Results matching “xl” from Photoethnography.com Blog

In my rush to pack for Japan, I forgot to bring my usual digital audio recorder. I decided to pick up a new one in Japan since there were several options that weren't available yet in the United States.

I decided to not go with my previous Roland- Edirol or Samson-Zoom choices. Those companies make great digital recorders designed mainly for studio recording, but I don't need XLR jacks this time around since I'm not shooting any video. My main frustrations  with the R-09 and Zoom H4 as field recorders were their comparatively large size and the short battery life, surely there must be better options now.

Oh, I should note everything I'm mentioning is only available in Japan. I'm not sure when or if they will ever make it to the states.

Olympus: I first looked at the Olympus Voice Trek data recorder series. These are highly rated by journalists and fieldworkers alike. Many of my graduate students use their sub-$100 series. On the higher end,  I liked the DS-750, it had almost everything I wanted including the ability to recharge its NiMH AAA batteries itself, when plugged into USB.  4GB internal memory, linear PCM 48 kHz / 16 bit recording. The price, Y17,000 or around US$200.

Unfortunately, I'm the type of geekette that always has to have best of class. In the Olympus lineup, that meant the new LS-11 which just came out.  Much better mics than the DS-750, 96 kHz / 24 bit,  more internal memory (8GB) and a wireless remote control. Drool.  Street price, Y36000 or US$400. Gulp.  And while the two AAs would power it for an amazing 22.5 hours, there was no internal recharging capability like the lesser DS-750. Well, harumph.

Sanyo, which is not known for its audio recorders in the USA, had some very nice models. I wish they sold them in the USA because I think they would be a huge hit among field recorders.  I ended up settling on the newest, latest, biggest, baddest model: the Sanyo Xacti ICR-PS605RM (egad, what a mouthful).

The PS605RM has 6 ... count 'em ... 6 mics.  Four mics in a W-XY configuration and two that are omnidirectional. This allows for a wide variety of recording modes. When recording with the 4 W-XY mics, the frequency range is 40 Hz to an amazing 47,000 Hz -- digitizing at a 96 kHz sampling rate at 16 or 24 bits. Although no one except your dog might be able to hear pure tones above 25 kHz, there is some small evidence that even ordinary people can "sense" such ultrasonic overtones in musical instruments. Total overkill, the way I like it.

Although it doesn't look like it, the PS605RM is actually smaller than the Olympus models and is powered by a single rechargeable AAA battery (enclosed), which keeps it chugging for 26 hours in MP3 mode (15 in linear PCM). Incredible.

No fancy wireless remote, but there is a nice binaural mic option which I'm going to try.

Also, the Xacti can recharge directly from the computer with a slide-out full-size USB A plug. So no cables needed for downloading files or for recharging. The only thing I forget more often than batteries is the darn USB cable, so this is great.  It can also take a 16 GB micro SDHC card if the internal 4GB isn't enough.

It comes in a nice bundle with a windscreen and tripod/clip adapter.

We'll see how it functions in some field tests this summer. I especially want to plan with the binaural mics, since I want to make some recordings that show Tokyo as a blind person would hear it.

The cost was just over Y30,000 or around US$350. A tad expensive. The next lower model was a full Y10,000 cheaper. But it didn't have the Klingon shaver look....

p.s. The binaural mic is the Sanyo HM-250 -- around $75 but unfortunately only available... yes... you guessed it... in Japan.

p.p.s. And I haven't forgetten iPhones, more after the jump.

I was recently asked by several people to recommend digital camcorders. While I've previously recommended tape-based HDV camcorders, I'm now recommending SHDC flash memory based camcorders for most people. Flash memory is now very cheap and so is hard drive space.

I personally use a Canon Vixia HF100 high-def digital camcorder to tape meetings and talks here at school.

The current model is the HF200 which is listed at around $750. You also have to budget for a
16 gigabyte SD card ($50~), tripod ($100), and microphone ($50).

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=177&modelid=17994

If your budget is less, then I think the Canon Vixia FS21 at $400 would be
just fine. You lose high-def but if you're just uploading to the web,
then high-def is overkill. You'd still need to get an 8 gigabyte SD
card, tripod, and mic.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=2544&modelid=18057

Be sure to buy a good tripod as most cheap tripods have plastic heads that herk-and-jerk when you try to pan or tilt. If you've ever used a good fluid head, it's hard to go back to el-cheapo tripod. Personally, i wouldn't touch a tripod under $300, but I realize that's not in most people's budgets.

The AVC format that these cameras used makes it fairly easy to dump the video to your harddrive and then onto a DVD for archival purposes. AVC isn't terribly great for intensive editing since it's highly compressed, but it's not terrible either with today's fast CPUs.

