I had the award-winning HDV (tape-based) HV20 prior to this, and the HF10 is almost indistinguishable in terms of image quality. Given the dramatic difference in image data between an HDV image and an AVC image, that means this is one heck of a camcorder. I have tried out other AVC camcorders and have been really disappointed. Not so here, and I purchased this one. It has 24p and 30p recording, in addition to 60i. (Don't be confused by Canon's nomenclature, it is true 24p, just recorded in interlaced 60i.) The cinema mode has a bit of a wash-out effect on colors. The camcorder is surprisingly small. Power save mode is great, and is virtually instantaneously on when the LCD screen is opened. One warning about AVC in general, if you don't have a fast computer, it will grind it to a halt. I have a quad-core with 4 gig RAM and editing is fine, but I wouldn't want to use an old computer. Sony Vegas works great with the files. Wish the camcorder automatically saved to the SDHC card when the internal storage was full. Otherwise, this is the best thought out camcorder since my DVX-100. Nice to occasionally see consumer products worth their expense.

This is my first HD camcorder so I can't really compare it to others. But my expectations of what a full 1920x1080 camcorder should be have not been met.

I have shot scenes in both 1080/60i and 1080/30p at the highest quality possible - 17Mbps. The images seem softer than I'd prefer even with the digital sharpening enabled. This must either be the lens or the sensor based on my experience with digital still cameras. Either way I was disappointed. The compression artifacts and/or noise reduction being performed also degrade the video quality to a point below what I would expect. Even in ample light, the texture of fine hair and textiles is lost lending to a plastic appearance. In low light, noise levels are about what I expected. It is not terrible like I've seen in samples from older AVCHD cameras and other small flash cameras like the Sanyo Xacti. Notably, noise levels and exposure were markedly improved in 30p mode vs. 60i mode.

The built-in video light is next to useless. I couldn't get the right color balance, the throw distance is poor and it's too narrow. The built-in flash is too bright without manual adjustment. The camera's ports are all hidden behind plastic doors attached with thin plastic strips that ruin the otherwise solid-feeling build of the camera. There are several functions that are only accessible by scrolling through menus for which I would have preferred having dedicated buttons to manipulate (auto/manual focus, exposure compensation and manual white balance in particular). The placement of the some controls is awkwards. I have small hands so I felt a small camcorder should work well. But it is difficult for me to reach the power button with the hand holding the camera. I can't actually bend my thumb back far enough to activate the start/stop button with the pad of my thumb - it hits rights around the inside of my thumb's knuckle. The zoom lever is sensitive and smooth. The mode dial is difficult to operate with the hand holding the camera.

I do like the weight of the camera. I like the appearance. I like how quiet it is. My previous Mini-DV camera produced videos with wonderful whirring tape motor and zoom motor background sounds. This one has no noticable background noises aside from when on-camera controls are manhandled. I like being able to transfer the recordings directly to my computer in a fraction of the time that the recordings represent. My Mini DV camera transferred at a 1:1 ratio.

I don't like that the software I use (iMovie) can't read the recordings directly unless they are on camera. I have to trick it by putting a previously transferred recording onto a memory card and inserting it while iMovie is running. The recordings take several times their length to import into iMovie on my Intel C2D 2.16 GHz iMac because it converts them into an intermediate format for editing. These are issues with my software, not the camera, but Mac users should be aware of this since besides professional level editing software iMovie seems like to only option for handling AVCHD video on the Mac.

I am considering returning or selling the camera in the hope that something better will come along. I don't have a need to capture HD video so I can wait.

I got mine Wed. 9 April ..took only a 2min vid to see what it looks like. I've been running Macs for 15+yrs ..currently an Intel iMac with latest OS and most popular apps: iMovie, Photoshop, etc.. and recently upgraded Final Cut Express (FCE) v.4 in anticipation of this new cam. Canon provides a subset of the PC app - EOS Utility - for the Mac.

Plug the camera in via USB and it give you a RED warning: 1) You must use aux. power (so much for laptops in the field..) 2) You cannot disconnect as there may be damage to the camera. Then, the code budget ran out, because there is no way to turn the camera off or disconnect?! I left it on overnight so I could get to the forums to ask what to do?! The answer: a hard disconnect - which we are trained not to do... I dragged the desktop image to the trash - nothing else to do..

But first, where's my footage! It's in a .mts file. The EOS utility stayed inactive(*), did not see the camera on the desktop .. you cannot drag/drop an .mts file into any Mac application .. you cannot open a .mts file in any Mac app. It took a tip from one of the forums: you need to 'Log and Transfer' within FCE. How many people who want to make simple HD flicks for their flatscreen; a) want to spend $200 for FCE ..and b) want to 'learn' it...

