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July 18, 2008

Canon Vixia HF10 camcorder review

In our testing, Canon’s Vixia HF10 shot impressive, brilliant video, up to par with its similar MiniDV counterpart, Canon’s Vixia HV30. The HF10 has a few minor flaws, but it’s a fine choice for Mac users eager to leave MiniDV tape behind.

The HF10 is sleek and sexy, but it feels a bit clumsy to hold. The camcorder is shaped like a cannon barrel, and you need to use your middle finger to control the zoom tab, making it difficult to maintain a firm, steady grip on the camcorder. You access the HF10’s menu using the four-directional joystick, which is located next to the LCD screen; the flaw to this design is that it’s conducive to camera shake. The HF10’s control panel is extremely intuitive to use; you should be able to figure out how to use this camcorder minutes after powering it up, without reading the user manual.

We’ve seen camcorder manufacturers sacrifice basic features for the sake of making smaller and lighter devices, yet the HF10 has an impressive feature set. Weighing less than a pound, the HF10 is definitely small and light, and it doesn’t leave out basic features. Canon includes microphone and headphone jacks, an accessory shoe, and a lamp for shooting in dark environments-niceties to have in a device this small.

Of course, features and ease of use don’t matter if you can’t get your footage off the camcorder to edit and share with your loved ones. Fortunately, the HF10 uses a MPEG-4 (H.264)-based AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) codec. It even works seamlessly with iMovie '08 and Final Cut Pro on the Mac.

In our test footage, the HF10’s video in both low-light and standard-light settings pleased our panel of experts. Colours were slightly oversaturated but looked realistic compared to our control objects. We noticed subtle motion artifacts, but they looked no worse than the artifacts we’ve seen in MiniDV footage; for the most part, motion appeared smooth. The HF10’s video quality earned an overall Very Good rating. Our jury had a small preference for the Vixia HV30's video quality - the HF10 scored right behind the HV30.

The HF10 didn’t perform as well in our still images test. Colours looked very oversaturated in a standard-light setting; in a low-light setting with flash turned on, the colours looked especially eerie. The HF10 earned a Good rating for still-image quality.

The HF10 had a meagre battery life compared to camcorders we’ve tested in the past. On a full charge, the HF10 recorded for one hour and 21 minutes before it ran out of juice, earning an overall Good rating. By way of comparison, Sony’s HDR-SR11 Handycam lasted two hours on a full charge.

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Independent customer reviews from

Canon Vixia HF10 scored:
9.2 out of 10 100% real reviews

The 2 most helpful reviews based on 6 reviews:

20 May 2008 Anonymous verified purchaser

10

Good Points

Almost everything is superb on this camcorder, the image is amazing, the zoom is more than adequate, in fact the digital zoom, which I've never liked to use on cameras before - usually too gainy, is incredible. It weighs next to nothing, easy to hold, easy menu functions, once familiar with, so much better than the fiddly Sony on-screen menus. The battery life and power management is excellent too. Nice touch to have the battery flush with the body, I stumped for 2 standard batteries, which is more than adequate and thus leaves the same non-protruding super looks. Oh and the onboard flash, no moving parts means less weight and power conumption. Truly Excellent!

Bad Points

Bad points! Well... Canon could have used the standard hot-shoe rather than bespoke, there are limited and expensive attachments for this. Mini HDMI is ok, but when are manufacturers going to include this cable? Any sort of bag or protective cover should be included for as well. Come on Canon lead the way and start including extras for your loyal customers!!! Can't think of anything else!

26 Apr 2008 Anonymous verified purchaser

8

Good Points

great image quality....low weight, relative ease of use for basic functions.

Bad Points

Small but can be uncomfortable to hold unless at 'eye height', but with no viewfinder there's no need to have it at eye height. If only I could play back the files on my high-spec PC without the picture jerking; and that's after the file has been transferred to my hard drive.

See more Canon Vixia HF10 reviews on Reevoo.com

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