What Photo Gear

Searching for a camcorder? Or just looking to upgrade? You just might be surprised at the quality of camcorders now. With the popularity of High Definition television’s, more and more camcorder manufacturers are bringing out camcorders capable of recording High Definition video.

And it’s almost unanimous that the Canon HV20 was the ultimate consumer High Definition camcorder from last year ; and the Canon Vixia HV30 released this year, while a minor upgrade, still retains the amazing image quality of its predecessor, and is still one of the best bang for the buck camcorders currently available.

And just how good is the video quality? Here are 3 video’s to give you an idea:

*Note that the video’s embedded here are not HD quality ; unfortunately the host does not allow embedding of HD quality videos - but you can hit the links below the videos to jump to Vimeo and view the higher quality videos. (Warning - fast internet connection and fast PC required!)


Italy - Brisighella e Modigliana HD - Dec. 2007 from myksto on Vimeo

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The great folks over at Camcorder Info have just published their in-depth review of the Canon Vixia HF10 ; Canon’s current top of the line hybrid HDD (Hard Disk) and Flash High Definition consumer level camcorder - and they’ve come up with some pleasantly surprising conclusions - even calling it “the first great AVCHD Camcorder.”

Almost everyone was pretty much unanimous in saying that Canon’s HV20 Camcorder was the best consumer level high definition camcorder last year - due in large part to the poor performance of AVCHD camcorders, especially with motion. But the HV20, if it had one flaw, was that it still recorded to old-fashioned tape. Which for some people, me included, felt we should have abandoned in favor of less cumbersome media like a Hard Disk Drive or flash cards.

But in terms of image quality, the HV20 was still king. It could make that video of your pet dog look like it should be on Discovery Channel’s HD Theater. But now, even with the minor update to the HV20 - the Canon HV30 ; it looks like Hard-Drive High Definition camcorders using the AVCHD codec have finally improved and are right up there in terms of image quality. Of course, editing the video is still not as easy, and it requires a lot of processing power - but it’s getting there.

The Canon HF10 gives up some controls, and is a bit more dumbed down compared to the HV20 and HV30 - but the big news here is the image quality. Personally, I can’t wait to see what Canon will have in store for the follow-up to their current top of the line HDD High Def camcorder - the Canon HG10 (which uses an ‘older’ AVCHD compression method which just doesn’t compare to the HF10’s)

The Canon Vixia HF10 can be purchased via Amazon by clicking here.

From: CamcorderInfo via WhatPhotoGear