Why You Can Trust CNET Canon HG10 review: Canon HG10
The Canon HG10, the hard drive-based, AVCHD-compatible camcorder, takes some chances. For starters, it has one of the most comfortable zoom switches in its class. Plus, upping its low-light performance, both focus and video quality, means it goes beyond other models to produce sharp photo and video
It's been a long wait, but the hard disk drive-based, AVCHD-compatible Canon HG10 is here.
Canon HG10
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Based on the innards and lens of the HV20 and costing around £750, the HG10 nevertheless uses an almost completely different design, one that takes a few chances -- not necessarily successful ones.
Design
The HG10 is significantly smaller than the HV20, though at 505g, it's not much lighter. And though it weighs a tad less
than its main competitor, the Sony Handycam HDR-SR7,
it's also a bit taller. The silver-and-dark grey body doesn't look
quite as snazzy as the SR7's mostly-black chassis, though. The taller
body does, however, make it easier and more comfortable to grip.
To squeeze the body, Canon moved and reshaped a lot of the controls. In some cases, as with the large, extremely smooth and comfortable zoom rocker switch and the extendable eye-level viewfinder, the changes work for the better. Some things, such as the nontethered accessory-shoe cover -- you might as well toss it now, it's bound to get lost eventually -- should have been changed but weren't. And others simply disappointed us.
Take, for instance, the new four-way-plus-Set switch with the concentric scroll wheel. On one hand, it's far better than a touch screen. But it's very hard to use the directional switch without moving the scroll wheel, which ultimately makes navigation and manual focus difficult. Canon also dropped the manual focus dial from the lens barrel.
Furthermore, the joystick on the HV20 is also better located. It sits on the body of the camcorder rather than the LCD bezel. So with the HG10, you're forced to shoot using the LCD far more than necessary. That's not just annoying and harder to hold steady, but you end up wasting a lot of battery power.
Features
For the money, though, the HG10 delivers a pretty well-rounded set of
features. The 3-megapixel CMOS chip shoots native 1,920x1,080-pixel HD video,
which then gets downconverted and interlaced to 1,440x1,080-pixel AVCHD. It
can also shoot 1,440x1,080/24p, although support for this flavour of the
format is even more limited than that of vanilla AVCHD.
Its 40GB hard drive stores between 5.5 hours of video at 15Mbps to as much as 15 hours of video at 5Mbps. As usual, however, we don't recommend dropping below the highest quality level, unless you're absolutely certain you will never want to edit the footage. You can snap 3-megapixel stills in photo mode or take 1,920x1,080-pixel grabs while shooting in movie mode. But we find it utterly ridiculous that stills can't be captured to the hard drive, only to a MiniSD card.
The Set button on the LCD bezel calls up shooting controls for backlight, exposure compensation, focus and quick review. In camera mode you also get flash controls.
In video mode, a membrane Function button accesses the choice of program, shutter-priority, aperture-priority, Cine mode -- for a film look, to go with 24fps shooting -- and slow-shutter Night mode; a handful of white-balance options; various image effects presets, plus customisable colour depth -- for a posterised look, sharpness, contrast and brightness; a few digital effects; video quality; and still grab size.
For still photos, you can also select from evaluative, centre-weighted average and spot-metering modes; continuous-shooting and bracketing; and photo size.
We'd prefer it if a couple of the features, specifically Focus Priority -- the choice between Canon's AiAF and centre focus AF mode, Instant AF and normal, and zoom speed -- variable plus three constant options -- were closer to the surface. They're a little too frequently used to be buried in the menus, and unless you know they exist -- and how they're named -- you may miss them entirely. And, as with the HV20, you can't change the white balance while shooting, which is a pain in scenes with multiple light sources.
A 69mm (2.7-inch) LCD is about the smallest you can get away with on an HD camcorder, but it remains viewable in direct sunlight and from multiple angles. The eye-level viewfinder is almost too small, and its hard plastic eyecup isn't very comfortable to use.
Performance
The 10x zoom lens integrates Canon's SuperRange Optical Image
Stabiliser, which tweaks the stability by providing continuous feedback
to the system. We found it works very well -- better than most out at the
end of the zoom range. Canon's Instant AF uses a rangefinder
approach -- it bounces a signal off the subject to provide the AF system
with a rough location, so that the lens hunts for a focus lock over a
smaller area.
You can turn IAF off when it's less useful, generally in low-motion scenes such as talking heads or school plays, in order to save battery power. The IAF makes low-light focus lock a hair faster. Although it still pulses slightly, we think the low-light performance in general -- focus and video quality -- is a bit better with this model than we've seen on previous Canon consumer camcorders. It also has one of the most comfortable zoom switches we've worked with in its class.
Audio doesn't fare quite as well. When the windscreen filter is set to Auto, the built-in stereo microphone records sounds from behind it very well, but voices coming from in front sound muffled and conversations to the side barely register at all. It records better from the front when the windscreen is off, but the camcorder still seems to have a rather limited range -- about a metre or so -- and no zoom mic capability. Nor are there are any input volume controls. There's a mic input and an accessory shoe for a better -- albeit extra cost -- audio experience.
Image quality
There's little to complain about on the image quality front, however.
The HG10 renders well-exposed, saturated and sharp video and photos.
There's some visual noise and softness in dimly lit scenes and blown
out highlights in bright ones, but no more than usual for this class.
Conclusion
We dinged the Canon HG10 for its frustrating ergonomics and audio
performance problems. Before you buy, you should try it to see if you
feel the same way about the control layout, especially in light of the
Sony SR7's underwhelming touch-screen alternative. If the audio issues
pose a serious problem for you, then there's either an external mic or
a touch screen in your future.
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday