Welcome to XA10 User! I recently bought a Canon XA10 after a lot of research into other cameras. Mostly I checked the reviews or footage on either Youtube or Vimeo but there wasn’t as much info as I’d have liked as they mostly seemed to cover either DSLR cameras, large sensor cameras (such as the Sony F3 or Canon C300, most of which were out of my price range) or the Gopro (which I also have and love, especially now that I’ve got around to buying the LCD Pac).

All the reviews seemed pretty positive so I went and ahead and bought one. Initially, I was a bit disappointed, though, as I had a few problems. Firstly, the XLR attachment REALLY DOES MAKE A RATTLING SOUND!! I checked with Canon to make sure that it wasn’t just the model I was given but it does seem to be a design flaw with the XA10. If you sellotape the XLR buttons, the rattling stops. As I use a tripod mostly, the rattling isn’t really a big problem for me (but still!!).

My second problem was that, unlike with my Gopro SD cards, my Apple computer didn’t recognise the footage direct from the SD card. Since I bought the XA10 BECAUSE it had SD cards (for easy review of footage and transfer to my computer, without having to bring the camera along for downloads), this was again a nuisance. It took  a while to realize that I can still download direct from the SD card but only when either Final Cut Pro (FCP) or iMovie is opened, after which it downloads in the usual way.

Thirdly, and lastly, I was shocked that the footage was very blurred when viewed back, making it very difficult to edit (although, when exported to a .MOV file, the blurred footage was not so bad). It turns out that this was the result of filming at 50i, which was clearly NOT compatible with my Apple software. After I changed the setting to 25p (or better yet, used the camera’s filters settings), this problem was solved.

Since then, I’ve been pretty happy with the camera and will be doing a lot more shooting and testing with it. Hopefully, if you’ve just bought the camera yourself, and have the same problems I had, you’ll now have a quicker solution than I did because the manual didn’t really address the problems mentioned (either that or I didn’t read it very carefully!).

Over the next few weeks, I’ll also be posting some of the footage I’ve shot as well as running a few tests so that you can see how to get the best from your Canon XA10 if you’ve got one or if you’re still undecided on which camera to go with.