("Fresh" beats commence) - Now, this is a story, all about how the camera
world got flipped turned upside down. And this might take a few minutes. So just sit right there. I'll tell you how Canon created
a groundbreaking camcorder, but most of the world didn't care. In Tokyo, Japan is where it
was researched and developed. And then in the pros bags is where it spent most of its days. Weather shooting b-roll or interviews, there were features under the hood that went on to do future
cameras a lot of good, even in low-light, you didn't need to be scared, because the VL lens had an aperture of 1.4 to let you film without a care. I searched for a cam, And when the results became clear, the listing said for parts and
it had a scratch on the rear. If anything, I thought that
this camera could be rare. So, I told the seller to buy
it now and ship it by air. (cue that intro) And that's where we find ourselves now. I've got this near 30 year old camcorder that I bought as a prop
for a different video. And now I don't know what
the L to do with the L1. I've been working on a
video about the Canon XL1. Now, this is not the video about the XL1, although it is an excellent
one in its own right. This was my dream camera when I was a kid, the original one came out in 1998 and then the XL1S which is
what this is came out in 2001. And so it's over 20
years old at this point. But when I was a kid
this thing was my dream. I literally had a picture
of it on my bulletin board. And this was a big deal, because for about $4,000
you got a three CCD camera that had believe it or not
interchangeable lenses. Four to $5,000 is still pretty expensive, but that's much more attainable than tens of thousands of
dollars, if not beyond that. And so, I've been wanting one
of these since I was a kid and I finally bought one this past summer, that's in perfect working condition. And I wanted to make a video
all about how this camera was so important because of
the interchangeable lens. Much to my surprise, this was not the first camcorder with interchangeable lenses. It turns out that in 1991, Canon released a camera called the L1. And once I realized that, I knew I needed to talk
about this in my XL1 video. So, I wanted to get an L1. However, this sort of
turned into its own journey. And that's what we're talking about today, because this thing, look at this camera. This is one of the most
unique looking cameras you've probably ever seen
or never seen really, because even though Canon
sold it for a number of years, it wasn't a wildly popular camera. If you're like me and you were interested in cameras before the
internet and YouTube, made things super accessible, the place you might've seen this and wondered what the heck is that camera is in the movie, "Titanic." There's a part at the beginning where Bill Paxton is
filming an underwater vlog, and he's using this crazy looking camera and he's pointing out the
window at the shipwreck. And it is the L1 with a different lens with a wide angle lens on it, because you can change the lenses out.
(crazy, right?) When I saw that movie
in theaters as a kid, I was so curious, about what kind of really cool
looking camera he was using to film out the window of the submarine. Another place you might see it, another mid to late 90's movie
that affected me as a kid was "The Jackal" with Bruce Willis. At one point in the movie, Bruce Willis ends up rigging up this, well not Bruce Willis but his character, ends up rigging this big machine gun, automated thing together. And he uses it to kill Jack
Black– in a tale as old as time. But the gun has some sort
of automatic sight on it or something. And basically this top panel of the camera is very, very prominent and
the power button and everything is all over the place. And that, again just
struck me as interesting, but I had no idea that
it was the same camera in both of those movies. And for some reason I
never thought of like, maybe I should look that up? Now, that the internet is a
thing and YouTube is a thing and I could probably find those answers, never thought about it. It wasn't until I saw this camera featured on Cathode Ray Dude's YouTube channel, which is like one of my favorite channels, please go check it out. That I knew this camera existed and what it was. And that's when I decided I needed to learn more about it for my XL1 video. So, this specific one
that I'm holding here was manufactured in July of 1993, although they originally
started producing these in 1991. This is the Canon L1. They also came out with an L2, which is pretty much the same camera. There's not really any differences to it. And this is largely also
based on the Canon A1. So during the 1980s, when home camcorders
became widly accessible and much more compact and easy to use, companies were doing all
kinds of different things to try to get people to
buy their camcorders. And then the L1 came about
as what would be considered a "professional" or a "low-end
professional camera," because of the lenses. And what's fascinating about this to me is that we live in a world
where it's not uncommon to use a camera that looks
like a very traditional camera, but it can do photos and
videos a little bit of both, even with the same lenses and all that. We're pretty used to that at this point. But in the late 80's, people have been using film SLR cameras with interchangeable lenses
for decades at that point. And people had now been using camcorders for a number of years, but to take both of these things and smash them together
into a video camcorder that has professional features
and lens compatibility, but still has the familiarity of a camcorder– companies didn't really
know how to approach that. And it sounds kind of funny, but if you literally take a traditional camcorder where you hold it on the side
and you can film everything and then you take a
traditional SLR camera, a 35 millimeter camera. If I basically were to take this camera and put it on the back of this camera, something like this, that would be crazy, right? To have a camera that sort of
looks like two cameras in on? But that's kind of EXACTLY what the L1 is!
