 Hey guys welcome back to my YouTube channel this is Daniel Rosel here I want to record a video today regarding the differences between the Canon pro camcorders in the xa range and that currently comprises the xa 40 45 50 and 55 so there's four camcorders in that range for pro camcorders Canon also have a slightly higher end pro camcorder product family which is the xf range of camcorders now there are videos I spend quite a bit of time researching this purchase because it's probably minus a car the most expensive purchase I've made in a long time so I did spend a ton of time on YouTube watching Canon's videos from trade shows and that and watching other YouTube videos but I have a little hack for finding really good info and that is why I'm starting this video on this tab and it's you can see what I what I've searched here for is Canon xa 40 and then I've used the Google advanced operator to call up PDFs and if you don't know how to do that it's file type colon PDF and then you'll only get PDFs now the reason I do that is there is a bunch of brilliant documents that are usually described as data sheets and data sheets kind of cut through all the marketing gloss about this is the best product and this is great they'll just tell you straight up in a very factual format so I find a few data sheets but one of the I think the most useful one I stumbled upon was this one it's on a website called ccisolutions.com it looks like an official Canon document that they put together and they call it their professional camcorder comparison chart so don't ask me exactly who this comes from it looks looks to me like it's prepared by CPS which is Canon Professional Services that's like their kind of arm for the pro camcorder range and this will really kind of break down the range here so as you can see and this is as the best of my knowledge pretty much up to date you have the xa 40 and xa 45 they're 4k uhd camcorders and they record a 2.3 to a 2.3 1 over 2.3 inch CMOS sensor then and I don't really like the way they order this because it's a little bit illogical but then if you look at the bottom left corner we have the xa 50 and 55 and their top line description here is 4k uhd so there's no change in the top resolution they can record but it has a one inch CMOS sensor so the 40 and the 45 have that 1 over 2.3 and the 50 and the 55 have that one inch and when you get that bigger sensor you're going to get better low light performance but consequently they're going to cost you more money so as I've said in a couple of videos about the xa 40 if I wasn't doing video just as a hobby and I wasn't so constrained by budgetary factors I would have got the 50 or the 55 because I'm doing this for fun and not currently generating a lot of money from my video related activities I'm trying to keep keep the costs of this reasonable so therefore I opted for the xa 40 it wasn't a small difference either it was about in my locality in Israel there was about a you know seven or eight hundred dollar difference between these two camcorders so that's the xa range I'm not sure that these guys the xa 11 and xa 15 are still being sold really I haven't found them on the market but they're kind of the predecessors as far as I'm aware but these guys are not 4k as you can see they don't have that 4k ultra hd so in other words if you want it the cheapest camcorders in the xa range are the 11 and the 15 and they're just full hd so 1920 by 1080 if you want your 4k you want to jump up to the 40 or the 45 the difference is that the 45 has sdi and this comparison chart will show you even more small details and the 50 and the 55 then will give you that one in sensor there's a couple more options in the canon pro camcorder range currently you have this this slightly strange looking camera it's called the xc 10 xc 15 and these are kind of more boxy they've kind of moved away from that from that form factor and then you have the xf range three camcorders and the xf range and this isn't complete there's also the xf 605 but this is um I don't know when this was issued but it again it looks to me pretty pretty up to date because they don't have the 605 they have the 705 so the last couple of years let's say um so we have here the 705 is the very top of the range if you will that's their kind of big camcorder and then just below that you have cheaper xf xf options the 400 and the 405 and all these all these options in xf are one inch cmo sensors so here's the chunky comparison chart and again this is the kind of thing that I couldn't find on canon's website I couldn't find it anywhere else but it's kind of invaluable as far as I'm concerned I'm going to do some zooming in on the video because it's going to be a little bit hard to see all these details but this is laid out side by side exactly what you're going to get with each of these camcorders so if you're looking between the 40 and 45 and the 50 55 then look at columns after the descriptor column here look at columns three and four where I have my mouse currently oh my mouse isn't going to be capturing the video so ignore that look at columns three and four the ones that say 50 55 so just to kind of show what the really my new differences are let me just read off some of the details well the big difference is that the cmo sensor on the 50 55 is one inch and on the 40 45 it's one over 2.3 the way canon have laid out this table is that if there's no difference they just put a little hyphen that means it's the same so you can so what's similar about this to the image processor on the 50 55 is also better it's dual dig dig ic dv6 and on x a 40 slash 45 it's a digic dv6 so you've got a different image processor I don't know the differences between the dv6 and the dual digic dv6 presumably the dual one is better that's about as much as I know resolutions are as you can see exactly the same the 4k the the fhd and the hd12 80 by 720 full hd being 1920 by 1080 pixels and 4k being 3840 by 2160 there is no difference between the resolutions either the 40 or the 50 shoot at in terms of the lens it's actually interesting that you have a 15 times optical zoom on the 50 but a 20 times optical on the 40 45 so that is indeed interesting and in the aperture 8 blade irs on both image stabilization same image stabilization modes the same both support powered is dynamic and standard as now there is a difference in the ND filters on the 50 55 you have built-in ND filters it says three stop rotating turret style that means it's a physical ND filter that has can three levels of ND it doesn't specify what those levels are here but you'll find that somewhere else and on the 40 45 you have auto ND I haven't explored that feature yet but basically