The images from this camera may make movie history, but the other video cam I've run for the past year was like most other Mac-friendly products - 2min out of the box - it was plug-and-play. I have Canon's DSLR and their fancy L lens', but this is a let down of the first order.

...'May as well pile on: the zoom is jerky. (there may be a speed control that I didn't read about yet..)

Jim

* in fairness: one of the people in the forum did say this utility worked for him. I didn't read what he did with the .mts file.

I have owned this camcorder now for 2 weeks and have loved it since I got it. The video quality is amazing. In full HD the the detail and color accuracy really shows. The camcorder also auto focuses incredibly fast even while zooming and panning. The quick record mode is very nice (especially if you have children). When the quick record mode is on the camcorder will come out of sleep mode and be ready to record in about a second. Literally by the time you flip the lcd open, it's ready to record. The still shots are ok, but I wouldn't get rid of my stand alone digital camera. The transfers of files to pc requires the use of the included software. There is a quick burn option with the software that can create either an AVCHD dvd or a standard definition dvd. I also tried using the software for editing and authoring but found it cumbersome for that usage. I personally use Nero 8 and it works perfectly with the files created by the Canon. The drawbacks to the camcorder are the battery and the awkward menu. The included battery barely last hour with normal recording. I'll be buying the BP-819 2.5 hour battery by summers end. The menu has a few awkward sections. For example, to fade in or out when recording you have to select the fade effect from the main menu. But to use the selected fade while recording, you have to use the joystick to activate the fade effect assigned before recording. Overall, this camcorder is very good. It has great video quality. The software package, though a little cumbersome, is pretty decent. I don't regret this purchase one bit. It seems pricey, but once you see the differnce on a HD tv compared to SD mini dv, you won't regret it.

I will begin by saying that I am not an audiophile, a videophile, or a techie of any kind. I'm just an old geezer who loves to shoot event,travel,family,and video in general. My first video camera was a Sony Betamax about thirty years ago and I have owned many camcorders since. This is the best ever. Easy to set up,easy to use, great picture and easy transfer to disc.---I love it and the DW 100 DVD burner that I purchased at the same time make it a joy to transfer my Grandson's baseball games to disc. Great battery life, great recording capacity and nice not to have worry about tape.

I like the camera alot. However, the camera is no good without software to download, transfer and edit. The Imagemixer software is terrible - it is very difficult to use, it comes with no documentation, and the Pixela technical support is awful. I am an experienced Movie Maker user and was surprised that Canon would supply such mediocre software.

While I wanted to like this camera (and use it to replace my Canon HV10), the growing list of annoyances and downright bugs are making me doubt this purchase. I can't find too many faults with the technical aspects of the camera (which all the reviews on the web seem to focus on). But trying to use it gives me a lot of frustrations. Notably:

1) As mentioned in another comment, you cannot extract video over USB without the camera also being plugged in to its AC adapter. Period. Yet you can extract pictures without external power. This makes no sense and is quite a drawback to anyone who wants to pull video off it in a hurry or to a laptop away from an AC outlet.
2) The ability to take still pictures during video recording is greatly hindered by the fact that it will often (always?) not let you take more than one picture until you stop recording and let everything get written out to memory.
3) Many aspects of the interface are maddeningly slow (particularly when displaying picture/video thumbnails). With only a dozen still pictures saved in my camera, switching to "view pictures" mode takes 10+ seconds, and flipping between pictures takes several seconds. Expect to see a lot of "READING MEMORY" messages. I've even had it hang up entirely just when switching between modes, requiring me to pull the battery.
4) The "premium" of built-in memory in the HF10 doesn't seem worth it. The camera treats it and the SD slot as distinct storage areas you have to manually select and switch between. Unless you are going to use the internal memory exclusively, you might be better off with the less complicated HF100 and a big SD card.

This is a nice camera in many technical respects, but in my mind falls flat in the implementation. The interface is littered with various "DO THIS/DON'T DO THIS" messages; too bad they didn't spend the time to eliminate the need for the messages instead.