🤯 It's something that was designed to try and make video camcorder
people feel comfortable, while also making those who
are used to changing out lenses and having more professional features, also feel comfortable as well. And so you've got this camera body that looks like nothing
else I've ever seen. Basically the backside of it, it looks like there's an SLR
camera just sort of wedged on the back here and you
can grab it by the grip. And it feels very familiar to that, but it also has a grip on the side. So, you can still hold it
as a traditional camcorder. And this does feel a lot better. And there are just buttons
all over the place, everywhere you could put
a button on this thing, there is a button and there are
several duplicate buttons, like multiple record switches, which is fascinating
because of the camera, as you can probably
hear is very plastic-y, (camera making sad plasticky sounds) It feels like it sounds. So if you're hearing this, it feels like that it's kind
of hollow and plasticky, but the interchangeable lens is a really nice Canon
L Series lens that is, (high quality metal dings & tings) fully metal. Like this is a heavy duty lens right here and here's something you're probably
not super familiar with. It uses a VL-lens mount, which Canon did not make
very many VL-lenses. It's sort of similar to
the story with the XL1, which uses an XL-lens mount. So, you can't swap these lenses together... ...but I digest. And this is the standard kit
lens that came with the camera. It's an 8 to 120
millimeter f/1.4 lens. And of course when we're talking about sensors, we're not talking about
full-frame or crop sensor or Micro Four Thirds. We're talking about a
very small CCD sensor and this is not a three chip camera. This is just a one CCD Hi-8
millimeter camera. The XL1 on the other hand
is a three CCD camera. So, what that means is that while the sensor
isn't necessarily bigger, which is kind of a measurement
that we're used to today, bigger sensors = better image quality. The Canon XL1 has three CCD chips, one for each of the primary
colors: red, green, and blue. The Canon L1 has one CCD chip
that combines all colors. So, basically what that means is a three chip camera Like the XL1, gives you a separate chip
to process each color and then those are combined, essentially an entire regular camcorder's color processing power is dedicated to each of the primary colors, which gives you a significantly
better image quality, low-light performance, and all that. And so the L1, while still being considered
professional at the time because of the interchangeable lens, does not have three different chips. It's just a single chip camera. But the point of this video, isn't to just talk about the
specs of this old camera, although those are interesting. I was able to purchase this
entire thing for $40 on eBay. They're not hard to
find used and on eBay, however, they're near impossible to find in working condition. And the reason for that
as far as I can tell is that a lot of these
80's and 90's electronics, use components, resistors,
flux capacitors, that just don't last. Even if they don't really get used. This camera here, the Sony F35, which is another 8mm camcorder, I actually did buy this brand
new just a few years ago. I found one brand new in a box that had never been opened from 1989. And it doesn't work. 😢 It sort of turns on, but you can't actually
get an image from it, which is very sad, very frustrating. And the reason for that is that even though it was never used and it was never abused,
just decades sitting and not being used, caused things to just sort of
start failing on their own. And I think given the
relatively cheesy build quality on this camera, I kind of think that a lot of
the components tended to fail and that's why you can't
find working ones of these or at least ones that
are listed as working. And so, my $40 got me
this camera and lens, which was super dirty and gross. So it took me a couple of days of very nice detailing to
really clean out all the gunk and the grime. But fortunately, once I got everything cleaned out, this camera was actually in
really good physical condition. It's not super beat up. It's not really stained. It has like a couple of little
scratches here and there, but it's actually a really good shape. And then I thought, "Well, hey, I wonder if
this camera actually works?" So, back to eBay I went where
I was able to find it this, which is the Canon CA-100 battery charger. It's basically for batteries
that kind of look like this. It came with a dummy battery and for Canon cameras throughout the 90's, maybe even into the 80's, these were really the
most common types of batteries. So this works on lots of other cameras and I was able to get it for
like $20 and it works great. I figured maybe one day I'll
