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The XL1 has a wealth of features for great flexibility in recording sound.
The Canon XLI Mini-DV camcorder has become a hit with a broad range of video professionals during the past year or so, and for good reason. Its features and video specs are outstanding. But although the XL1's picture-making advantages have been highly touted, it's the audio implementation on the XLI that really excites me.
On the video side, the XLI takes full advantage of the Mini-DV format, including IEEE 1394 digital I/O for fast, high-quality online editing, and a "prosumer" price tag of $4,699 list (about $3,900 street). Canon's renown in lensmaking is also well-served with the XL1's proquality glass lens, resolving to over 600 TV lines (exceeding the DV standard of 530 TV lines). The supplied lens is easily replaced with any of Canon's XL and EF lenses, including wide-angle and telephoto.
The audio side, meanwhile, rocks just as hard.
Microphone
The microphone that comes with the XLI is a one-point stereo mic with a permanently attached foam windscreen. It fits into a clip that's secured with a finger-operable screw that combines sure attachment with ease of operation. Replacing the factory mic with another microphone more suited to special circumstances is a 30-second operation that leaves you confident your precious shotgun won't slip out during the shoot. The factory mic connects to the camera with a proprietary, twopin plug; one pin is a standard 3.Smm stereo, the other, smaller pin supplies power to the mic. When you use a different mic that needs phantom power, it will typically have its own batteries, so you only need to plug into the 3.5mm stereo jack. Mics that don't need phantom power (mostly dynamic mics) of course won't need the second pin either.
The factory mic is about what you'd expect for a built-in unit, though in non-rigorous testing it seemed to have better side and rear rejection than the microphone built into the Sony DCR-VX1OOO I've been using.
Perusing the Menus
One of the shortcomings of some Mini-DV cameras around this price has been hard-to-reach settings in the camcorder's menu. The XL1 overcomes that problem with some clever design. On the left...