Canon HG10 - Review
After a long long wait, I got my new “Canon HG10 High Definition” on this Jan 15th. I got it from US and amazingly with the help of 7 hands and 3 shipping companies. 
and one month of travelling. The best example of social networking. Thanks to everyone.
This review may not be much helpful for professionals, but may be good for normal consumer or personal videographer, as I am looking with eye of normal home/event video maker. After all this is consumer camcorder NOT the professional
- The camcorder is excellent, and one line review is - I AM HAPPY.
- And the one big fact is : Its not FULL HD, Its just 1440×1088 (actual, and yes 1088 not 1080) and stretched to 1920×1080 resolution. Canon is misleading to everyone here.
Main features :
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Hard disk based - 40GB storage, AVCHD format.
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10x Optical/200x Digital
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Optical Image Stabilization (lens shift)
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Video resolution - 2.07 MP ( Strached and fixed, you cant change)
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Still Photo resolution - 3.1 MP Max.
For full specs, please refer : http://www.usa.canon.com/app/html/HDV/HG10/specifications.shtml
Here is my first test compostion :
Pari’s Day out. (HD) from SatyaDev
Recording format
This tiny tool record videos only on HardDisk and stills only on miniSD. File format is AVCHD, with variable bit rate.
Most of people says HDV (tape based) is better then AVCHD. But for me, Its not as much true. If you can record uncompressed video or in Microsoft video 1 format, that will be better then HDV also. In theory HDV uses more space(~25mbps) then this AVCHD(~15mbps), so it may better. But if you play footage of of both format shot under similar condition, on a full HDTV, you will not be able to determine the difference easily. First you should understand canon HV20 and HG10 both outputs video on 1440×1088 and upscales it to 1920×1080. It means they populated pixels 1.3 times. And, HDV may be good theoretically but this stretch-n-fit action sets it almost equal to AVCHD.
Let consider the 2nd thought, Handling. Canon HG10 creates a single file for every start/stop while tape based recording goes continuously until tap ends. You can simply plug your HG10 with USB cable to PC and transfer all footage within minutes. And all recordings separated, in a single file. I cant think, playing/editing with captured video can be so easy and fun !!!
Now think about working with HDV ( tape based HV20/30). First you need to play/transfer video to PC in real time. For 1 hour video, you need to spend 1 hour transfer time. Then separate videos into individual clips. Software are available for it, but this is again a time consuming process. Many times you just take a test footage for 4 mins or 5 mins or sometime 10 mins, and same time you want to check them on PC ? Yes, Its very difficult to play with it. Normally every one re-uses tape, and there is always a confusion about start/end point, which was we exported, which not. And some time we overwrite the video, which was not transferred to PC before.
So at this point, what you will prefer, AVCHD with extremely easy handling or 1%-5% better quality with lot of hassles ? I seen, because of lot of hassles and limited time, we only edit/export very important videos, rest of them are always on tape only.
Low Light Performance
When we say low light, what it mean ? really very low street light at night or bright moon’s night ? yahh .. but for this camera, normal home light is also low light. I tested under normal 60W Tube-Light, which is much more sufficent for reading, working and daily needs. But HG10 performed very bad. It has too much noise, motion trails and heavy color loss. I found this camera shoots ultimate under bright day light but anything other then that turned out into color loss. Some times I feel, Sony’s cheap DV handicam provide better low light perfomrance (I dont have footage in same condition for comparision, So I can’t claim). But as this is a consumer level Camcorder, I should say Okey.
Overall result is HG10 is not impressive under low light, but okey for consumer level, or similar to all other DV models.
Greb pics from Video Function
(editing continued…..)
