Monitoring an XHA1 with an LCD

[Adam Adorno]

I'm an XHA1 user and have been for about 7 months now. I have a small shoot coming up and was hoping to find out some more info on monitoring. I have a 22" Wide Envision LCD monitor and was wondering if there is anyway I can monitor my camera with it. I know that the monitor has "VGA & DVI-D Signal Input." That's pretty much all of the information I have.

 

If someone could post any information at all it would be a big help. I've tried reading through other forums, but no one seems to be talking about connecting their A1's to a computer lcd. If you have any info regarding cables that I should purchase, if you could post a link to the type of cable you're talking about it would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

 

Adam

[Chris Bowman]

I'm an XHA1 user and have been for about 7 months now. I have a small shoot coming up and was hoping to find out some more info on monitoring. I have a 22" Wide Envision LCD monitor and was wondering if there is anyway I can monitor my camera with it. I know that the monitor has "VGA & DVI-D Signal Input." That's pretty much all of the information I have.

 

If someone could post any information at all it would be a big help. I've tried reading through other forums, but no one seems to be talking about connecting their A1's to a computer lcd. If you have any info regarding cables that I should purchase, if you could post a link to the type of cable you're talking about it would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

 

Adam

 

As far as I understand it, there is no way to attach the camera directly to that monitor. The XH-A1 has the following outputs:

1) Composite (3.5mm to yellow, red, and white RCA cables*)

2) Composite over coaxial (BNC connector)

3) Component (D-shell to Red, Green, and Blue RCA cables*)

4) FireWire

 

* Indicates an adapter that comes with the camera

 

If you want to monitor in HD, your only options are analog Component 1080i or FireWire (Labled "DV" on the camera). The monitor does not support either of these formats. If you have Canon's Console software, you can use that to monitor the camera through the computer over the FireWire, but the software costs ~$500 USD and has a lot of bugs.

 

You could try to get a component to VGA signal converter, but a quick search of B&H Photo only came up with one that would do that, and it is $1,700 USD. I'm sure that there are cheaper ones without all the bells and whistles that it had, but I couldn't tell you where to find them.

[Adam Adorno]

Thanks for the great help Chris. It's too bad the envision monitor and the A1 have that lack of compatibility. Although, I do have Adobe OnLocation. I was just trying to see if there was a workaround to bringing my entire computer to a set. =]

 

Thanks again!