Canon XL1s

I stumbled upon and borrowed a Canon XL1s, a MiniDV camcorder from 2001. My only other MiniDV experience was a Canon ZR80, a (if I remember correctly) fairly cheap lil thing I got back in 2005. Not awful, it served me well! Digging it out in recent years though, absolutely underwhelmed compared to some of the older VHS based camcorders I have. Colors washed out, worst sound ever. But damn, I powered on this XL1s and it was beautiful. I didn't know MiniDV could look so pretty! The colors, the clarity, absolutely gorgeous.

I have A LOT to learn about how it works, but just to test it out, I turned it on auto mode and went in my backyard and tried to film some birds. Didn't find a lot, but I pieced together this short video just to show off what the thing looks like. I wasn't focused on sound at all, but I got on some headphones while editing and noted how nice and clean it sounded. This ain't no tiny onboard mic picking up internal tape sounds and my dumb fingers fumbling around, it was real nice.

I added some music, some handwritten titles, some reverb, slapped this thing together and uploaded it to the YouTube. Later on I watched it through in its completed state for the first time and found it to be a really beautiful cool little film. Calm, peaceful, and now I really want to make more lil videos. This was nice :)