Canon HG10 and HV20 side by side -- pics
 

Props to DV Info Net member (and fellow Longhorn) Austin Meyers who drove down and met me earlier today so we could pit the new Canon HG10 side by side with the Canon HV20 in a "most other things equal" test between AVCHD and HDV. This will develop quite a bit, but I wanted to at least show you some pics tonight (click the thumbnails to see 'em big) and we'll have a lot more input to follow.

My apologies in advance to Austin for stealing some of his thunder, but here is the quick rundown of what he observed regarding camcorder features... I'll let him expound on this in a little more detail at his convenience about these significant differences, but I wanted to go ahead and briefly get the word out now:

1. Focus Assist: unlike the HV20, the HG10 does not have Peaking (although it does have Magnification).

2. Exposure Monitoring: unlike the HV20, the HG10 does not have Zebras (HV20 has 70% and 100%)

3. Audio: unlike the HV20, the HG10 does not have manual audio level control (it does have a mic input).

4. Manual Focus: Austin said he prefers the ergonomics of the HG10's selector wheel over the HV20's dial.

Lots more to follow (about features and ergonomics... plus video, both 60i and 24p). Stay tuned,

no zebras in HG10 :( ..... this bad news

Couldn't you create a zebra chart and place it in front of the camera, or something similar to get the same results? Pardon my ignorance on the matter.

This thread is incredible, and it's what I've been waiting for since i found this site... the best HDV camcorder compared directly to the best HDD camcorder. Thanks for everything and keep it coming! I'm so glad I've waited before purchasing, but I'm running out of time before I need to make a decision.

i think you might be mistaking color bars... the zebras show what's overexposed (100% or 70% on the hv20)

overall i was fairly impressed with this camera. i'll know more this evening when i meet up with chris to pull some footage off of it into FCP, we'll be able to do some direct comparisons of stuff shot with my hv20 and the hg10, and also figure out the workflow implications in fcp/imovie. i made sure to shoot alot of fast pans and high motion stuff so we can see how well the avchd codec holds up. i'm also quite interested in seeing how the 24p is handled, i get the feeling that it's going to be exactly the same as removing pulldown from the hv20, i know FCP has a "remove advanced pulldown" abilty when ingesting avchd, but i doubt that it will work on the normal unflagged (just guessing) stream.

i'll also have some more notes to give after i get to see the footage full quality (exposure bias, color, lcd factors etc)

anyways i'll post up some clips once i get them worked over this evening...

I'll be interested to see what you think about 24p from this camera. I know (reference removed) said it was all but unusable.

Beware of such unsubstantiated claims made elsewhere on the web (and I've removed that particular reference from your post). Austin has ingested all of our HV20 and HG10 clips into Final Cut Pro, including a healthy mix of 24p material. At first glance, we didn't see any noticeable difference between these two camcorders in their 24p implementations. Please allow him to make the analysis for DV Info Net instead of blindly relying on outside sources which make claims without showing any proof.

We're going to upload some side-by-side 24p comparisons between the HV20 and HG10 for you to look at for yourself. If there is a big difference, and whether or not 24p from the HG10 really is "unusable," we're going to offer proof of it. At this point I'm not saying it's usable or not usable -- I'm not saying it's the same or different from 24p in the HV20 right now -- I'll let Austin Meyers be the judge of that. What I am saying is that either way, if it is or if it isn't, we're going to show it to you for you to judge for yourself instead of just saying "well, we looked at it and here's what we think." Because that kind of claim doesn't really have any kind of validity unless it's backed up by presenting the actual data for your own examination. Hope this helps,

And here it is... with the video clips to prove it:

See his report and download the clips for your own analysis:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=101059

Hope this helps,