| Rating |
Review |
Date Reviewed |
- Product Rating:
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- Pros: Superb image quality, compact, lightweight, great feature set, incredible price (~$600!)
- Cons: None significant (somewhat convoluted user interface for special functions, somewhat short battery life)
- The Bottom Line: I have been researching AVCHD camcorders for almost a year. When HF-100 was announced in January, it seemed that the AVCHD had finally arrived. I have had it for two months now and have shot over 20GB (2.5 hours) of HD video at max quality. If you wish to switch to tapeless HD, this is the camcorder to beat (and HF-11 will be the one to beat it). Incredibly compact, the most significant quality is its superb picture. HD on 42" TV simply looks amazing. Check camcorderinfo.com for a lab test to confirm this. There are no MiniDV (standard-definition) camcorders that come even close, and majority of HD models are inferior. Low light performance is surprisingly good. Remember, though, this is $600 consumer camcorder, not a $5000 professional one. After migrating to AVCHD, I have finally realised how much hassle capturing and editing of MiniDV content was. Once I'm done shooting with this one, SDHC card goes straight into my card reader, iMovie automatically transcodes my captured files into AIC, which I can edit as I wish. As we are still in the early stage of AVCHD (and Blu-Ray authoring), very few software tools can create Blu-Ray file structure. I'm happy to report that Toast Titanium 9 (Mac only) does a fine job. Great thing about that is, you don't need to burn your material to Blu-Ray recordable discs in order to get your videos to your Blu-Ray player. Any standard Blu-Ray player will play your HD files from a DVD-R, as long as they are properly encoded and formatted. Obviously, you'll have less space, so you won't be able to squeeze more than an hour on a dual-layer DVD, but these are $0.30 apiece, whereas Blu-Ray recordable discs are $20 each (in addition to that external Blu-Ray burner you need to buy). This camcorder is an excellent way to enter the world of tapeless HD. You'll thank yourself ten years down the road for making that switch.
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by vasic,
15-Aug-08
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- Product Rating:
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- Pros: * Very good hight definition video quality * Low Price* Solid State camcorder (no moving parts).* Allows high definition video to play on normal TV.
- Cons: * Battery life* useless editing s/w provided by Canon* No hdmi cable provided by Canon.* No viewfinder.* does not allow to record in standard definition mode.
- The Bottom Line: This is great camcorder to buy for a consumer. It produces high quality video. Canon should have given at least 4 gb of SDHC card with the camera.
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by r.s..21,
17-Jul-08
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- Product Rating:
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- Pros: HD, ultracompact, SDHC
- Cons: Flashlight, AVCHD
- The Bottom Line: I was looking for the best HD camcorder and after a lot of research settled on this. I love its compactness. Its slightly bigger than your palm. Controls are nicely laid out. The quality of video is amazing esp if you watch it on HDTV. However these come at a cost. First of all, price is little high. The flashlight is almost non-existent. Low light performance is so so. AVCHD format is very troublesome to work with. It requires a lot of CPU and fast processor. Recording on SDHC is nice as you can quickly change once its full. Overall, I liked it so far.
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by ikumar2000,
14-Jul-08
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- Product Rating:
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- Pros: True HD resolution: 1920 x 1080, small overall size, light-weighted
- Cons: a little bit pricey, not so satisfactory low-light performance, no internal memory
- The Bottom Line: Overall, this is a decent HD camcorder, just the price is still a little bit high in the market. It has 12x optical zoom lens with optical image stabilizer, with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080, rather than the laterally expanded HD 1440 x 1080 of some brands. 3 Mp still images can also be captured. Although it comes with an optical stabilizer, the video still looks very unstable if shot hand-held. You really need a tripod if you want to experience the clarity of HD. Most operations are intuitive. The included software is easy to use but lack of some advanced functions, additional video processing software is recommended if serious job is to be done.
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by tableau,
25-Jun-08
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- Product Rating:
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- Pros: Decent image quality
- Cons: AVCHD is requiring huge space.Image stability seems not work very good
- The Bottom Line: I got this camcorder through a B&H deal. It is really worth investment since it will record a HD quality of your memories. I know there will be better and cheaper camcorders appear in the market but your good memories is also leaving. This camcorder has a very decent image quality. Altough when your hands are shaking or you shoot when you are moving, the image seems not very good. So I suggest it might be the IS isn't strong enough? Another drawback is the AVCHD form is requiring a lot of space, I bought a 8GB SDHC card but it seems not enough.
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by fanskyer,
03-Jun-08
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