Comments

farss wrote on 1/25/2012, 4:03 AM
Looks like a wet Australia Day in Sydney at least.

I too have been looking at the XA10. I had the first one in AU last year for a few minutes and was quite taken by it. Beyond what can be found in the reviews I know nothing much but it I can say it does feel solid in the hand.
I would have prefered more buttons and knobs and less menus to deal with but not a lot of room for them on something so small I guess.

Bob.
Duncan H wrote on 1/25/2012, 4:27 AM
Hi. I'd also be interested in hearing about the performance of the XA10, as I'm looking to get a new camera and this was one that caught my attention. Must be an Australian thing. Move south Bob, looks like being a cracker of a day in Melbourne!

Duncan
Duncan H wrote on 1/25/2012, 4:30 AM
Wow, the censorship team are out in force: previous post included no obsenities, just a bit of aussie jargon ref to the fact that we are expecting a very pleasant day (cracker)

Duncan
Downunder wrote on 1/25/2012, 4:45 AM
Hey Duncan I suppose you meant a ripper of a sunny day......

Bob, yup it is bucketing down here in Sydney. Oh Well (a great Fleetwood Mac song) this forum always makes the best reading on a rainy day. Re the XA10 the only real issue I have read is the creaking noise coming from the handle, did you pick this up with the one you held ?

Lee
farss wrote on 1/25/2012, 7:02 AM
"did you pick this up with the one you held ? "

No but it was bought into our shop by the crew who were using it to shoot the local promo for it for Canon. I think it was only one of the prototypes. I really didn't have time to give it much attention at all.
The only complaint I've read of is the switches on the audio bridge can rattle. If that were an issue should be pretty easy to fix. Much easier than the issues of the Sony camera that's in the same class.

Bob.

Andy_L wrote on 1/25/2012, 9:30 AM
I played around with an XA10 for a while. What killed it for me was having a TM700 at the same time to compare footage.

The XA10's sensor is a one-chip native hd, so color is bayer-interpolated. I actually liked the Canon's color balance; the picture was bright and had a nice dynamic range, and it looked good on a TV screen. But in terms of sharpness the 3-chip TM700 just crushed it.

Since then, I've found myself backing away from sharpness as the paramount concern, but I still believe that a new crop of 3-chip compacts is likely just around the corner, and for that reason I still wouldn't keep an XA10.

I should also mention that newer processors seem to be doing a much better job with scaling issues on one-chip oversampling sensors (bigger than 1920x1080), like Sony's NX70U, so maybe the wave of the future won't be 3-chip after all. Be aware, however, that there are show-stopping issues with the NX70U, which may or may not (I say probably not) be addressed in a March firmware update...