Decent Foray into Hi-Def flash memory video recording

I have been waiting for about 2 years for this type of camcorder: one that records full hi-definition video onto solid-state memory. I've looked into the Sanyo Xacti camcorders, but the video quality was disappointing. I didn't want to purchase a digital video tape, DVD, or Hard-disk camcorder. After reading reviews of the new Canon, I purchased one online from Amazon.com for $629.00.

It has the usual support for various recording modes, effects, and the like. But, I suspect most people will just click on the "Easy" button (it literally has an "Easy" button) and record away. This is a good choice, and I found that it was really simple to record bright outdoor scenes, incandescent lighting from indoor scenes, and indoor ice hockey arenas on the "Easy" setting. The image quality is everything that I had hoped for. I play back the video on a Sony Grand Wega 1080p LCOS 60" rear-projection HDTV and it looks fantastic. I did experiment with the various filters for sunlight, incandescent lighting, fluorescent lighting, but none seemed better that the Easy setting. I also tried the Cinema mode that records at 24 frames per second instead of 60 interlaced. This is supposed to give the picture more of a film-look, but I was disappointed in the results. I greatly preferred the 60i video mode. I recorded that same outdoor image in standard mode, partial hi-def, and full hi-def. Oddly enough, I couldn't really tell the difference! The images played back were almost identical in quality. This left me confused until I read the manual and discovered that the highest quality mode records in full 1920x1080, but the lower recording modes still record in a very respectable (and still hi-def) 1440x1080 range.

The camcorder itself is small and barrel-shaped. It is a little too small to easily hold while recording and a little too large to comfortably fit in a jacket pocket. It has a strap that you slip your hand through to stabilize the camera while shooting, but it is very inefficient. The contact points for the strap are near the bottom of the camera, which means that the camera's center of mass is above the anchor points of the strap. It is very easy to rock the camera and jiggle it with slight hand movements and the strap does little to dampen this vibration. The result is shaky video, especially when zoomed in. The OIS does not work very well. I have only an old Sony analog 8mm camcorder to compare against, but I found it's combination of standard-def video, OIS, and better hand strap placement resulted in far less apparent shakiness than the HF100. I found over the course of 1 hour, shooting video of my son's hockey game, that my hand fatigued very quickly and the video became ever more jittery as my hand would shake. A monopod or tripod is a must, especially if you intend to zoom in on your subject.

The camera has a HDMI interface, but does not come equipped with an HDMI cable to connect to your HDTV. It does have a component cable, which works well, but you should purchase a cheap HDMI cable for best playback quality and convenience.

The auto-focus appears to work very well, but it does have problems in situations like an ice-hockey rink where you have either glass or the protective netting in between you and the action. It will focus on the netting or glass, leaving the action out-of-focus. It is situations like this where you miss a manual focus ring or control. However, I think most people will only ever use the auto-focus and just live with situations where it isn't usable.

The camera is true 1920x1080 interlaced hi-def (in its highest quality mode) and samples at a high bit rate. I would have preferred a 720 progressive scan for sports, but the ice hockey I've recorded has looked perfectly sharp. They were mites and squirts (6 to 9 year olds), but some of them can fly and the video looked great.

My choice was between the HF100 at $629.00 or the HF10 at $800.00. The only differences are silver finish for the H100 and black for the HF10, and the HF10 contains an internal 16GB memory card (not changeable) in addition to the external memory card slot that the HF100 has. 16GB SDHC (class 6) cards go for about $60.00 at this time and will only get cheaper in the future. It just doesn't seem worthwhile to purchase the higher-end HF10 for a $200.00 premium. The battery only lasts about 80 minutes to begin with. So that will run out before you fill 16GB with the highest quality video (about 2 hours worth).

I love the idea of popping out the flash memory from the camcorder and popping it into a flash memory reader on my computer for transferring video. It takes about 5 minutes, using USB2.0, to copy 1 hour of video at the highest quality onto my computer. By extension, it should take about 10 minutes to copy over a full 16GB worth of video. The same transfer on USB1.0 interfaces will take at least 10 times as long, so make sure your computer's flash card reader supports USB2.0.

You will have to format your memory card in the camcorder before it can be put to use. But, I found that my linux computer was able to read the reformatted memory card with no problems.