• Canon Cameras

  Is Canon XL2 native 16:9 widescreen, or is it 4:3 chipped with a built in widescreen 16:9 electronic affect?

  Posted by Nigel on February 25, 2006 at 9:00 pm

  Is Canon XL2 native 16:9 widescreen, or is it 4:3 chipped with a built in widescreen 16:9 electronic affect?

  Canon’s web site simply states “Pro Quality 16:9 and 4:3 recording”, which could mean either.

  Any XL2 owners confirm whether the chips are 16:9 or 4:3 blocks?

  Don Greening replied 20 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Don Greening

  February 26, 2006 at 12:57 am

  The explanation is a bit confusing, so bear with me. The Canon XL2 does shoot native widescreen but the actual chip size is 4×3. What they do is disable the top and bottom pixels to get a 16×9 widescreen aspect ratio when you choose to shoot in 16:9. When you want to shoot in 4:3 mode the pixels on the sides of the chips are also disabled to give you the full screen aspect ratio. Does that make sense?

  For more info go to this link where the XL2 CCD technology is explained in much greater detail:

  https://videosystems.com/mag/1204_video_canon_xl2/

  Hope this helps.

  – Don

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