It's been a long wait, but the hard disk drive-based, AVCHD-compatible Canon HG10 is here.
Canon HG10
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Based on the innards and lens of the HV20 and costing around £750,the HG10 nevertheless uses an almost completely different design, onethat takes a few chances -- not necessarily successful ones.
Design
The HG10 is significantly smaller than the HV20, though at 505g, it's not much lighter. And though it weighs a tad lessthan its main competitor, the Sony Handycam HDR-SR7,it's also a bit taller. The silver-and-dark grey body doesn't lookquite as snazzy as the SR7's mostly-black chassis, though. The tallerbody does, however, make it easier and more comfortable to grip.
To squeeze the body, Canon moved and reshaped a lot of the controls. Insome cases, as with the large, extremely smooth and comfortable zoomrocker switch and the extendable eye-level viewfinder, the changes workfor the better. Some things, such as the nontethered accessory-shoecover -- you might as well toss it now, it's bound to get losteventually -- should have been changed but weren't. And others simplydisappointed us.
Take, for instance, the new four-way-plus-Set switchwith the concentric scroll wheel. On one hand, it's far better than atouch screen. But it's very hard to use the directional switch withoutmoving the scroll wheel, which ultimately makes navigation and manualfocus difficult. Canon also dropped the manual focus dial from thelens barrel.
Furthermore, the joystick on the HV20 is also better located. It sitson the body of the camcorder rather than the LCD bezel. So with theHG10, you're forced to shoot using the LCD far more than necessary. That's not just annoying and harder to hold steady, but you end upwasting a lot of battery power.
Features
For the money, though, the HG10 delivers a pretty well-rounded set offeatures. The 3-megapixel CMOS chip shoots native 1,920x1,080-pixel HD video,which then gets downconverted and interlaced to 1,440x1,080-pixel AVCHD. Itcan also shoot 1,440x1,080/24p, although support for this flavour of theformat is even more limited than that of vanilla AVCHD.
Its 40GB hard drive stores between 5.5 hours of video at 15Mbps to asmuch as 15 hours of video at 5Mbps. As usual, however, we don'trecommend dropping below the highest quality level, unless you'reabsolutely certain you will never want to edit the footage. You cansnap 3-megapixel stills in photo mode or take 1,920x1,080-pixel grabs whileshooting in movie mode. But we find it utterly ridiculous that stillscan't be captured to the hard drive, only to a MiniSD card.
The Set button on the LCD bezel calls up shooting controls forbacklight, exposure compensation, focus and quick review. In cameramode you also get flash controls.
In video mode, a membrane Functionbutton accesses the choice of program, shutter-priority,aperture-priority, Cine mode -- for a film look, to go with 24fpsshooting -- and slow-shutter Night mode; a handful of white-balanceoptions; various image effects presets, plus customisable colour depth-- for a posterised look, sharpness, contrast and brightness; a fewdigital effects; video quality; and still grab size.
For still photos,you can also select from evaluative, centre-weighted average andspot-metering modes; continuous-shooting and bracketing; and photosize.
We'd prefer it if a couple of the features, specifically Focus Priority -- the choice between Canon's AiAF and centre focus AF mode, Instant AF and normal, and zoom speed -- variable plus three constant options -- werecloser to the surface. They're a little too frequently used to beburied in the menus, and unless you know they exist -- and how they'renamed -- you may miss them entirely. And, as with the HV20, you can'tchange the white balance while shooting, which is a pain in scenes withmultiple light sources.
A 69mm (2.7-inch) LCD is about the smallest you can get away with on an HDcamcorder, but it remains viewable in direct sunlight and from multipleangles. The eye-level viewfinder is almost too small, and its hardplastic eyecup isn't very comfortable to use.
Performance
The 10x zoom lens integrates Canon's SuperRange Optical ImageStabiliser, which tweaks the stability by providing continuous feedbackto the system. We found it works very well -- better than most out at theend of the zoom range. Canon's Instant AF uses a rangefinderapproach -- it bounces a signal off the subject to provide the AF systemwith a rough location, so that the lens hunts for a focus lock over asmaller area.
Youcan turn IAF off when it's less useful, generally inlow-motion scenes such as talking heads or school plays, in order tosave battery power. The IAF makes low-light focus lock a hair faster.Although it still pulses slightly, we think the low-light performanceingeneral -- focus and video quality -- is a bit better with this modelthan we've seen on previous Canon consumer camcorders. It also has oneof themost comfortable zoom switches we've worked with in its class.
Audio doesn't fare quite as well. When the windscreen filter is set toAuto, the built-in stereo microphone records sounds from behind it verywell, but voices coming from in front sound muffled and conversationsto the side barely register at all. It records better from the frontwhen the windscreen is off, but the camcorder still seems to have arather limited range -- about a metre or so -- and no zoom mic capability.Nor are there are any input volume controls. There's a mic input and anaccessory shoe for a better -- albeit extra cost -- audio experience.
Image quality
There's little to complain about on the image quality front, however.The HG10 renders well-exposed, saturated and sharp video and photos.There's some visual noise and softness in dimly lit scenes and blownout highlights in bright ones, but no more than usual for this class.
Conclusion
We dinged the Canon HG10 for its frustrating ergonomics and audioperformance problems. Before you buy, you should try it to see if youfeel the same way about the control layout, especially in light of theSony SR7's underwhelming touch-screen alternative. If the audio issuespose a serious problem for you, then there's either an external mic ora touch screen in your future.
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday