Canon HF10 Review
 

In case someone is toying with the idea of getting the Canon HF10 solid state HD camcorder, here are some of my impressions:

THE GOOD:

After I made some movie clips I went home to see how they turned out (you can't judge on the tiny camcorder display). So I hooked up the cam to my hd tv, and YES, it's high-definition, just like I know it from National Geographic or the Discovery Channel: The picture clarity & resolution are amazing!! At this point I knew that I made the right decision to dump my previous standard-resolution camcorder.

I got rather anxious when I connected the cam to my Mac as I had a hard time getting my previous JVC camcorder to communicate with my Mac. Big surprise here: I started iMovie, connected the cam to the Mac using the USB cable. The camcorder detects the Mac and asked me on the display if I want to transfer files to my "PC" (ok, it's a Mac and not a PC ... Canon doesn't seem to know the difference). I clicked on yes, and all the clips showed up in iMovie, and I could import them right away. Transfer was very fast and without a hitch, I am a very happy camper!!

- Solid state recording is the way to go. Imagine, no moving parts except the autofocus and aperture! You can record as long as you have tiny SD chips. With the built-in 16GB solid state, you can record about 5 hrs of HD footage in "standard mode" (there are two higher resolution modes I didn't bother to check out yet). Love it! Don't get me wrong, hard drives are a great recording media, but hard drives inevitably fail at some point. I expect that the built-in solid state memory of the HV10 will outlive most other components.

- Nice build quality. Even though the cam is tiny, it looks & feels great.

- The image quality is SUPERB. Colors are natural.

- The "snap autofocus" works extremely well. It's amazing how fast it is. Here is some footage:

http://www.vimeo.com/945150

- Macro: I don't have much experience with camcorders, but it is normal that a camcorder can focus right up to lens??When I press the lens against my pants, I can see all individual threads of the fiber, almost like a microscope! Here are examples:

http://www.vimeo.com/945148

- The OIS works VERY well. Sometimes the image drifts a bit, but overall, this is the best OIS I have seen on a comsumer/prosumer camcorder. The OIS was the decisive factor why I didn't buy the JVC HD7 or HD6 and I don't regret my decision.

- Power up in 1.8 sec! Show me the cam that can beat that. Nothing beats solid state recording (no waiting for a hard drive or tape drive to boot up and be ready).

- The 24p "cinema" setting is actually quite useful. I didn't expect much from that setting, but the different colors/gamma and frame rate give scenes a much more "film-esque" feel & look. On the Canon web site or manuals, there is no mentioning of a different gamma during the cinema setting, but it's actually more important than the 24p frame rate! The color are more mellow, the sky is not washed out, you can see details in the shadows -- wonderful! I am not sure if it's my imagination, but the video looks "softer" to me and has less of a harsh digital video quality. This will be my standard setting. Here are two stills images side by side which show the 60i and 24p settings so you can judge for youself:

http://www.mouthpiecemuseum.com/Misc...10_60i_24p.jpg

Note that the sky is not washed out in the 24p mode, the shadows have more detail, and the colors seems mode mellow.

Here are clips that show standard "60i AE" and the "24P cinema mode" footage:

http://www.vimeo.com/945037

- The built-in microphones are well placed (at the front below the lens), work well and give a wide stereo image and clear & crisp sound. Wind is not a major problem. Bravo, Canon! I bought an Audio Technica Pro24 mic which I expected to sound much better, but I haven't tried it yet.

- The low light performance is good. Event though the footage gets a bit grainy, you can actually film at night under natural light conditions. Under low light conditions you can clearly see the advantage of the large CMOS detector compared to the smaller CCDs of the JVC series of camcorders (which measure only 1/5"). It makes a BIG difference as larger detectors capture more light. Below is a link to some low-light footage:

http://www.vimeo.com/945048

- The standard battery is fully charged within 10-min or so, which seems very fast. It lasts for about 85-min, which is OK for a standard battery, I guess.