you have actual ND as in physical built-in ND filters on the 50 55 and not on the 40 and 45 the autofocus system is also a small difference between these two on the 40 45 you have what's called hybrid autofocus and on the 50 55 you have dual pixel CMOS autofocus you've got a higher end autofocus technology on the 50 55 LCD size is identical three inch on both it's actually handy to know the LCD size because if you're looking for a lens visor it's based on the size so that's good to know they're both three inch LCDs if there's stuff that I don't know I'm just going to not mention like not I'm not going to not mention it but I don't know what this means looks standard YDR neutral monochrome I guess those are kind of filters that you can get not feel as in software filters that are that are pre-configured into the camera that doesn't exist in the 40 40 or the 45 but the 50 55 yes in terms of recording bit rates and frame rates because we've got those dashes it looks like it's identical in the XF AVC codec and when we're getting into the mp4 codec it doesn't have the oh I see there is a difference so okay so you you can do 59.94p in 4k and you can't do that in 4k so these are the really small differences that you only pick up sorry I'm looking at the wrong column I'm going crazy here those look the same to me I was looking at the column for the XF 705 so if you look at the columns one and two for the top range you'll see you'll that you get that uh you can guess on the XF 400 and 405 you can get 60 fps in 4k for the 50 and the 45 I don't see any difference if I'm missing something you can let me know what it looks to me like the same frame rates across both mp4 and XF AVC codecs in terms of the color sample um again that looks the same to me there slow and fast motion hdmi ipod now sdi ipod um this is another difference here um this is the row I'm on I'm just gonna highlight it here for a second so that's what distinguishes the 45 and the 55 is that they have sdi um so that's why there's an asterisk saying 55 only but otherwise the sdi ipod looks to be the same it's 1920 by 1080 uh 422 sorry 422 10 bit um on the 50 55 and it's 420 8 bit on the 40 45 so these are the really tiny details that really matter uh if you're looking for sdi or it might matter to you and they're just buried in the spec sheet so that's why I love these data data sheets slash spec sheets when you can find them um so then regarding the audio recording aac 16 uh 16 bit over two channels and lpcm 16 bit over two channels um two sd cards and both neither camera has wi-fi or ethernet that's really important and you can see if you look at the other columns on this comparison chart um once you get up to the 705 and the xf series in other words the 400 405 and 705 you're going to be getting uh fdp ip streaming etc etc and there's a physical rj45 ethernet jack so um ethernet is not something that's in the um in the xa xa series um as far as I can see here none of them have neither wi-fi nor internet xr inputs uh two xlr's on both they have phantom power that's not noted here um regarding the ntsc uh slash pal no and no um remote wireless and rc v100 on the 50 55 and just the rc v100 on the uh so there's a different i'm not familiar with the remote controls for the canon models the rc v100 is not a cheap piece of gear but um the even the xa 40 does have an input for it it's actually the same battery as you can see the bbp a20 slash a28 for both of them 4k recording time is 75 minutes or 120 minutes at um 29 point uh in other words 30 fps on the 50 it's actually longer on the 40 45 um so that is worth knowing there dimensions are uh four point let's just look i'm going to look at centimeters 109 so that's about 11 centimeters by 914 um by 203 millimeters there so it looks like there's a really really pretty small difference but that the xa 50 and 55 are slightly taller but these are really small differences so they're almost the same and the weight is the xa 50 and 55 is a tiny bit heavier it's 953 grams and the xa 40 45 is 740 grams so those differences are really not very significant but it is good to know what your camera weighs because if you're putting it on a tripod and accessorizing tripods i typically have a payload limit so uh 953 grams you know the 50 55 is basically a kilogram and the xa 40 45 is just a tiny bit shy of a kilogram um so you can add that up if you're calculating payloads for a tripod so that's it i think the summary really between all this my new detail is that well okay the 50 55 has a one inch sensor that's the key difference between these two camcorders um it does have a dual dig dig dig it's slightly better image processor the resolutions max resolutions are the same they're both 4k capable uh camcorders you get your physical nd rings on the 50 55 you don't get those in the 40 45 bit rates video recording to me it looks exactly the same um you get your sdi i put on the 45 and the 55 but not on the 40 or the 50 you get two xlr inputs with phantom power on both camcorders and the pro audio there's a slight difference in the remote control capability it's the rcv 100 on both but there's also wireless remote control on the 50 55 i do not know exactly um what that product is someone probably does and they're almost i they're almost the same shape everything they look almost identical uh the xa 50 55 is just a tiny bit bigger in one dimension and it weighs just a small bit more as well as you'd expect that probably that extra weight's coming not just from the uh not just from the tiny tiny differences in size but probably from the built-in nd filters that would probably add a small bit of weight to the body too so that's it i hope that was helpful if you're looking at uh if you're on the fence between the weather to buy the 40 45 50 and 55 i'll put a link to this pdf that i found lurking around the internet um in the video description and um yeah that's the current this is a current overview of the different pro camcorders that uh canon is selling at this current time these came to market a couple of years ago and um i really like i really like the xa 40 so far um if i had extra budget as i said i probably would have bought the 50 i don't need sdi and i don't think most hobbyists do need sdi but if you do if you if you can afford to go for the 50 uh you're going to get yourself those built-in nd filters and more importantly for most people you're going to be upgrading from a 1 over 2.3 cmOS to a full one inch uh CMOS sensor which should give you a better uh low light performance which can be important if you're doing a lot of shooting after dark thanks for watching if you'd like to get more videos please subscribe to this youtube channel