Canon VIXIA HF10 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 16 GB Internal Flash Memory and 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend With widescreen TV and HDTV approaching as a viewing standard, it's sensible that home video be compatible. That's the philosophy behind Canon's VIXIA HF10 HD Camcorder. You can have stunning AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) format recording with the ease and numerous benefits of Flash Memory - No discs or tapes required! It's used in most innovative electronic products such as notebook computers, MP3 players, and cell phones. Record to both… Product details and pricing info |
|---|
76 Customer Reviews Posted
- Its too good for a first timer like me
- Canon VIXIA HF10 has been my first camcorder purchase. It has exceeded my expectations. I was little skeptical about the still picture quality (with no doubt about the excellence of motion picture quality), th photos hav come quite crisp in color as well as clarity.
I'm yet to explore all the features, however first feeling is gr8 !!
Thanks to amazon for the prompt service offered - 2008-06-02, 0 of 6 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Great product!!!
- I was instantly amazed at the quality of the video this camera takes. It even looks amazing on the viewfinder. I bought the camera for our business because we needed to make professional quality videos but we couldn't afford the $3000+ cost of a professional camera. So far, this little guy is keeping up with the big boys.
I just finished filming and editing an instructional video for a local school district and the quality is top notch. I was a little embarrassed walking into a professional shoot with this very tiny little camera, but the final product is nothing to be embarrassed about.
The quality of the stereo sound from the camera's microphones is also amazing. I set up secondary equipment for recording the sound for our video but used the camera's audio in most cases because it sounded better. My only complaint here would have to be that there is such great stereo separation from the mics that you lose the center channel where primary dialogue is usually played back.
Still photos are equally amazing quality even allowing still snapshots while recording video. My favorite is the high speed continuous shooting, though you have to be prepared to wait a few minutes for the camera to process the data at high quality before you can take another picture.
Battery life is about 90 minutes in top quality mode. The 16GB onboard flash memory gives you nearly 3 hours of recording in the same mode. I picked up an addition 16GB SDHC card online for about $75 to double my capacity. High capacity batteries and accessories have been hard to find or too expensive but I expect that to change as the popularity of the camera grows, which I am sure it will.
One final note on editing the video. I already owned a copy of Adobe Premiere and was disappointed that it wouldn't read the AVCHD format of this camera. In fact, there is very little software support for this format due to it being new. I'm sure that will change over time. The only software I found to edit AVCHD is Cyberlink's Power Director which is pretty inexpensive, easy to learn and does a nice job.
Summary:
Pros - Great quality video and sound, small and light, no moving recording parts to wear out.
Cons - Current scarcity of accessories and editing software. Manual focus using the joystick on the viewfinder is awkward and jumpy. - 2008-06-01, 7 of 7 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Very nice camera. Be aware of AVCHD limitations.
- This is a fantastic camera but people need to have more realistic expectations of what to expect from AVCHD. It is a highly compressed format so using this camera in low-light conditions is going to produce pretty "grainy" results. In good lighting AVCHD output from this camera can produce some really great looking results in HD but don't kid yourself into thinking you're going to get professional HDTV quality. This is a point-and-shoot.
I love the camera, especially how fast it focuses in good light, so I'm going to concentrate on what some of the other reviewers said to correct some misconceptions.
I use both Macs and PC and I have to tell you that you that PCs suck for AVCHD - you will waste a lot of time and pull your hair out. I'm sure PC video software vendors will address this eventually, but seriously folks if you want to do this the easy way get an Intel-based Mac (caveat: only Intel based machines using Leopard support AVCHD) and use either iMovie or Final Cut Express 4. Both of these programs (iMovie 08 and FCE4) just LOVE this camera (and two other Sony AVCHD cameras I've tried as well) and they work like a charm. Video making has never been this easy. FCE4 lets you mix AVHCD, HDV and SD video on the same timeline and save in whatever format you want so it's worth the $200 if you want to do that or have more exacting control over your videos. It is basically a (lightly) stripped-down version of Apple's excellent professional video software (Final Cut Pro) and it is very good. For most home videos iMovie 08 (which comes in iLife 08) will be just fine.
I've had no problem transferring the movies directly from the camera but, as mentioned earlier, you do need to have the camera plugged into the AC to do it. You can avoid plugging the camera into your Mac to transfer the files if you're only recording on SDHC cards, rather than internal memory on the HF10, but it works just fine. For this reason I would recommend buying the HF100 (over the HF10) and getting an extra 16Gb memory card or two. You will save money that way and have more flexibility. I bought the HF10 because I had to have it the next day and, at the time, the HF100s were delayed a bit. Transcend's excellent 16Gb SDHC Class 6 card comes with a nifty little card reader for only $78.98 here on Amazon, you can get two of them for less than the $200 difference in price between the HF10 and HF100 so you'll have 32gb to work with instead of 16gb for less money. I don't mind having the internal memory as a backup but you pay more than it is worth for it.
The video camera is just acting like a USB reader when you connect it to your Mac anyway - it is the file layouts that the software recognizes. When read in and converted to Apple Intermediate Codec at 1920x1080 they will balloon in size. If you want to store the raw video in a more compressed way you can simply copy the root directory of the card to another directory and copy it back again later. If you're working with AVCHD you need to buy the biggest hard drives you can afford. 60 minutes of video will use up something like 50Gb of storage on your Mac when converted to 1920x1080. If you just want great looking home video to show on your HDTV, but don't want to go broke on hard drives, Apple offers to import the movies at a slightly lower resolution (960x540) which takes up a LOT less space with very little drop in quality. I have been making home videos and showing them on an Apple TV at that resolution and they look stunning. The quality difference between that resolution and full HD isn't that big of a deal.
If want to try to get truly professional-quality video you should avoid AVCHD cameras and stick to the HDV format concentrating on cameras with larger sensors. But this is great camera for HD home videos at a great price.
The user interface on this camera is slow and clunky. Sony's AVCHD cameras have a better interface (using a touch screen) but you can still watch back the videos (which is the main thing you'll do) and it beats the heck out of a tape camera. I wish they had added a dial or button set for adjust exposure and/or backlighting control on the camera. The joystick works surprisingly well for this however in bright light the screen gets washed out enough that it is hard to tell if your exposure is really that great or not. This is where a viewfinder would really help. But these are minor nits because the camera does a good job at exposure control on its own.
As I said earlier this is a very compact point-and-shoot camera that shoots HD video and for that it's excellent. - 2008-05-28, 58 of 61 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- One of the best available
- My overall on this is that if you want an AVCHD camcorder, this is by far one of the best in the consumer category. It uses a high-quality Canon glass lens and Canon's renowned auto-focus system which is critical when shooting fast moving kids. The detail and color are great.
Being an iPhone owner, I would say that the menu system of this camcorder is not intuitive. It is far better than the Sony camcorders in my impression, but hardly close to the ease-of-use I have become accustomed to with the iPhone. The battery life is also less than stellar.
I highly recommend this camcorder. - 2008-05-24, 4 of 6 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- HF-10 WOW WOW
- If you want to get into HD video in a big way for a reasonable cost the HF-10 is the way to go. I love it. Being able to pop out the SCHD card and get video right into the computer is great. It is small light weight but really delivers a great full screen HD picture. I got the WIDE ANGLED lens (sold separately) and the bigger battery (sold separately) to complete my package, but for kid vid and amateur shooting, you really don't need to buy the extras. When you get it, check out the DIGITAL ZOOM 200X.... You can watch your neighbors, hee hee hee, dd
- 2008-05-24, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