get another old Canon camera that needs it. So, even if it doesn't work on this, it won't be a total waste. And it goes right in here and now you can run the
camera off of AC power. Here's what I did. I plugged it in. I was super excited, super nervous. There's a power button right here. I press the Power button (startup chime that definitely came from the camera) and the camera actually turned on. I was pretty excited about that. What I did notice was when
I pressed the zoom lever, nothing happened. The lens didn't zoom. I couldn't hear the lens focusing. And when I looked through the
black and white view finder, I didn't actually see any image... ...but there was text on the viewfinder! Which showed me that the
camera was alive in some way. It showed the counter, it showed dates. It said that it needed a battery. And it also kept saying "LENS" flashing over and over again. So, I thought, "Lens see
what's that all about?" I took off the lens and I cleaned all of
the contacts on the lens and I cleaned all the
contacts in the camera and everything looks good. Even though it clicks in fully, the camera just does not
register that a lens is attached. And so I thought, "Okay, the camera's busted or the imaging part of
the camera's busted." However, I noticed something, which was when I took off the lens and I looked in the viewfinder. I could see flashes of light. Things were kind of changing. That showed me that the
camera was picking up, some sort of light. It was actually sensing the environment. And then looking through this lens, I noticed something interesting, which was that I could NOT
look through this lens. Sometimes with camera lenses. What you'll notice is even when they're not
connected to your camera, you can still actually see
through them to the other side, because the aperture is open. That was not happening with
the lens from the Canon L1. So, what that told me was that the lens has its aperture closed. Probably when you connect
the lens to the camera and turn it on the aperture was
supposed to open up. So, that way you can then adjust it. But when you turn off the camera, the aperture closes and since the camera wasn't
registering the lens, it was just staying closed. So now that I knew the
camera was taking in light, my next question was is the lens broken or
is the camera broken? Now you might remember that I said Canon didn't make too
many different models of these VL-lenses, but they wanted to sell this
as a "professional" camcorder with interchangeable lenses. But it's hard to see the advantage of interchangeable lenses if there aren't that many
lenses to interchange with. And this is something Canon
still does to this day, right now one of the most popular things you can buy for a Canon
camera is the RF to EF adapter, which lets you connect EF, their older lenses, to an RF camera, like the R, R5, R6, R3, RP, you know, oh gee, and use those lenses natively. Well Canon's EF lenses have been around for a really long time. In fact, they've been around so long that Canon actually made
an adapter to use EF lenses with the L1. Somehow I had the best
streak of eBay luck ever. And I was able to find a VL to EF adapter that was brand new, still in the box unused. And you can see the original price tag from the camera store that
it came from for $269. I got it for $35 🥳 and it's completely brand new
with all the instructions, the box, everything,
it had never been used. Date of purchase says blank, blank, 19, blank. So, that at least gives you
an idea of which millennium this came from and here's
the adapter itself. So unlike the EF to RF adapter, which is very small, compact and lets you have full automatic features, full control over your
lens to the adapter, there were still figuring
things out back in the 80's. And this actually takes a little battery to help with some of the exposure in some of the different controls. If you take off the really
adorable tiny lens cap, it does still manage to fit
in right there on the L1. And now I have a really,
truly bizarre looking camera. So, when I did this and I
connected the dummy battery and powered on L1, the camera turned on, but still nothing happened. I had the same thing that said lens. It wasn't registering that
the lens was connected, but it was good because it told me that it wasn't the lens that was damaged. It's something to do in the camera– which might actually be worse? I don't know, it depends
on how you look at it. But then I thought: "Okay, whatever, I'm going to
pop a lens on here." So, now I can take an EF
lens, of which I have several, this is my Sigma 24 millimeter 1.4, one of my all-time favorite lenses, a really nice, beautiful
high quality prime lens that now I can mount
onto this old camcorder. And then when I look
through the viewfinder, I can actually see an image!
