Canon HG10 AVCHD High Definition Camcorder with Optical Image Stabilizer
by Canon
Our Price: $1,799.00
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Category: Digital Camera
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Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: CanonRelease Date: 2009-11-30
Model: 2183B001AA
Color: green, blue
Product features:
- Record up to 15 hours of high-definition video to 40 GB hard disk drive
- Canon full-HD CMOS sensor; 24p Cinema Mode
- High-definition 10x optical zoom lens; 2.7-inch widescreen Multi-Angle Vivid LCD
- SuperRange Optical Image Stabilizer; simulatneous still-photo capture
- HDMI terminal; advanced accessory shoe
- Pinnacle Studio HD V14 [OLD VERSION]
- Adobe Premiere Elements 9 [Old Version]
- Nero 9 [OLD VERSION]
- Roxio Creator 2010 [OLD VERSION]
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Canon HG10 AVCHD High Definition Camcorder with Optical Image Stabilizer
Customer Review: Good Camera, Hard Drive Initially Convenient
Summary: 5 Stars
I'll be blunt, this is a long review, cause that's the type of review I would like to read myself, just a simple THIS CAMERA IS GREAT A+++ doesn't tell me much... Anyways, I chose this camera over the cheaper HV20 because it looked prettier, and because it had better imagery and manual controls over sony's sr5 at the same price. I also like the large lens, just simple math can tell you a larger lens allows more light to enter.
For those of you pitting this HG-10 vs. SR5, the adv is many...:
1) mic in (essential for good mics out there, accessory shoe is gimmick really, only good for mounting the mic
2) Manual controls = awesome interview, high shutter slow-motion, special effects footage
3) viewfinder (though i think it's a pretty bad one)
4) OPTICAL image stabilization
5) Head-phone out which is really essential for monitoring your audio during shooting
5) 2.1 megapixel effective vs. 1.4 MP sensor, don't even talk about the JVC or Panasonic 3 CCD sensors with about 0.5 MP each, and pixel-shifting.
For those of you deciding between HG-10 vs. HV-20:
1) It looks much less el cheapo at the same price, which is oddly very important to me
2) HARD DRIVE! I shot an hour of interviews and I still have about 5 hours left, without worrying about changing tapes, NICE!
3) Handling is awesome, hands and fingers go where they should go and zoom rocker is good for doing fixed zooms
4) Shorter; scroll wheel is good concept
5) ingesting an hour of raw footage to external hard drive took *correction ~5 minutes and took up 4.3 gb, NICE, try doing that with miniDV
Common Issues/FAQ:
1) Isn't MiniDV recording easier to archive?
Answer: I'm going to take someone's excellent argument for this, look at it this way, my 1 hour of footage takes up 4.3 GB of hard drive space in raw AVCHD format, let's say I have a 500 GB external that I got for $80, that external can then hold ideally 116 hours of video. So at the going price of $3 per miniDV tape and an hour per tape, you would be looking at ~$350 to match what the $80 External can do, and... hard drive space is only going to get cheaper. Plus the advantages of random access to 116 hours of high def video is clear vs. who in their right minds will look through 116 miniDV tapes, digital camera vs. film camera argument anyone?
2) AVCHD is too compressed to be good quality = not so. I think this footage is comparable to the Panasonic HVX200 and that's record to DVCPRO, not in low light though, but in adequate lighting it's pretty damn good.
3) I'm going to run out of footage space because I can't get another hard drive!
Answer: Well this is like the chicken and egg argument, sure you may only have 6 hours of footage at highest quality mode and "only" 10 hours the next step down, but you're still ultimately limited by the 1 hour battery life, so you're well on your way home to recharge and to backup your footage by the time you hit that one hour mark. Those on vacation with this camera should already know its limitations and bring along a laptop, copying and pasting the raw AVCHD files is lightening fast.
4) Canon Camcorders Suck! : Herm, don't quite know what to say here, get a Sony then and all the power to ya
Pros from use:
1) automated lens cover is handy, especially when you playback video, at least it reduces my paranoia a tad bit: it automatically closes.
2) Hard Drive Capacity: 6 hours at highest quality is a dream, 15 hours at lowest is also awesome, I may never have to buy media for this camcorder (yeah i know, technically I can't haha), or log and capture from miniDV... ugh
3) I may be repeating myself, but this camcorder is beautiful, the gray areas are kind of a dirty gradient of colors that looks like a slab of marble, and the mode toggle has concentric aluminum ridges, the zoom toggle is beautiful and the dimensions are trim.