THE BAD:

- What was Canon thinking when they decided to put a "miniature accessory shoe" on the camcoder?? So it's "intelligent" -- who cares?? Nothing will fit except the one single microphone that Canon offers and the single one video light that Canon sells -- big bummer. Also, the location of the accessory shoe is weird, right at the end of the camcorder (above the battery). If you put a mic in the shoe, it's right above the zoom button!!!

- Wide angle: The wide angle zoom is not wide enough. The JVC HD3/5/6/7 has a much better wide angle lens! That's one of the few things JVS got right: The lens!

- The on/off button is hard to press and at a weird location at the top of the body on the left hand side (while all other camcorder controls that you need to film are on the right side). I have to use my finger nails to switch the camcorder on (and I don't even have butcher's hands)!

- There are not enough manual controls. You have to zap through the entire menu (using the joystick) if you want to change a setting (e.g., if you want to change the 3.5mm plug from "AV" to "headphone" mode, or if you want to select shutter/aperture priority). We needs buttons, switches and dials! Speaking of buttons ... the zoom button is very small. The zoom works well (you can chose between variable and three fixed zoom speeds), but the button is way too small.

- The tripod thread is at the front end of the cam, not at the center of gravity. This strikes me as very odd! Ok, I admit that the Canon designers must have had a hard time finding space for things like this, but I don't get it: Put the tripod thread and accessory shoe somewhere in the middle!

- OIS: I don't know if this is inherent in OIS (and maybe someone else can chime in here), but I observed a weird thing: when I shoot a house with my shaky hands, the bricks of the house are moving/shaking, but the outline and edges of the house are stable. Is OIS based on an edge-detection algorithm and does it only correct detected edges?? Very very strange!

- Lends cap: It might sound petty, but I don't want a lens cap that closed automatically when I switch off the cam or close the display. I am old enbough to decide if I want to put a lens cap on the lens or not.

- Right out of the box, the battery wasn't charged and only good for 3-min. Why don't they charge the batteries before they ship them?

- No manual focus. Big bummer.

- I wish the body was made of a more durable material (magnesium, aluminum) than plastic. It's only a matter of time until it will be scratched. Let's hope that it is durable enough.

Overall, I am very happy with the cam and feel that I made the right decision. When you watch the above movie clips, keep in mind that VIMEO down-samples the movies. The actual movies look way better. Also, all clips were shot with a monopod, not tripod was used. The clips have not been edited other than imported in iMovie and exported to mov files using MPEG4 compression.

Hey Stefan, thanks for the review! Been waiting for someone to review this tiny HF10. Looking forward for another review using DOF adapter/35mm adapter... wait... what?? no manual focus??

Stefan, two of the vimeo videos you link are protected and not viewable by us.

>- No manual focus. Big bummer.

I believe there is manual focus via the menu, not via an external rolling button as in the HV20. All Canon cameras have that, even the $180 ZR800. :)
It's on the same menu as the exposure menu, no?

Stefan,

Thanks for all these details.

It produce good colours but I have question for you, at 00.07( I am refering this video: http://www.vimeo.com/945037 ) why your video look too bright? The round part of building is so bright, it gives more over exposure, was this in auto mode?

And at 00.15 in 24 cinem mode exposer was better sky was looking good though the top of round building was little little over exposed, not much.

And at 00.18 the passage man walks on is so bright!

And last portion at 00.35 it looks better , the colours, sky, passage and etc, but then the tress are loosing some dfination, it showes generally dark portion witought any defination, and the moment when 24p applied from 00.41 till end video looks very good!

So 24p is giving real video, and I am afraid we try to reduce exposer than what would be dark portion would look like? If gives more darker than its very bad!

In 24p the exposer look perfact, but then in 60i it looks more bright!

What was the settings? This was in manual mode? Or auto?

I have Canon HV20 & JVC GZHD7, both are very good, but I am more comfotable with JVC GZHD7, it has fantastic manual features! For me OIS in JVC GZHD7 was never big issue!