Had the HF10 for about a month now. Here's a few things that dont get talked about much:
1. The built-in memory is basically useless. Its very slow and hard to get images and video off it. Go for the HF100 instead and buy some big SD cards.
2. If you have a mac, get ready to pull your hair out. repeatedly. Even though Apple lists this as a supported device, you cannot get photos or videos off the camera via usb at all. It does not mount as a volume when you plug it in. Quicktime cannot access avchd files.
3. The assinine avchd directory structure means that ZERO of the existing photo and video editors find the files on the camera/cards by default - you have to go and find them yourself. Or subject yourself to the horrors of the bundled Pixela Imagemixer software.
4. Canon's bundled software for getting images off the camera for macintoshes doesn't handle video _at all_ !!!
5. The images that are captured when in video mode are not saved as jpg's - they are in some bizarro avchd thumbnail format which nothing on the planet seems to be able to access.
6. the resolution of the stills is really poor compared to cameras a 1/3 of the price.
7. it's really slow (enumerating a completely empty memory card takes about 5 seconds)
8. the selection of photo mode/video mode and video view/photo/view is really really irritating
9. the menus are confusing and inconsistent.
10. the battery does not last long at all.

The Canon HF100 is the same as the Canon HF10, except it has no internal memory (the HF10 has 16GB) and the HF100 is $200 cheaper. For $75 I can buy a 16GB SDHC card which works great with the camera;... you do the math.. ~ three 16GB cards for the same price has the HF10 which only has 16GB of memory (but can take external cards also)
Records video at Standard Definition (SD), 720p and 1080p (also takes still shots) This is a must for those that have upgraded to an HD TV and want to watch their home movies in HD.

Here Be Dragons...
If all you want to do is watch your videos directly from the camera, no problem; comes with composite and component cables (will take HDMI sold seperately) However, if you actually want to save your videos, without buying new SDHC cards, then there are a few hiccups. The camera will download to your PC, but only in the format filmed; no filming in HD then downloading in SD. It will capture the HD you filmed in, but the software will not edit the HD format and you will be hard pressed to find a codec that will play the H.264 format nicely.

Here's my problem. I want to film my son's soccer games in 1080p for viewing on my 57" TV, so I film in 1080p. His coach, along with 1/2 the parents, want SD because they still use DVD players, while I can play the HD via my PS3. I tried many video capture/editting software to capture the HD I film in; nothing recognizes my camera. If I film in SD, everything works great, but this defeats my primary reason of wanting HD (so I can view on my 57" TV, thereby justifying to the wife that HD is worth it...) So, here's what I do. I film in HD, 1080p, use the Canon DVD burner that connects directly to the camera (sold seperately $250) to capture 1080p source (by the way, no blue rays reqiured, a 1 hour soccer game fits nicely on 2 standard DVDs; 1 half per disk - that can then be played back via my PS3) For the coach, and the rest of the parents, I use a Pinnacle 500-usb Video Capture box (about $50) This little device was intended for turning VHS tapes into DVDs. But just plug into the composite output of the camera, and into the usb of your PC, and your PC DVD burner will make the 1 hour of 1080p video into 1hour of 480p on a normal DVD; plus the Pinnacle software also allows you to edit anf make menus and all the good stuff that the HD software hasn't really caught up with yet.

First I want to say that I'm an average Joe when it come to shooting video, I'm not a videophile or pretend to be an expert in filming. With that being said, here's my thoughts.

Nice camera for the money. Video looks great! I think the indoor performance is very adequate.

Don't care for the fact that you have to plug in the camera to an electrical outlet in order to transfer video from camera to computer.

Wished the camera came with a batter charger, had to buy a separate charger for $75, ouch! HOWEVER, you can charge the battery while it's plugged into the camera and the camera plugged into the wall. Battery that comes with camera only lasts a little over an hour, you'll want to buy an extended battery (which obviously won't sit "flush" with the camcorder, but it doesn't stick out too far).

I have big hands and the camera is almost too small for me! :) Really though, great size and doesn't weigh too much.

I haven't tried taking a still photo with this and probably won't, typically all the video cameras out there today don't come close in taking the quality of digital photos as a good digital SLR, so not going to knock Canon on that one. I bought a video camera for video and not photos.

Quick start mode is great!

I did have a standard def panasonic before this one and I think the image stabilization worked just a little better on my Panasonic than on the Canon HF10, but that being said, OIS isn't bad.

Overall I think it's worth the money I paid for it. Would recommend to my friends.

Having read 4 EXCELLENT professional reviews (just google it to see them for yourself) on the HF10 before buying, I completely agree with what was said about this camcorder. It is simply amazing, in virtually every measure of performance! Beats ALL OTHER consumer AVCHD camcorders in the market including the more expensive Sony, Panasonic and JVC counterparts. It even outperforms CANON's own intimidating HV30 in real-world testing in terms of resolution, artifacting, low light performance.