I've been recording some Ainu music and dance performances on the side. I needed a second mic unit, so I bought the Samson Zoom H4 to complement my current Edirol R-09. I was waiting for the H2, but its ship date seems to have been pushed back to late August. The H4 was ¥27620 or approximately $230 by mail order.

Here are my preliminary thoughts on the Zoom H4:

Size: The unit is much bigger than I thought, the H4 seems almost twice the size of the R-09. It seems needlessly large, as though they could have reduced it to half the length if they wanted to.

External Mics: The H4 seems to have excellent sound recording when using an external XLR mic such as my Sennheiser ME64. The preamps are very quiet. The H4 supplies true +48V phantom power (+24V selectable) to the mic. One thing that seems odd is that I haven't found how to make the unit record in mono if there is only one mic attached.

Internal mics: Preliminary tests suggest that the internal X-Y configuration condensers are quite sensitive and separation is quite good. However, the internal pre-amps have a considerably higher noise floor compared to my Sennheiser ME64 condenser mic when plugged into the external XLR jack of the H4. Also, I'm very surprised that the internal mics on the H4 don't have any type of shock mounting. This means that any button press or even the faint sound of your hand sliding on the unit body gets transmitted to the mics. I would have liked to have seen the internal mics at least a little more isolated from the case.

Recording Mode Selection: I like the easy one-button selection and display of the current recording type (MP3 / WAV), bitrate, and bit depth. I switch between using MP3 compressed formats and uncompressed WAV files depending on what I'm recording. This requires going through a menu structure on the R-09 but only one-click on the H4.

Levels / Attenuation: You can't change the sound levels / attenuation without going first to the input menu, selecting levels, and then clicking through a couple more items. All of these button clicks are transmitted to the internal mics and to your recording. I would've preferred a simple one-button level control as on the R-09.

Lack of peak meter: The R-09 has a separate peak LED that lights when the recording levels are too high and are clipping. While the H4 has level meters, they aren't always visible and it's not easy to tell when it is clipping.

Batteries: Battery life is about 4 hours with two alkaline AAs. The H4 does not officially support NiCad/NiMH rechargeable batteries. Exacerbating the lack of support for rechargeables, it does not have a battery level meter, so you can't tell if your batteries are good or half-finished. Also, the H4 can't turn itself off if you leave it on by mistake. The R-09 supports NiMH and alkalin, has a battery meter, and can turn itself off when unusued.

Accessories: The Zoom comes with a tripod adapter, wind shield, and thin case. The Edirol doesn't come with any of these. Unfortunately, the Zoom's tripod adapter has no shock mounting and since the internal mics are also not shock mounted, any vibration coming through the tripod mount will show up in the recording.

Following on the heels of the Zoom H4 (which apart from not having a time/date stamp would be perfect for me), Samson has announced the Zoom H2 at NAMM 2007. Now this looks perfect except for the lack of XLR inputs! But it does have a time/date stamp. The specs are from the Zoom website:

• One point stereo microphone design
• Realize Mid/Side (MS) Stereo technique by using 3 mic capsules configuration and digital signal processing
• Switchable pickup angle between left and right channel, choose 90° for single voice or instrument, or 120° for many voices and instruments, arranged across the stage
• Also Switchable cardioid pattern as front, rear and omni direction
• Finally record 360° sound as 2ch data or 4ch data simultaneously
• Built-in USB interface with audio interface function, usable as a USB mic
• WAV 96kHz/48kHz/44.1kHz and MP3 up to 320kbps VBR data format
• EXT MIC IN can connect general plug-in-power stereo mic (new to the H4)
• Time stamp function (new to the H4)

You can faintly see the SD logo on the prototype photo listed, so I'm assuming it's a SD-based device.

The best thing was the price: $199!!!!!!! It should come out in several months, not a moment too soon in my opinion.

Hi Karen,

-Loren

My Workflow

In the field, I usually operate as a one-person crew. If I'm lucky, my partner can help me with a second camera and do interviews, but usually I am by myself. Sound is important to me, so I try to use wireless lav mics or use dual-system sound with a digital audio recorder. I shoot everything to HDV and label each cassette with the date, sequence number, and topic, and camera name. For example: 20051221b-BETHEL – Canon is the second tape I shot on December 21st, 2005 at the Bethel Community using my Canon XL-H1.

I write daily fieldnotes and I note the tape numbers in my fieldnotes where possible. Otherwise, I just correlate them later by date and time. I don't otherwise have time to log and review tapes in the field. I also carry a very minimal fieldkit which doesn't include a preview monitor (except the one built-into the camera). This has led to some problems -- noticeably that I have fluorescent flickering in some sequences of Bethel because Hokkaido uses a different power frequency than western Japan. This was not noticed until I went into post.