4) Batteries are the same as many other canon camcorders, so after market ones are very inexpensive
5) After market mics are really inexpensive also, I saw an Audio Technica stereo one going for $35
6) Monitoring audio with the headphone out is VERY useful in any situation, especially interviews or anything shot outdoors
7) I must say, low light performance is only good if you use a tripod and under controlled lighting conditions. Want to know how good? For an interview, I had a single 60W table lamp shining on my subject and I was zoomed in with an aperture of f2.8, very sharp image and background is appropriately blurred, who needs lens adapters! (http://thaid.bol.ucla.edu/Dad.png or http://thaid.bol.ucla.edu/Neighbor.png - I was going for that Band of Brothers effect).
8) LCD is pretty sharp, so focusing is easy, color accuracy could be improved though
9) Backup Ingesting is fast!
10) Each start/stop scene automatically becomes its own file, vs. manually logging a scene to capture it with miniDV
Cons off the top of my head:
1) camera should be able to also record pictures on the hard drive, instead of just the miniSD (which I DON'T have!)
2) There should be more mac software bundled in than just the image downloading one. HOWEVER, on macs and possibly pcs, you can backup and ingest the footage by copying and pasting the entire content of the camera hard drive over to your computer. Then open the directory using Final Cut Express 4 or Final Cut Pro 6.0.1+ to let it encode to something editable. Updating this backup is simple, just overwrite everything... or if you want to make things faster, overwrite everything except the AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM folder. Then copy over the new STREAM files while leaving your old ones intact. At 1 Gig/min. though, it may just be simpler to overwrite everything. This hard drive feature kind of reminds me of my digital camera and its 2 GB SD card, I've learned not to delete any pictures from the card, just to take what I need from it when I need it. It's been a year and it's still not full, I suspect the hard drive on this camcorder would work similarly.
3) What they say is true, 24P is not pretty, though yes it allows for more light
4) Doesn't have analog pass-through so you can't hook up a vcr through this camcorder and record the footage to your computer, I've done this before so I kind of miss it.
5) AVCHD is a pain to encode to something useful vs. miniDV, though miniDV is a pain to import. One thing to note is that Final Cut Express lags with 1080 Apple Intermediate Codec or DVCPRO footage, but Final Cut Pro handles it very quickly (on a macbook with core duo 2.0ghz). DVCPRO is awesome but then you'd have to buy something like the HVX200.
6) No firewire = no live-capture and monitoring with your laptop or desktop, I really do wish they could've included firewire.
7) They might as well have left out the viewfinder, its lower res than the lcd panel and doesn't swivel up, not to mention you can't control anything when the lcd panel is closed
8) Ports are fragile
9) Top mounted microphones are the worst idea since the invasion of Iraq, good thing alternative mics are affordable
10) Everything should have been controlled by the scroll wheel, but instead its use is limited and the directional pad takes over too often
11) Cat-eye record button... what? why? I'm fine with a regular old round red record button.
12) USB port inside the LCD cavity, why oh why am I exposing my lcd panel to damage during the lengthy ingesting process?
13) Manual focus sucks on camera since you'll be making a loud scrolling sound, but oddly silent and intuitive with the remote
14) Ahh, 1080i video takes up too much space, my laptop's lcd can't even display that many pixels, give me the option to record in 720p or standard definition please!
*Update: If you use the free Mpeg Streamclip, and encode using Apples Intermediate Codec or whatever, you can reencode it to 720p resolution, and the resulting footage looks identical to the original and it would take up about 1/4th the space: down-resed image: [...]
*New
15) In real world conditions, low-light performance is pretty bad. If you're going handheld through a neighborhood at night lit only by christmas lights and various other christmas decorations, the footage is nauseating to watch. There'll be severe ghosting, out of focus picture, bobbing up and down from walking. I see Canon still has problems with low light situations, in moments like these I'd rather have the Sony infrared option and see black/white picture rather than a color picture with little detail. The pen light only works up to 2 feet, good for interviewing on the spot, but really bad for anything else.
I'll write more when I spend more time with it, but here's some pics to tide you over (not original resolution):
[...]
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Description of Canon HG10 AVCHD High Definition Camcorder with Optical Image Stabilizer
The Canon HG10 AVCHD Format Hard Disk Drive Camcorder delivers high definition technology with the effortless ease of recording video directly onto a hard disk. Incorporating the latest AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) format, it puts superb image reproduction and advanced features at your fingertips in a compact AVCHD Format HDD camcorder, which means you'll carry it everywhere you want to capture the special moments in your life in true HD.Camcorders
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