Canon XF205 Camcorder Excels at Manual Shooting
The best thing that’s happened to cameras in the past 10 years is the banishment of tape drives to the scrapheap of video history. Everything about solid-state digital recording media is far superior to videotape, including size, weight, reliability, power demand and cost, and the gulf widens every day. Good riddance to videotape!
The Canon XF205 HD camcorder is so over the videotape era that it gives you three slots for memory cards and supports two different kinds of memory. If that wasn’t enough—the XF205 is also a joy to use.
The Canon XF205 is an HD camcorder that can shoot 1080p/60 video at bitrates up to 50 Mbps with such as canon BP-522 battery, canon BP-535 battery, canon BP-406 battery, canon BP-412 battery, canon BP-422 battery, canon NB-1L battery, canon NB-2L battery, canon BP-2L12 battery, canon BP-2L14 battery, canon NB-3L battery, canon NB-4L battery, canon NB-5L battery, including full 4:2:2 quality. It is intended for professional applications, such as ENG, documentary production, commercial and entertainment video production, as well as corporate/government video projects. The amount of features packed into this camcorder is astonishing, and I was able to only scratch the surface of its capabilities during the pleasant two weeks I had with the unit.
Starting at the front of the XF205, it features a 20x non-removable optical zoom lens that has an aperture of f1.8 to f2.8 over the range of the zoom. There is a lens cap integrated into the lens hood, and three rings on the lens to manually control focus, zoom and iris. Of course, focus and iris can be automatically controlled as well, and there are two rocker switches for motorized zoom control.
Through the lens, light is focused on a single 1/3-inch sensor, but that tells only part of the story. The sensor is actually underscanned so that the XF205 can do electronic image stabilization in addition to optical stabilization built into the lens. Together, these make for exceptional stabilization for handheld shooting.
There are two viewfinder/monitors: a 3.5-inch unit that flips out from the body and a 0.45-inch one in a huge eyecup. Both have 1.23-megapixel resolution, which is state of the art in viewfinder image quality.
Audio is well served on the Canon XF205, with two XLR connectors that support mic/line level and phantom power for mics, full manual audio control for audio, a built-in stereo mic that can be assigned to either (or both) channels, an unbalanced mic input and a headphone output. There’s also an included shock mount for a shotgun mic.
All manner of outputs and professional connectors are somehow packed onto the XF205’s small body, including SDI, a monitor output on a BNC connector, genlock/sync out (BNC) and a timecode connector (also BNC). There is a full-size HDMI connector, as well as a 3.5mm connector for audio/video out—which I can’t imagine gets used often. Finally, there is an RJ45 network connector that can be used to transfer files out of the XF205.
On the subject of file transfer, the XF205 supports WiFi to move video files off the camera.
Physically, where there are no connectors on the XF205, there are switches. There are switches for everything, giving complete control over the all aspects of the image from video level to white balancing. They are clearly labeled and have good tactile feel, but everything is a little small… in keeping with the small overall package.