And not just any image, but actually a really
clear, good looking image! Well, I mean it was being filmed
through a nice prime lens, which is great, but I was actually kind of surprised at how great the picture
quality was on this thing. And you might remember that a while ago, I made a video about
how to use old camcorders with your computer for streaming, using these little relatively inexpensive RCA to HDMI adapters. So I thought, "Well, let's see if I can connect the L1 to Ecamm Live record
some footage from it." So, just on the side of the camera, there's a port here which has RCA outputs and I believe also has a video output. And from there I could
connect it to Ecamm Live. I can see through the lens, it's all manual focus, but then I was able to
get footage from the L1. And as I go around the room and kind of focus on different things, it's really not too bad. For the first time in
who knows how many years, this camera was seeing, capturing
and sending out an image! And so that just blew my mind right there, but there are a few limitations. First and foremost, this rocker switch here for
the zoom is entirely useless and does nothing because the camera still doesn't think that
there's a lens on there. This is just letting me connect a lens that has an open aperture. Now the downside is since there's actually no communication happening through here, I can't control the lens'
aperture through the camera and this is not a manual aperture lens. So if I want to change
the aperture on this lens, I need to connect it to one of my EOS R's, change the aperture to what I want and then put it back on here. Unfortunately, I can't use this really cool zoom lens or see through this or see
the quality of this lens. If you have any ideas of what I could do to make
the camera work again, that would be awesome.
(please help 🙏) And this camera does actually come with some rudimentary digital effects. There's like a closeup right here, which lets me punch in a little bit. That's actually kind of cool, especially in the world of YouTube where you punch in to make an
impactful statement sometimes. There's an overlap feature, which is sort of like
a weird cross dissolve. There's a lot of different versions, like a freeze effect where
you can just freeze something and it's almost like a snapshot and you can turn it off and
keep going where you were going. There's an art freeze. I actually don't even know what this is. Oh, very, very retro. I'm not disliking this at all. So, the effects are pretty
limited and kind of strange, but they work! The camera is processing the different effects. And this camera does have a lot of really interesting controls, which is something that a lot of older camcorders
tended to do anyway. But since this was geared
towards professionals, it makes sense that it can
do all of these things. Right here on the side, this is where the mode dial
is to go from auto to manual. So, if you turn this to auto
the camera does everything. If you turn it to manual, then you can start using
all of these controls. And there's a lot of
different ports on here. There's a store on the side
that I mentioned earlier, which lets you connect
different outputs and things. There's also an edit mode if you wanna record an
external source onto your tape and use this as like a VCR for editing. On the back of the camera
is where you insert the tape, we're gonna talk about that in a second. And then there's also a
zoom rocker switch here, which I haven't gotten to use yet, because it doesn't know that
there's a lens attached. And then on the side over here, there's not much, but there is a big red record button in this little outcove. And then there's another shutter
button here to record too. And of course you got the zoom rocker and then where you can
install the battery. Now the top of this
camera is very strange, because that's where there
are a lot of controls. You have all of your playback controls. You don't need to switch it