And you wrote you that you did't buy JVC GZHD7 or JVC GZHD6, because of poor OIS, I do agrre with you that JVC GZHD7's OIS is less effective, but then other side you have so many advantages in HD7! And HD6, has 120GB HDD and I have read some reviews of HD6, and it said that in current all HD camera HD6 has the best OIS system! And it has x.v.Colour( better than traditional sRGB system) system and 1080p output to your TV!

Maybe HD6 could have been also good buy, anyway as long as you are happy everything id fine.

Kaushik

Hi Kaushik,

Yes, the HD6 could have been a good buy and it was among the last two on my shortlist. In the end, I couldn't justify another $300 for the HD6, especially since it didn't offer anything substantial that the HD10 didn't have either. It also lacks the "24p cinema" mode which is very useful. If the HD6 had the manual focus ring like the HD7, it would have been a no brainer. The wide angle of the HD6 lens is nice, though.

The camcorder tried to find a balance between the shadows in the trees and the bright building and sky.

All settings were auto.

Cheers

Which ones? They all work fine for me.

Yes, that's true. What I meant was no external focus controls.

Time to build that 35mm adapter, huh? ;)

945150 and 945048 are marked private and cannot be viewed by others

Thanks a bunch for this review, Stefan -- moved from Canon HV30 to AVCHD.

Sorry about that. I changed the settings, so you can watch the videos now.

This does seem really strange. Did you check this out several times and/or under several different conditions. I've only played with the HF10 in stores so far, but didn't notice anything like this.

It is certainly possible that due to lens distortions, that one point on the image might be perfectly corrected and others less so, but it's hard to imagine so much of this that it would be so easily visible.

>Which ones? They all work fine for me

Right now they all do. Last night two of them didn't work.

Actually you could consider it external control in that the joystick selects maual focus and then is used to adjust focus.

That is if it is the same as the HF100 (and the only difference between the HF10 and HF100 is supposed to be the internal flash memory on the HF10) pressing in on the joystick activates the joystick menu guide, then the joystick is used to rotate through EXP, FOCUS, and MIC. Push in again to select and left or right to adjust the selected mode.

Just got my HF10 on Saturday for the sale price $999 minus an additional 10% off at BestBuy, so a pretty good deal! Use the savings to buy the 4 year all-peril warranty, have extra battery, charger, and microphone on their way from 47th St. Photo.

Here's some 30p video I shot with it yesterday of friends playing at the Auld Dubliner pub in Long Beach, CA. After doing several tests in Spotlight mode, I ended up using primarily the footage shot in 1/30 shutter priority (Tv) mode:

http://www.vimeo.com/950398

Seems to me that the HF10 has slightly lower noise than the HV20 at equivalent gain-up. Hard to quantify but I really expected some of these shots to be noisier than they are given the lighting conditions so that's a very pleasant surprise!

I'm really pleased with the HF10, was concerned about it possibly being a moderate step down from the HV20, but it is working exactly as I had hoped.

The most recent updates to Cineform HDV that are optimized for use with CoreAVC really have made it very simple and predictable for me to use the HF10 with my workflow.



Cheers,

Michael

Hi Michael --

I paid the same, and also bought a high capacity battery, a microphone (AT Pro24, haven't tried it out yet), and Cokin A filter holder with a bunch of filters.

Nice! The audio is clear as well, not bad. Which microphone did you buy? Did you use the external mic for the audio?

This was shot with the built-in mike on the camera using the camera auto-level for the sound. Not too bad!

I have the Canon DM-100 on order, should arrive the end of the week.

Thanks for your review Stefan.

Note that cinema mode is not limited to the 24p frame rate. You can use it with 30p and 60i also. Might be worth experimenting with other frame rates to see what you like best. 24p is likely to show jumpy movement due to the low frame rate, so I personally wouldn't want to use it as my default shooting mode.

Some of your clips do illustrate a fairly common issue with the HF10/100 - they tend to blow the highlights when capturing in 60i full auto. I plan to experiment with cinema mode and/or contrast -1 to see if I can reduce that tendency.

