Review: Canon XA25, Part 2--AVCHD Image Quality and WiFi Capability

In Conclusion

The XA20, for me, is a very nice camcorder, one that I wouldn't at all mind adding to my stable of gear. It would be a nice replacement for my HDV camcorder. It is certainly more flexible in terms of frame rates and codecs. It has a nice long lens. Battery life was surprisingly good from the BP-820 battery, but I would certainly get the external battery charger and at least a second extended battery.

Battery release on the bottom (Figure 3, below) is annoying. Having all the other ports readily accessible on the right side of the camcorder (Figure 4, below Figure 3) is very nice. Having both HD-SDI and HDMI on my XA25 gives me the flexibility to use the camcorder in low- and high-end production situations. You can even set it up for studio use with a big HDMI monitor, and send HD-SDI to the control room for switching. There's a LANC-capable remote jack for zoom and focus. Headphone output separate of the analog AV out. Stereo mic input defeats the internal mics.

Figure 3. Battery release on the bottom. Click the image to see it at full size.

Figure 4. Everything else (including HD-SDI on the XA25 only) on the right. Click the image to see it at full size.

The XLR adapter, on the other hand, can be set to also use one of the internal mics, reducing the need for an on-camera shotgun. The XLR adapter makes interfacing to professional audio gear a breeze. It's also nice that it can be removed if a smaller camera size is needed. Although, as I mentioned in Part 1, the fact that the audio meters are not in stereo without the XLR adapter is a very annoying limitation that I hope a firmware update can fix. The audio quality is up to par for voice recording.

Assessing the image is left up to the on-screen zebra. There's no histogram or scopes built into this camera. While a waveform scope would indeed be a stretch, I expected a histogram on here. Without either, all you can see is when Caucasian faces are properly exposed, or when the brightest parts of the image are clipping. That's it. You have to step up to the XF100 to get an in-camera waveform monitor. But if you use an HDMI monitor with some sort of exposure meter, that will help greatly.

I'd like for the grip to be more forward, or a second mounting thread to be further back because when you load up the camera with accessories (mics, a light, maybe a wide-angle lens) it gets very front-heavy. But without the extra hardware, it's nicely balanced.

For the price, the XA25 is about than $1,300 less than the higher end XF100, and about $1,300 more than the XA10. So it's sitting right in the middle in terms of price and features. If you don't need the HD-SDI, you can save about $500. But in terms of flexibility, I can't imagine not getting it. One thing I hear about a lot from the DSLR crowd is broken HDMI ports from yanked or banged cables. Having a second, more reliable professional video output could be well worth it in the heat of a shoot.

So as the DSLR craze dies down, it's nice to see that camcorder manufacturers have not forgotten about these little workhorses. While not as splashy as the latest DSLR, a small camcorder like this goes a long way to handling a lot of different kinds of video--simply, quickly, and easily--and produces video that you can deliver immediately. When it comes to getting work done on an every-day basis, it's camcorders like this that let you focus on delivering product, as opposed to working with gear.