into like VCR mode or play mode. You just press this and it will go. There's another record button right here, but it's next to this record button, which is also next to that one. So, there's like three record buttons, right next to each other. And on the side over here, you have some time counter information, but they even smashed some
buttons on the front here, this is where you can do
your date and your title. And then the effects. If you can kind of see the effect buttons are
on the side up here. So, you press this Effect Select button to cycle through the different effects and then you turn them on and off here, which is in a very awkward position. So the form factor on
this is fascinating to me, because you can tell
that they didn't yet know what they were doing
and it's easy to go back and laugh at that and be like, "Those fools in the 80's and the early 90s, they didn't know what a camera should be!" But there had never really
been anything like this, because aside from the super expensive, like Hollywood film Panavision
cameras and stuff like that, nobody was changing
lenses on video cameras. The only people who were
changing lenses on their cameras were people who were
used to film photography. And the people who are taking video were the people who
were used to camcorders that didn't change the lens. And so you can see the logic that Canon had in trying to make a camera that appealed to both people. So if you're used to changing lenses, this is going to feel like your SLR. If you're used to camcorders, don't worry, it's still a camcorder. And I'm not going to say it was
a wildly successful design, but it's a really fascinating design. There is a little thing on
the bottom of the viewfinder that says tally lamp and a sensor. So, this makes me wonder
if this actually did come with a remote control or
something at one point. And I did a little digging while editing, only to find that it did come
with a wireless controller and it did come with a Hi-Fi
stereo shotgun microphone. And then it does have, some pretty interesting
audio controls right here. So you can connect a 3.5
millimeter microphone, but it's also one that can draw power from the camera through a DC out. It was kind of a common
thing in older microphones. It's basically how the
XL1's microphone works, where the mic itself
actually has two connectors. That's how it sends
the input to the camera and draws the power from it. So you could do that here and then you have this dual volume knob where you can turn everything at once to adjust the gain on your microphone or you can do it separately
to do right and left channels. And on the back, you've
got the LCD display, which not only shows a counter, but it will also show audio
levels when you're recording. So this is a very interesting camera. And now this specific one, once I got it to a point where it could actually see an image and I could get it onto a computer. Now I wanted to see if I could take it a little bit further... So, the first step was to see if it could actually take a tape. And I was pretty scared of this, because there are a lot of mechanics that go into the ejecting, and inserting, and loading of a tape. And that was where I kind of thought, "If this camera's really
going to have some problem, it's going to be here." I didn't want to risk damaging, any of the 8mm tapes that I have that have like
actual treasured memories and old, weird movies on them and stuff. So I had to order one, which these are shockingly hard to find now. This one had to
come straight from Japan. (tape potentially being sent to its demise) I popped in the tape, closed it. And all the commands seemed to work! (camera makes happy tape sounds) It would rewind, play, fast-forward, but I would just see the
fuzzy snow static on the tape. When I tried recording, I wasn't getting an image and that was kind of
sad and disappointing. So I tried recording our dog and I was still just seeing
the snow static and I thought, "Oh well, I tried but it just doesn't work." And then at one point
through all the static, I could see the quick outline of our dog.
