Canon's New Vixia HD Camcorders
Posted Jan 07, 2008 | 1 Comments
tags: canon hv20,
filmmaking
The Vixia Line
Canon has announced three new HD camcorders today that kick off the Vixia line of high-end consumer models. The black paint jobs are definitely nice, making the HV30 look less toy-like compared to its predecessor, and the HF series sports some sleek new styling, an area where Canon has taken a back seat to competing Panasonic and Sony models. You sure will look cool now with a Vixia in your hand.
HV30
This is the camcorder so many HV20 fans have been pondering, and now that it has been announced, HV20 owners can rest comfortably knowing it wasn’t really worth holding out for. The added features can be counted on one hand: black chassis, 30p mode, larger zoom toggle control, upgraded LCD that resists solarization (changing image appearance with screen tilt), and support for an expanded battery pack. No changes have been made to the CMOS or other components of the imaging system, which is fine, the HV20 is already amazing the way it is. It would have been nice if they’d enabled some more manual controls in the HV30, but alas they didn’t.
The 30p feature is no doubt the most significant addition to the spec, but I wonder how much use it will really get. Mitch Glick, assistant manager of Product Marketing at Canon, had this to say about it:
“We recognize that people want to do a lot of web video work. Typically, when people are doing compression for the web, you’re compressing at 15fps. If you’re at 30fps, you’re only pulling out every other frame. It holds the quality together better.”
Why not just use 60i? The math works out nice with that mode too. One big reason people like to use the progressive mode on the HV20 is that it improves on the low-light performance of 60i significantly (as shown here), It will be interesting to see how the 30p mode’s low-light performance stacks up to 24p. If it delivers similar results, it may hold some real value to people for the reasons the Canon rep mentioned. The extra frames will also help smooth out the sometimes stuttering look of 24p when panning, giving it an edge. But given the history of 24fps in film, I don’t think too many indie filmmakers will switch from 24p to 30p, while there may be some casual users who decide to shoot in 30p instead of 60i, if there are indeed low-light benefits.
HF10 and HF100
These are Canon’s first solid state HD camcorders, and they include more exciting features than just solid state storage. The lack of moving parts for storing data likely means longer battery life and probably shelf life as well. They share a 1/3.2-inch CMOS that packs 3.3 megapixels (compared to the HV20/30’s 1/2.7-inch CMOS with 2.96 megapixels). Both record in AVCHD format, like the hard drive based HG10, but now in full HD 1920×1080 resolution with a maximum bitrate of 17mbs, up from 1440×1080 and 15mbs in the HG10. All of this makes for a significant upgrade over the previous HG10, but we’ll have to wait for some objective testing to know for sure how all of these specs translate into video performance.
The HF100 will retail for $899, while the HF10 will be $1099. The extra $200 gets you a black chassis and 16GB of internal flash memory, while the HF100 can record to SDHC memory cards only (the HF10 can still accept them for expansion). When you consider a 16GB SDHC card costs nearly $200 anyway, it may be hard to justify getting the lesser HF100. Other cool features include an intelligent battery that allows the HF10/100 to display in minutes how long before the battery dies. Zoom is up to 12x from 10x on the HV20 and HG10. We’ll have to see where street prices on these go in the coming months.
The 15mbs bitrate imposed by the AVCHD format was clearly a limiting factor in the HG10’s video performance. It shares the same CMOS as the HV20, yet has less sharpness and more compression artifacts. Also, its 24p mode is choppy and unusable, while the HV20 captures nearly pro-quality 24p footage. It remains to be seen how well the marginally increased 17mbs video bitrate will take advantage of the upgraded imaging system in the HF10/100. And while 24p and 30p modes are also included in the HF series, being progressive, we’ll have to wait and see if they suffer the same issues seen with 24p on the HG10, and be rendered useless. The new HF10/100 has a lot of potential, but the question is whether its AVCHD format will be a bottleneck that keeps it from surpassing the HDV-based HV series on the totem pole of HD camcorders.
#1 Andrew Swihart (Author) Feb 9, 11:26 AM