Hi Guys,

I have a very, very poor experience to share with you. I just bought an XHA1.

You might say so what?

I say exactly, so what! So what about everything, the construction materials left me in disbelief when I opened the box.

The microphone rubber support must have shrunk in transport as the microphone rattles if you shake the camera or indeed if you touch it.

The cassette access door shuts as badly as the back door of a Robin Reliant.

But wait! The best is yet to come!

To restore my faith I decided to test the new 1.670.000 pixels quality sensor against my old XM1 320.000 pixels so I took both cameras out for a walk in REC mode.

Came back, captured both footages on my Newtek VT4 for further analysis as I couldn't understand how you could improve so much the already excellent picture from the old one.

To my biggest surprise I was right. They didn't manage to improve it but after several attempts of readjusting the XHA1 I still could not even match the performance of the old XM1.

I still cannot believe how blurry the picture of the XHA1 is no matter what you do in AUTO or MANUAL setting.

I sincerely hope that somebody out there can embarrass me in proving me completely wrong but I am beginning to lose hope.

I have the two cameras pointing to a building and, where, with the XM1 I can see details and cracks in the wall as well as grain of a wooden door, I can go nowhere near the same definition with what is supposed to be almost 4X better.

HD, SD16:9, SD4:3, no difference whatsoever!

None of them looks any better than a toy camera in my opinion!

HELP!!!

What am I doing wrong? (apart from buying an XHA1!)

Sorry about the dramatic message.

Many thanks,

Maz

Maz, I don't own a HD camera but it should be better... in theory... so maybe your new camcorder has some faults from the factory...

I would also like to know about this as I plan on buying a Canon XHA1 soon!

It's designed to be slightly flexible:

"The built-in mic is shock mounted and is fully intended to give a little in both axis of rotation"

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I think we've all seen Bonanza.

you dont say if you look at the edited or the raw footage, look at the raw footage on a good hd panel. it will look stunning no question, if the qulity drops on the edit then its your edit gear. dont blame the camera.
the tape drive door is to stop dust, the mic is on a rubber mount to stop cam handling noise, i have the xlh1 the big brother of your camcorda, the picture qulity from your and mine is the same, fantastic.