh I mean
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they're okay they're not great but they're okay and then next you have
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analog controls for the levels on those two XLR inputs that are on the other
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side over here last but not least you get ah yes okay so you get a pass
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through for that shoe Mount as well as start and stop you can lock this off if
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you don't want to accidentally press as well as Zoom control so it really is a
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great little accessory it comes with the camera you should pretty much always have it on there so now we've got the
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camera geared up it's time to take a quick tour of it so first things first
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this is what this looks like installed on the camera it uh quite effectively
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blocks out the light completely from being uh transmitted it's kind of a one
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or the other with the hood and the lens cap because you can actually see right
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here even if I wanted to put the lens cap in I wouldn't be able to so I
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wouldn't imagine myself using the lens cap ever again again which means I'll probably lose it so here just guys
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remind me if I ever ask where it is I put it in the Box for the xa20 so that I
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wouldn't lose it all right so let's go ahead and have a look at controls to
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start with so the menu is much much
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better than last time around and the main reason for that is a couple small
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tweaks and layout for where you can uh where you can change settings and the
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biggest one is that it Now features a capacitive touchcreen instead of a
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pressure sensitive touch screen so that makes scrolling through menus much much
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easier compared to the previous gen product you don't feel like you're like
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mashing on the screen in order to select anything or change a setting um it's
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also just you know smoother to scroll through so that's that's more natural
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they've also moved around quite a few of the adjustments that you can make such
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as switching between autofocus and manual focus and part of the reason for
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this is that they've changed that the way the that the way you switch between
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manual mode and automatic mode so it used to be on the old camera the XA 10
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the power button when you when you turned it on you actually had to decide
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am I in auto mode or manual mode that's not the case anymore so now you've got
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off camera mode and Media mode which makes sense is like how every other
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camera in the world works the XA 10 had a button here for playback and review
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which is random I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before now
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there's just a switch for auto mode manual mode and Cinema mode so Cinema
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mode we're not going to spend too much time on cuz basically all it does is
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give you sort of some filters that you can put over top of your footage which
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um I mean might help a little bit in postprocessing so filter one right here
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is a cinema standard so it's just a bit of a flatter profile so you can play
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around with color a little bit more on post Vivid you can actually see previews
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of these over to the right here so we'll point out some stuff as you can see Vivid is much more Vivid uh dream just
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puts kind of a goofy looking vignette around things and then there's a bunch
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of other filters that you can you can set up um the next thing is layout of
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the buttons makes things a little bit easier easier for you as well so the buttons are now user configurable they
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have five programmable buttons two over here to the left of the LCD one on the
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inside right here that's button number five and then two more back here at the
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back of the camera so the fact that you can reconfigure those to whatever you
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want is a huge huge upside to this
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camera compared to the last gen product back are the dual SD card slots so these
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support SD XC A and B and they support a
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couple of cool modes actually a few cool modes so with the new dig 4 video
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processor that's inside here you can not only do what you could do on the
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previous product which was you could record simultaneously to both cards so
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that you have an automatic backup or you could record to one and then the other
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and you could actually swap them out in the middle so you could record continuously that's all supported now
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you can actually record in two different bit rates at the same time so you can
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have low bit rate working files or web ready files and then you can have full
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bit rate ones one on one card and one on the other card which is a very very cool
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feature it does have an infrared um mode
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just like the old camera did moving further around to the back we've got a
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little toggle switch here that actually allows you to change the functionality
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of your focus wheel between focus and zoom whatever you prefer so if we go
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around to the front of the camera that basically allows you to kind of go okay I want this to be Focus I want this to
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be zoom in the menu you can configure which way is which for both of them and
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then there's also aha this right here is a dedicated button for gain now you used
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to be able to control that with the LCD screen but you had to choose between
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gain and something else can't remember what it was anymore it's been a long time since I've used the XA 10
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extensively but now you have a dedicated wheel for that so if you kind of go okay
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my focus ring is focus and it's a it's an infinite Focus ring guys so you don't
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you're not going to have like that muscle memory ability to focus which is
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really unfortunate I wish they had just made it linear um anyway so you've got
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your focus ring for Focus you can adjust gain on the fly right here and then you
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can use the zoom rocker for Zoom which actually has a variety of different
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speeds that it can operate at you can either have it be linear and you can select up to 16 different speeds or you
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can press it harder for more and press it softer for Less uh whichever you
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prefer this gives you a much greater degree of flexibility while you're
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runand gun shooting compared to the previous camera so why did we go with
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this versus something like a DSLR or a Blackmagic pocket cinema camera or