(Thanks Finley!) And I thought, "Wait, it is actually recording something! Could it just be that
the heads are dirty?" So I got the idea in MY
head to clean the heads and see if that would work. Because fortunately, going back to Cathode Ray
Dude's YouTube channel, he's done a few videos about
how video heads work and video players work. And that taught me specifically
how to clean the heads. And so, the quick explanation
is that when I opened this up, there's this drum in here and that's where the video head is. There's a little slot on either side of it. So I just took some isopropyl alcohol and a little sheet of paper and just sort of rubbed it across that, because I didn't want to get material from like a Q-tip stuck in there. And then I put the tape back in, pressed record, and then when I played it back, I was actually able to see the image! Which meant that the camera
was recording on its own and delivering a clear output. And now the last step was to
sort of take the camera off of this powered life
support situation here, so that it can truly be portable, like it was intended when
it was originally made. And fortunately, it's not that hard to
find these batteries. Battery life's not great. It lasts like 20 minutes maybe. But I could connect it here, do that, power on my Canon L1 and now I can go out and record mobile-y. However, this camera has
no built-in microphone and audio is half of video. So that was a problem. I tried the microphone from the XL1 and it didn't work, but then I grabbed, (equipment falling gracefully) Uh oh. But then I grabbed my old
trusty Rode VideoMic Pro Plus, popped it on there, and put it into the input. And basically as soon as I did that, the audio meters on the LCD screen on the camera started displaying levels. And now I can record video and audio. I have a working Canon L1! (*asterisk because adaptor and other lens that I can't change the aperture on) But it is a working Canon L1. Now 24mm on here
with this small sensor is not the same as 24mm on here. So this camera needs
to be like very far away for me to be able to use it. But if I set it up here and hit record. Now, I'm kind of filming myself and recording my audio with the Canon L1. (L1 Audio)
Now, I'm kind of filming myself and recording my audio with the Canon L1. So now with a little more setup, this is a proper scientific test of the Canon L1's capabilities. I'm not actually even using
this microphone though. I'm using the Deity Pocket Wireless, which works because the
camera at 24mm to get this wide of a shot, it had to be outside of
the room where I film, across the hall and the camera's actually in the laundry room and the Rode mic over there wouldn't work. So I needed to use a wireless mic and I am using auto audio
levels for this "scientific" test. So, we'll see what the gain is like. But it's a great opportunity
for me to tell you, all about this, because a lot of us know, about the original Photo Encabulator, but for many years, engineers have been
working to bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea of a device that would not only supply
inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but would also be capable of
automatically synchronizing, not just cardinal gram-meters, but also cardinal gramp-meters, your grammies and your grampies.
(hold for applause) And instead of a base plate
of prefabulated amulite, the new Photo Encabulator has a malleable parametric casing that allows for the spurving bearings to be in direct line
with the panametric fan and thus concludes our
scientific test of the Canon L1 in a studio environment. (STAR WIPE!!!) So, now I think that the
only logical thing to do is to take my L1 camcorder and get the "L" out of here and go film. (VHS vibey royalty free montage music) That is the condensed version as much as I can make it of
my journey with the Canon L1 which all started as just
trying to buy this camera body as a prop for a video, I haven't even actually finished
yet about another camera, but the story behind this camera is so fascinating to
me for several reasons, beyond just the fun of
trying to get it to work and be usable in today's world, many decades past its original production. This by itself really
represented something for where camcorders and personal video and professional and
prosumer video were going or even developing. And so as easy as it is
to laugh at this design, you can see things in here that directly influenced later cameras. Specifically, you can see
a lot of design elements, features and functionality from this, the world's first
interchangeable lens camcorder to the Canon XL1, which was really like the world's first, genuinely usable pro-level
interchangeable lens camcorder that was also relatively
semi-affordable to normal people. As I'll explain in my XL1 video, there are a lot of features on this camera and a lot of design elements that you can trace to
current Canon cinema cameras. So, Canon's C-Series cameras, even their professional camcorders. So a lot of those things, you can draw a direct
line back here to the XL1, which is originally released in 1998. And then you can take
a lot of these elements and draw a straight line right
back here to the Canon L1, which was the world's a very first, interchangeable lens camcorder. I think that this probably
doesn't get the credit it deserves for being as
important, as influential, as innovative, and as
impactful in future technology as it really was. And it's actually a ton of fun to use, even though it's not
necessarily the most ergonomic. And speaking of things that are fun, thank you to everybody who
helps support my channel, through Patreon and YouTube
channel memberships. I really appreciate it. It helps me to buy goofy
old cameras like this. And if you want to know
more about old cameras, like how to use them
with your live streams and stuff like that, check out these videos right here to help you get the most
out of that retro gear. (8mm Outro Vibes)
