Canon HG10 Camcorder
The HG10 becomes the first hard-disk based camcorder to be designed by Canon. This is compatible with AVCHD and has a close relation to HV20 with respect to its lenses and innards.
The HG10 weighs as light as 17.8 oz and has width of 3.2 inches, depth of 5.1 inches and height of 3 inches. Due to its low weight and taller built the HG10 is easier to grip and use. Being similar to the HV20 the HG10 shares some common features with it such as the presence of a shoe cover. But there are certain features which have been upgraded, some works while some makes usage a bit uncomfortable. The zoom rocker switch and the extendable eye-level viewfinder do improve the beauty of the camcorder. While the new four-way-plus-Set switch becomes a rather tough feature to use.
The camcorder uses up a lot of the battery due to the requirement of heavy usage of LCD. The HG10 has a 2.7-inch LCD which is not very large as compared to the other camcorders in the market. Nonetheless the LCD screen remains viewable even under the glare of the sun and can also be viewed by people from various tight angles. The camcorder in addition to the LCD has an eye-level viewfinder, but due to the small size the viewfinder is not comfortable working with. The camcorder makes use of Zoom lens – 6.1 mm – 61 mm – F/1.8-3.0 which has focal length ranging between 6.1 mm – 61 mm.
The HG10 has 9 auto focus points and filter size of 43mm. The HG10 has a minimum focus range of 0.4 inches. Looking at the video captured by the camcorder, 1,920×1,080 HD video is shot by the 3-megapixel CMOS chip which then gets converted into 1,440×1,080 AVCHD. The HG10 is equipped with a 40GB hard drive which has the ability to store up to 5.5 hours of video @ 15Mbps or 15 hours of video @ 5Mbps. Although the camcorder allows capturing of 3-megapixel pictures but they can only be stored in the MiniSD card and not the hard drive.There is SET button on the LCD through which one can make use of options including backlight, exposure compensation, focus, and quick review. One can have control over the flash while in camera mode.
There are a number of features that a photographer can control using the function button while in the video mode. They are choice of program, shutter-priority, aperture-priority, Cine mode, slow-shutter Night mode, white-balance options, image effects presets, customizable color depth, sharpness, contrast, brightness, digital effects and video quality. When pictures are to be taken one can make adjustments to some options including evaluative, center-weighted average, spot-metering modes, continuous-shooting and bracketing and photo size. The different special effects that can be used are Vivid, Cinema, Neutral, Skin Detail and Low Sharpening. The various digital scene transitions are Art Fader, Wipe Fader and Black & White Fader. The minimum shutter in the camcorder is ½ seconds while the maximum is 1/2000 seconds. The different shooting programs present are Snow, Beach, Sunset, Fireworks, Spotlight, Night mode, Sports mode and Portrait mode.
The White balance options are Custom, Presets (Shade, Cloudy, Daylight, Fluorescent, Tungsten light, Fluorescent light) and Automatic. The exposure modes present are Program, Automatic, Shutter-priority and Aperture-priority. The HG10 has a built in flash with two modes, Auto mode and Red-eye reduction.The place where the HG10 really performs at its best is when its 10x zoom lens comes into play. This combines with Canon’s Super Range Optical Image Stabilizer providing good quality images. The camcorder performs exceedingly well in low lighting conditions and one can make use of the zoom switch with ease. High quality images and videos are sharp and well exposed. Although there is slight noise interference but still it remains within an acceptable level.
The camcorder struggles providing a good audio performance and fails to match the level it sets with its video quality. The HG10 allows widescreen video capturing and the pictures taken are stored in JPEG format. The different resolutions available are 2048 x 1536, 1920 x 1080, 1440 x 1080, 848 x 480 and 640 x 480. The different recording speeds present are LP, SP, XP and XP+. The self timer can delay the picture by 10 seconds maximum and Lithium ion battery type is used for power. The HG10 can be connected to a computer by the help of USB and is also compatible with PictBridge printers.Overall the HG10 although might not be the best in camcorders but taking into consideration the good picture quality and a nice range of features for the photographer to make use of, this has a very reasonable price tag attached to it.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Filed Under: Canon Digital Camera