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something along those lines there's a couple of reasons so that runand gun
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aspect of it it makes it ideal for things like um you know event coverage
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where you're not carrying around some bulky thing or external adapters you
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just get one file at the end of it which might not be as flexible as what you
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might get out of a DSLR it might not have that same cinematic look and
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shallow depth of field like a DSLR it might not have the same uh codec support
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as something like a black magic pocket Cinema but what it is is it's an
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all-in-one the footage is ready to do something with it whether it's upload
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directly to YouTube uh automatically wirelessly upload to your FTP or
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whatever else the case may be the sensor is slightly bigger than the older XA 10
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so it's a 1 over 2.84 in and it's a SEO
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sensor so the older one was a 1/3 in SEO sensor so it's slightly bigger and I
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think that that's pretty much all the justification I mean it's got other kind
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of cool stuff it has a pre-record buffer which is really neat which means that
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when you have it configured whenever you're rolling it's actually capturing
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the last 3 seconds of footage which means that if you're kind of like you
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know you're at Little Johnny's thing and oh holy H crap they started the race a
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little bit early boom you press that button and you're actually going to get that previous 3 seconds so you're not
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going to miss anything um continuous autofocus is really nice they've
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actually got a few different modes for it so number one is you can do like a
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facial detection uh continuous autofocus you can have medium speed autofocus
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which will look more natural or you can just have instant autofocus which is
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something that you would have to do manually on a DSLR although it's great
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to have that manual control but again it comes down to Different Strokes for
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different folks this lens right here has a 35 mm equivalent Zoom range that goes
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from 26.8 mm all the way up to 576 MIM and the optical image
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stabilization coupled with some of the fancy image stabilization that Canon's
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doing with the dig4 processor actually looks pretty amazing so check this out
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we're going to go ahead we're actually going to zoom in 20 times on my sweater
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over there so I'm holding this like way out from my body you can see a little
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bit of noise in the image just because that's very very low light but there's
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actually surprisingly not a ton of shake you can see what an awkward position I'm
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in right there and the fact that I can hold it that steady zoomed in that close
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is very very impressive there's a viewfinder electronic viewfinder right
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there that you pop out in order to enable it there's the start stop record
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button here so that's in addition to the one on the handle there's aha this is
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great so there's a little rocker here that gives you uh push button support as
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well as directionality that you can use to navigate the menu if you prefer that
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to a touch screen which people do as well as another button that's for
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navigating the menu over here over on the right they have dramatically
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improved things here so power in goes up here which I actually don't think is
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better than the old one which had power in at the bottom and then there's also
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your AV out but mostly you're not going to need that for anything and look at
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this this little this little thing nothing here the old camera had like the
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micro or the mini HDMI out down there so you actually couldn't handhold it and
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have HDMI out at the same time which was ridiculous so what am I going to be
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using it for I'm going to be using it for things like vlogging if you guys saw
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any of our GPU 14 coverage where it was basically just like me hand camming
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things running around that was all shot with the XA 10 the older camera it was a
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bit of a test case for it are people going to enjoy this content at all how
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how easy is it going to be for me to create when I have like a small uh
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compact camera how good is it going to look so that's one of the reasons we
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invested in one of these behind the scenes up until now I've shot all of my
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behind the scenes footage on my HTC1 and while people have commented that you
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know hey it looks not bad particularly the sound is really really terrible you
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know whenever it's windy or anything like that so having a camera that
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actually has you know a reasonable quality shotgun mic on it in a shock
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mount with a wind sock is going to dramatically improve the audio quality
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of behind the-scenes footage and because it's nice and compact it's the kind of
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thing that we can actually carry around and and like quickly shoot things with
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much like you would be able to do with a phone um it's for things like casual videos
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where the cinematography of it isn't really important so if we were doing
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like uh you know oh hey crap we just found this like cool setting in this
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Benchmark and we wanted to just do like a short little video about it we grab
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this throw it in full auto mode shoot a quick thing and upload it to the channel
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obviously the quality of the footage is not going to be as good is what we can
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get out of the fs700 which is what this is being shot on but I would like to at
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least give you guys a little demo of what you can expect out of it and that
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will run here at the end of the video so guys if you liked this video give it a
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like if you disliked it give it a dislike if you have feelings that are
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more complicated than that or you really don't understand why I you know wasted
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my money on this camera or you really think it was a great idea and you can't
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believe we ever bought anything else please do leave a comment under the video and if you want to discuss it
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further guys there's always a link to the lineus tech tips Forum below the
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video as well as a link for where you can buy one of these suck because if you
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wanted to do so and as always don't forget to subscribe