Michael,

I looked at some of the video you had linked from your ad on the HDC SD1 and both it and this look great.

I'm curious, what is your workflow?

I'm using Pinnacle Studio 11 plus but my new computer's processor seems to fall just a tad short on handling 1920x1080 from the HF100. Quad core Q6600 at 2.40GHz when that hi def requires 2.66 minimum in Pinnacle. So I have to set the cam for 1440x1080 at 13MBps and then I can edit and render.

I may need to look at other software and see what the budget will handle.

Wouldn't the difference between a 2.4GHz and 2.66GHz processor just make editing run about 11% slower? Why would it cause you to not be able to edit 1920x1080 at all? Does the software actually check your processor speed and refuse to run if it is below 2.66GHz?

At least on my system, I found that the decoders that worked fine for transcoding AVCHD at 1440x1080 resolution didn't work for 1920x1080, so before I bought the HF10, I spent a lot of time making sure that between Cineform HDV and CoreAVC, I could actually create intermediate files starting with the 1920x1080 source, even if they are downsampled to 1440x1080 by Cineform. There is enough of a quality difference between the 12 Mb/sec and 17 Mb/sec that even after downsampling the 17 Mb/sec streams are much better.

Can someone recommend an editing software for the HF10 AVCHD footage on a Mac? I wanted to get Final Cut, but it seems that it cannot handle 24p frame rates and the full resolution 1920x1080 AVCHD footage (only 1440x1080). Also, what software would give me color corrections for a "film-like" look?

Thanks!

Stefan,

if you use PS11, you could be very satisfied about differents "film look" presets by vitascene prodad effect. it is very very slow (since not optimized for quad) but the result is superb.
if you give me 1920x1080@17mbit shoot as it comes from the camera i can provide you a little sample. :-)

about the need to provide a 1440x1080 13mbit to your pc to be able to edit, it sounds me very strange.
i have q6600 (overcloked) too and i use both ps11 and premiere 3.2 and i have no problems to edit 1920x1080 clip at high bitrate.
(i believe it is too much important that you start from the maximum quality that you can, even if your final work should be in SD).

PS Since it is firm that HV20 it has some limits in particular conditions as for example panning, panoramic shoots and in general about shoots with many movements, would kindly try to get some shoots with your HF in similar conditions ? (both 60i and progressive function). So you can help me and not only, to know if it is a CMOS limit or HDV problem...

PPS The difference from your camera compared to HF100 it is only the presence of 16gb internal flash memory in HF10 ?

Thanks in advance.

ciao!

I picked up an A-Data 16 GB Class 6 card at Fry's last night. Its really amazing to think how far we've come just in the last year. I would never imagine that I would be able to own such an amazing device as the HF10, with 32 GB of flash for less than $1000... what would this have cost just 5 years ago?

Its interesting, the HF10 just crosses the "finally, its good enough for my use" line that I've been chasing for a couple of years, starting with the Panasonic SD1 (small, very nicely constructed, but first generation AVCHD quality), to the HV20 (awesome, but tape based and a little big to toss in my piping case), I'm in heaven with the HF10. Sure its not for everyone, and it has some tradeoffs (AVCHD workflow, CMOS sensor, noise at very low light levels), but for my use (primarily very short videos of traditional Irish musicians in somewhat dark venues), I'm really happy.

M

Great Work!
 

Hi Stefan - glad to see you got the camera. Really appreciate that you took the time to document and share all your findings. Looking forward to seeing more of your videos!

Cheers.

Hi Lorenzo --

I can make any shots that you want and post them on VIMEO. This offer is also true to all members here ... if you need me to film something special you had in mind, just let me know.

I believe they are both the same, apart from the (missing) SDHD slot and the different color.

I am starting to get ready to shoot my first documentary: I got my camcorder (HF10), an external mic (AT 24Pro), an extra 5h battery, a Cokin filter holder with a bunch of filters, a Gitzo tripod with fluid head, and a Manfrotto monopod. Ready to roll! :-)

I feel exactly the same! It also comforts me to know that the features that are missing on the HF10 would cost me two grand more (which I don't have), so the HF10 is the natural choice at this point in my life.