After the first fieldwork period, I went through the tapes that I knew had core material and I made a rough cut with them in SD mode (standard def using the built-in downconverter on the XL-H1). I sequenced a few shots together in iMovie to get a sense of what the film could be about. This gave me a sense of what I was missing (hospital life, community activities, etc.). When I went back to the field again, I shot those additional sequences.

Back home, I organized and logged all of the tapes. I had about 40 hours of tape for the two shoots in Hokkaido. Since the film is about 60 minutes long, that's a 40:1 shooting ratio. Pretty high, but I'm not very skilled. I captured and logged everything into Final Cut Pro. With each hour of HDV about 8 gigabytes, the 40 hours fit fairly well onto a 500 gibabyte hard drive that I dedicated to this project. Since i was using Final Cut Pro HDV, I stayed with the HDV codec rather than converting to a HD or intermediate codec that would take up much more space on the hard drive. The trade-off was some additional processing time, but the Quad-Core Mac Pro made that less important than it could've been.

Logging all the tape was a major pain and a major project. My partner Hisako helped here too. :-)

From there, we went through the tape logs and highlighted what we thought were key sequences. I storyboarded some of them on the corkboard in my office. And then I made some rough sequences and patched them together.

Right now, I'm outputting and distributing the various rough cuts to standard-def DVDs. I am editing in HDV and only downconverting at the final moment in Compressor. The resolution of the standard def DVDs that I'm burning isn't quite as high as I'd like -- I understand that there is some magic involved in getting Compressor to downconvert HDV into SD properly. In any case, I'm excited that the latest version of Compressor handles burning HD formats to DVD-Rs for playback on HD-DVD drives, so as soon as the prices drop on those, I'll implement that into my output formats.

The long-awaited 6x wide-angle high-def lens arrived for my XL-H1. The new Canon HD Video Lens 6x XL 3.4-20.4mm L has a 35mm equivalent perspective of 24.5 to 147mm, making it ideal for indoor videography, especially in cramped Japanese houses! There's a manual iris control ring, although the focus and zoom are still servo controlled.

First impressions: HOLY SMOKE THIS IS A BIG SUCKER. It's considerably larger and heavier than the standard 20x lens. The lens hood itself is humongous, almost a matte box in itself. It also makes the XL-H1 even more front-heavy than it currently is, so you'll need some sort of brace unless you have forearms of steel. Also, I didn't notice until it arrived but the 6x zoom does not have Image Stabilization in it. You don't really need it for wide angle work, but it would've been nice on the longer end.

The XL-H1 needs to be flashed up to version 1.0.4.0 in order to support the new iris ring (I was very confused at first since I ignored the enclosed SD card in my haste to play with the lens). The flash card is provided and after you've flashed it, you have a nice 16mb card to store your presets. I haven't learned if there are any other new features in the 1.0.4.0 software except the iris support.

The price for the 6x wide is set at MSRP $3000 and most retailers have it at $2700, but I bought it through the Canon educational program at about $2300.

Once I have some test footage shot, I'll post them.

Jason Romero sent me a link to the BoingBoing blog entry about a review of the SpiderBrace on CoolTools. This is not a bad looking brace and the price is right ($70), but I'd have some concerns using it with my Canon XL-H1:

• Both forearms getting tired since it doesn't look like it redistributes any more weight to your back rather than to your arms
• Lack of camcorder controls at your fingertips

From the picture, the Spiderbrace really seems designed for the new HDV mid-size camcorders that are coming out rather than full-size HDV camcorders like the XL-H1.

Gizmodo blogs about the new Samson Zoom H-4 field recorder, which seems extremely promising. At only $300, it is about $100 less expensive than either the Edirol R-09 (which is what I have) or the Microtrack 24/96 (which is very popular). The interface for the Samson looks absolutely fantastic and it has two XLR balanced inputs, which none of its competitors have.

The mike placement of the Samson is a spitting image of the Sony PCM-D1, which costs about $2000. The X-Y configuration is designed to give you a better sound field by reducing the possibility of the stereo mics being out of phase with each other.

Samson's product home page is here and they also have a copy of the manual online, which gives some of its specs. After the jump is a comparison of the Samson H4 against the Edirol R-09. The main defect that I can see is the lack of a time/date stamp on the files. This makes it much harder to use as a field recorder -- or as the audio component of a dual-system video recorder.

I'm thinking of picking one up as it seems very promising. No one has it in stock yet though. There are also only a few reviews online, but check the video review on Neo-Fight.tv.

