Review: Canon XA25, Part 1

Infrared

AJ: This camera also has infrared, like the XA10--one or two little LEDs that shine super bright like a spotlight. Some people might need it for ghost-spotting, and it’s there if you need it. It's an easy way to do some infrared video if you want to. In a year of using the XA10s I never needed the infrared.

AB: To sum up, I found the camera good to use. Coming from the high-end line, I was initially frustrated in finding things but once you find them and assign buttons to them, it helps. I got frustrated trying to figure out how certain things were done because the methodology on a small camera like this is different than it would be on a bigger camera that has dedicated buttons, knobs, and switches for the things that you need. But in the end, you can get the same functionality; it’s just not as readily accessible. The functions have to be put into menus.

Mic Options

AB: Clearly, when you add the microphone adapter on the front, you get your line/mic, phantom power, on/off. Another nice feature is that it's one switch to activate or deactivate the XLRs. So you can have your built-in ambient mic and then, click, you're listening to your lavs. One click and you're back to ambient stereo.

AJ: And with the actual on-board microphones, you can zoom, go omnidirectional, apply low cut filters, or use custom EQs when you're recording. If you're recording voice, you can record certain frequencies (Figure 9, below). So that's actually quite nice to see added.

Figure 9. Built-in microphone settings.

AB: Perhaps the shotgun microphone is not included because you can use one of the built-in microphones and one XLR channel. So you don't have to add that XLR mic to get a second ambient channel. You already have two perfectly good microphones built into the camera and it saves on bringing extra gear. At that point, you can take the short shotgun microphone holder off and it's smaller and easier to pack.

All in All…

AB: All in all, I liked the screen, very good. Handling, very good. The optics are great. Canon knows lenses. Canon knows stabilization and that's clearly evident on this small camera.

AJ: Bitrates are very good. If you wanted to take an external recorder and mount it up here you can take the HD-SDI or HDMI out and use that to feed your external recorder and get even better images with lower compression than the built-in 28Mbps data rate. If you have a Samurai or Ninja that will keep you from dealing with the AVCHD codec.

This camera feels much better in the hand than the XA10. It's a big upgrade. Some people may think the XA10 is good enough, but the XA20 is definitely a worthwhile upgrade. And having spent a year with two XA10s, I actually got rid of them last week because I was tired of the menus. So this is a welcome change.

AB: If you're coming down from the XF300 or the XF100, it's still, optically, quite good. Codec-wise, AVCHD or MP4, the image quality is quite good. You're going to have the gain structure of a small sensor. You're not dealing with an APS-C sensor. You're not going to get a 20x optical lens in a camcorder this small with a big sensor like that. But that said, the image quality was quite good for what we needed.

AJ: You can get good depth of field on these cameras. It's got an f1.8 lens-to-2.8 lens. Still very fast--especially with a 20x zoom. I was getting some good depth of field in what I was shooting. For interviews you want to get at least the nose to the back of the head in focus. You can get that with these. You've got a 58mm thread for ND filters so you don't have to stop your lens down. Or you can add a wide angle or telephoto adapter.

AB: I found that, in my two-camera shoot, I had a wide camera and a close up. With the close-up camera, only 10 feet from the subject and in a medium shot, the background went a little soft. I liked that. I was surprised to see that with such a small camera like this. I expected everything to be tack-sharp from 1" to infinity. The background was another 3' behind him and it was a little soft. The wide shot, of course, being super wide, you couldn't see any depth of field differences, but going in for the head shot on the interview camera, that is a nice, pleasing shot.

AJ: It's going to give you that same kind of look that you're used to with broadcast camera with that f1.8. It does have internal ND filters that kick in around f4. So you're not having to crunch your camera down to F8 and then change over to ND. Three different settings are in the camera. Now, are they real ND filters? No. They are electronic ND filters. There's no way they could fit a filter ring into this little camera. But if you want to, you have the threads. And you can put your own VariND on here if you want.

AB: Overall, if you're coming down from a higher-end camera, be aware of the workflow differences.

AJ: If you're stepping up, it's a must. Because what this camera offers you is new possibilities, possibly even a quicker workflow with the two recording formats, and more outputs. So if you're on set and need a client monitor, you can plug in and supply that--HDMI to a TV and still use a Samurai recorder. You don't need to send the client the analogue output. You've got the options. It's a big upgrade. It's a must.

AB: In part two of my review, I'll provide the results of my video tests and show how the WiFi control works.