Canon XL H1

Similarly, while the motorised zoom is silky smooth and has a wonderfully superslow speed, you have no true manual control over it -- the zoom ring provides only a sluggish electronic impersonation of manual control. Fortunately for those demanding better lens controls, Canon makes a superb fully mechanical 16x zoom lens. Be aware, however, that the optional lenses are not optimised for HD and cost about £700 to £1,000 each -- a very high price to pay on top of a camera that already costs nearly £6,000.

The controls on the lens

The adjustable side-mounted viewfinder is the other major component of the modular XL system. Where every other camera in this class offers a traditional viewfinder on the back and a flip-out LCD screen on the left side, the stock XL H1 viewfinder attempts to combine both options in one unit by allowing the viewfinder eyepiece to flip up and expose a small 61mm (2.4-inch), 215,000-pixel colour screen that can be viewed at a (small) distance. While this viewfinder is better than the one supplied with the XL2, it does not hold up well against the current competition. As an alternative, Canon offers a higher-resolution, tube-based black-and-white viewfinder at a steep £1,500 price.

Perhaps to show off the camera's new capabilities, a couple of conspicuous controls in front of the rotary selector let you set the frame rate and choose HD or SD recording

The Canon XL H1 retains almost all of the XL2's nonstandard but easily accessed mechanical controls over all major camera functions: iris, shutter, gain, white balance, audio levels and so on, as well as two user-assignable custom keys. Most obviously, the XL H1 preserves the large rotary selector on the camera's left side, which you use to turn the camera on and place it in one of its many exposure modes.

Mic and line input switches

The only other obvious revisions to the controls are two new buttons that activate the Peaking and Magnifying functions -- two new viewfinder features that will be covered in the Features section. Unfortunately, given how useful these new features are, the buttons are not very well placed and are difficult to find by feel. In contrast, Canon has made a big ergonomic improvement by returning the iris control to an easily manipulated wheel, such as the one on the XL1, rather than replicating the XL2's awkward three-position switch.