Canon USA and Canon Japan have announced that there is a new firmware upgrade for the Canon XL-H1 camcorder. Version 1.0.3.0 corrects issues with time-code synchronization as well as reducing the granularity of the manual iris control to 1/8 stop steps.

The firmware is available by either bringing the camcorder to a Canon center or by phoning them and asking them to send you the update on an SD card for free. It is not available by download. I phoned them and they are sending the new firmware by Fedex 2nd day. I'll post again when I've updated my unit.

p.s. My camcorder, which is one of the first 100 made, was at version 1.0.0.0. I haven't been able to find out what the minor fixes between 1.0.0.0 and 1.0.2.0 (the last public version) have been.

For more info: http://www.usa.canon.com

For more info about the upgrade from Canon Japan: http://cweb.canon.jp

Canon HD Video Lens 6x Zoom XL 3.4-20.4mm L

Canon has also announced a 6x wide-angle high-def lens for the XL-H1. The new Canon HD Video Lens 6x XL 3.4-20.4mm L has a 35mm equivalent perspective of 24.5 to 147mm, making it ideal for indoor videography. There's a manual iris control ring, which makes many people happy. Unfortunately, focus and zoom are still servo controlled which makes me unhappy. I had to dig around to find the maximum aperture, but it looks like it'll be f/1.6 to f/2.6.

The price is quite reasonable at a MSRP of $3000. When it comes out in November, I want one. This is the lens that should have come with the camera, in my opinion.

For more info: http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelFeaturesAct&fcategoryid=175&modelid=12152&pageno=0

Darn it if I don't have some flickering from fluorescent lights in indoor footage from Japan -- shot with both my Canon XL-H1 and Sony HDR-HC1. This was both in footage shot in 60i and 30f -- with shutterspeeds of 1/30 and 1/60.

What is going on? While the United States is 60hz and Western Japan (where I normally stay) is also 60hz, eastern Japan including Tokyo and Hokkaido is 50hz. This means that I should have used a frequency multiple of 25/50 instead of 30/60. So the best shutterspeeds for avoiding flicker were 1/25, 1/50, or 1/100.

Let that be a lesson to me.

DVInfo.net has a page up with Canon XL-H1 presets submitted by various cinematographers. Canon provides zilch documentation for what presets do, so this is great for experimenting with the settings.

I was editing some footage of an interview I shot with an emeritus faculty here when I discovered to my delight that iMovie HD suddenly supports 25p/30p progressive HDV input.

Since when?!?!?!?!

I had shot the interview with my Canon XL-H1 and forgot to reset the frame-rate from 30p to 60i. I only realized this when I got back home and started to edit. I was adjusting settings and turned off the HDV->DV downconvert on the XL-H1 and was astonished when iMovie was happy to suck in the 1080i/30p footage without problem. A quick check of the Help file and it states that 25/30 frame progressive modes are supported.

Since when??!?!?!?!?

Frequent readers know that I've been working on a ethnodocumentary film about disabilities in Japan. I spent three weeks over winter shooting and I'm going back again next week to shoot some more. I've already gotten a rough cut of one film (on mental illness) done, which I've been screening to a limited audience.

I shot the footage using two cameras, the Canon XL-H1 and the Sony HDR-HC1. Both are HDV or high-definition DV camcorders, shooting in 1080i. The images from both of them are simply stellar. The Canon has a much better lens, better sensor, better on-board sound, XLR jacks, etc. but the Sony can be taken to places where the shoulder-mounted larger camera is too indiscreet.

I'll be taking the same rig back to Japan. Here is my modified equipment list, you can compare to what I brought last time to see that very little has changed.

MacWorld reports that Apple's Final Cut Pro Studio now formally supports the XL-H1.

StudioDaily.com has a review by Bruce Johnson of the Canon XL-H1 camera:

While Canon has turned out dozens of great still cameras and lenses over the years, when the DV revolution came about the company was relatively unknown in the video world. Canon’s consumer cameras were a mixed lot — anyone remember the original ZR? Now that was weird. And even when the XL1 came out, it certainly wasn’t perfect. I ought to know, I bought one and own it to this day. But give Canon credit, it was committed to fixing its problems and improving the camera. Learning from its fixes on the XL1, many additions and modifications on the XL1s, and many more on the XL2, which I also own, here comes Canon again with the XL H1. It’s no exaggeration to declare it a worthy successor to its older siblings.

I've reviewed the XL-H1 here too. And in other news, the new version of Apple Final Cut Studio 5.1 is supposed to support 24P/30P on the XL-H1, although I don't see it on their Qualified Devices list.