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Canon Optura Xi
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CNET Editors' Review
The good: Solid, intelligent design; relatively high still-photo resolution; manual focus ring on the lens; accessory shoe.
The bad: Comparatively short battery life; no fully manual controls; no infrared night mode.
The bottom line: A sturdy, logical design and a 2-megapixel sensor make the Xi an excellent advanced camcorder for general home or business use.
Editor's note: We have changed the rating in this review to reflect recent changes in our rating scale. Click here to find out more.
The Xi offers three modes for shooting in dim conditions: Low Light, Night, and Super Night. Each increases brightness and color saturation by decreasing shutter speed, which results in blurred motion and trailing bright spots. Super Night combines the Night shutter speed with white light from an LED that Canon installed just below the lens. The additional illumination is a nice touch, but in the dark, most subjects flinch when the highly directional beam shines into their faces. Also, it would be nice if you could activate the light in other modes, such as Low Light and standard Auto. The Xi's shutter- and aperture-priority modes, intended primarily for use with still captures, are of limited value when you're shooting video. We'd like to see a fully manual mode offering complete control over shutter, aperture, and gain. On the upside, the lens-mounted focus ring teams with the 3.5-inch viewfinder to make manual focusing quite comfortable. Finally, the Xi provides two features rare in this price range: lines called zebra stripes appear on the display to indicate a scene's overexposed areas, and (as with the Optura 300) you can set audio levels manually.
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