What missing SDHC slot? Aren't the HF10 and HF100 the same? The HF10 definitely has a slot, otherwise, I just put my 16 GB card in a very bad place... :-)

Can the Rode VideoMic be attached to the HF-10 hot shoe? Anyone has any picture to show? Thanks.

No, not unless someone has an adapter that would step up the proprietary mini-shoe to a standard size. I could use one of those as well!

Alas... I found a solution!

But I guess it's a little pricey.. but what the heck ;)

http://shop.dm-accessories.com/products/cms-flat

Thanks for the input!

Or maybe we can make one of these. Just came up with an idea...

I meant missing built-in 16GB solid state.

I made my own adaptor from parts that I found in the hardware store. Below is a picture (the mic is not plugged in).

Basically, I put a metric hex (M5) bolt upside down inside the show, a washer on top within the shoe, the same washer on top outside of the shoe, and tightened it with a metric M5 bolt. Next, I was sliding a plastic spacer over it (white plastic), the standard mic holder of my AT Pro24 mic on top, and a washer and a metric M5 nut on top of the mic clip to secure the mic clip. It's rock solid and cost me around $3 total.

Well, I work on a Mac, so PS11 is no option.

When I drop the first 1920x1080 clip on the timeline I get a warning message, "not enough graphics memory to edit 1920x1080". I have 256MB on an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT separate graphics display card.

The error message we get doesn't always refer to the correct error. Pinnacle has stated specifically that editing 1920x1080 with their software would require a quad core processor at 2.66GHz at the minimum.

I can actually edit and play it on the timeline, but rendering to any format results in unplayable garbage.

so...we'll wait for your documentary ! :-)

about shoots: i would like something about panning, for example following a car during fast movements (both 60i and progressive mode)....or some shoots for example about a basket match indoor with artificial lights...ore something similar that you like...just 30" for each clip is enough.. (and pls, if you can, i would prefer your clip as they shoot at 17mbit maximum quality from your camera, avoiding to pass from vimeo, to better evalute their quality).

many many thanks in advance!

ciao!

Cool! I guess I don't mind going to the hardware store soon and look around! Will update on my findings.

Bruce,

I don't see how that can be due to your CPU speed. There is nothing real-time about rendering edited AVCHD content that would require the CPU to "keep up" to produce a proper image. Pinnacle "requires" a particular speed because anything below it will not provide adequate user experience during editing, that's all.

I have an Atlhon X2 6000+, and Radeon X1950 -- definitely a step down from you -- and I have no problems editing and rendering 1920x1080 AVCHD.

Stan, what software are you using?

All I have to go on is the info provided by Pinnacle and the discussions on the topic on their forums.

I'm open to a change if I can afford it.

Bruce, sorry I wasn't clear -- this is on Studio 11. 1920x1080 from my HF100 edits and renders just fine on my system. I wouldn't say it's screaming fast, but it's certainly quite workable. Previewing effects in real-time is slow, but it works.

The main point, though, is that the CPU speed can't make any AVCHD editing work or not work -- it can just make it comfortable or painfully slow. You need to figure out what is causing the "not enough graphics memory" error and eliminate that, and then you should be fine.

How much system memory do you have? Do you have lots of room on your swap drive? Do you have a large enough pagefile? Are you using Vista or XP? (Vista can be a memory hog -- try disabling all Aero effects maybe?). Do you have the latest graphics drivers?

Of course, it's possible that the software is looking at the CPU model number and simply refusing to work if it isn't what it wants, but I'd be very surprised to see that. The fact that you get garbled output makes me think that it is indeed running out of memory somewhere, or something in your installation is corrupted.

Cinema Mode
 

Here is again the comparison between the standard AE (left) and the "cinema" mode (right). I like the colors and reduced contrast of the cinema mode much more, so the sky is not washed out, and there is more detail in the shadows.