My only complaint is that the HDMI output doesn't work with all 3 of my 720P HDTVs (whose manuals state that they accept 1080i signals). I think the TV has to have a native resolution of 1920 X 1080 in order to display the HF10's signals.

In short, this camcorder can't be beat, especially at this price.

Best,

Advanced Amateur

There are only a few software packages which can be used to manipulate the video output from this camcorder on a PC

When I read the Canon website, I figured that this little camera would give me superb FULL HD video. But if you are expecting the same quality of full HD 1080 video that you see on your big screen tv set, you'll be disappointed. I have been very happy with Canon video cameras in the past and currently own an Optura 600. The Canon HF10 (set to Full HD) is quite a bit better than the Optura 600 (set to widescreen mode 740X480) but nowhere near the quality that I have seen from miniDV full HD Canon video cameras. Perhaps the AVCHD compression is the problem. After trying many different settings and filming in different lighting conditions, I was unable to get the crispness of detail that I was expecting from this FULL HD camera. It does in fact record in 1920x1080 resolution, but there are artifacts and jaggedness to diagonal lines that shouldn't be there. I have returned the camera and will try to find a better choice, or simply wait until the technology improves.

Having owned several (consumer & pro grade) HD videocams in the past, the most important feature I was concerned about was low light performance. The latest competing brands (e.g., Sony & Panasonic) had a few attractive tidbits that this videocam didn't offer (e.g., face recognition) but I'm very happy without them: Low light performance is superb (cannot say the same for the competition, especially Panasonic's "3 CCD" grab)...as are autofocus and stabilization. Side-by-side comparisons reveal that this videocam is certainly the best choice in its class. Photos are quite nice too, with resolution well matching sensor size (the "zillion pixel" gimmick of small-sensor compact cameras just adds grain with bigger files).

I just got my Vixia HF10 yesterday, read the manual, charged the battery, and realized I will need a second battery as the one that comes with it will only last about an hour. While looking for this battery I read some of the reviews on this flashcorder and about choked when I saw the review entitled "Some Bad Features - Beware". I quickly grabbed my HF10 and did my first recording. I plugged it into my iMac, opened up iMovie, the program instantly found the HF10 and I uploaded the video without any problems. Possibly the previous poster wasn't using the same OS. I'm using Mac Leopard 10.5x and iMovie which comes bundled with iLife 08. If I had to do it over again I think I would have bought the less expensive HF100 as I found that you must manually switch between the internal flash memory and your removable SDHC card. I was under the incorrect assumption that the HF10 would automatically switch from internal to external flash memory when it was full. I may be premature in my rating but it seems to take great video. Much better quality than my previous miniDV camcorder but to be fair it's six years old. I like not having to mess with tapes anymore. I damaged the ilink port on this Sony miniDV camcorder and thought I would just buy a miniDV player to transfer them to DVD but to my dismay they are quite expensive, many times more than the camcorder. It looks like flash memory is the wave of the future with tapes going the way of cassettes and VHS.

My overall on this is that if you want an AVCHD camcorder, this is by far one of the best in the consumer category. It uses a high-quality Canon glass lens and Canon's renowned auto-focus system which is critical when shooting fast moving kids. The detail and color are great.

Being an iPhone owner, I would say that the menu system of this camcorder is not intuitive. It is far better than the Sony camcorders in my impression, but hardly close to the ease-of-use I have become accustomed to with the iPhone. The battery life is also less than stellar.

I highly recommend this camcorder.

If you want to get into HD video in a big way for a reasonable cost the HF-10 is the way to go. I love it. Being able to pop out the SCHD card and get video right into the computer is great. It is small light weight but really delivers a great full screen HD picture. I got the WIDE ANGLED lens (sold separately) and the bigger battery (sold separately) to complete my package, but for kid vid and amateur shooting, you really don't need to buy the extras. When you get it, check out the DIGITAL ZOOM 200X.... You can watch your neighbors, hee hee hee, dd

This is a fantastic camera but people need to have more realistic expectations of what to expect from AVCHD. It is a highly compressed format so using this camera in low-light conditions is going to produce pretty "grainy" results. In good lighting AVCHD output from this camera can produce some really great looking results in HD but don't kid yourself into thinking you're going to get professional HDTV quality. This is a point-and-shoot.

I love the camera, especially how fast it focuses in good light, so I'm going to concentrate on what some of the other reviewers said to correct some misconceptions.

I use both Macs and PC and I have to tell you that you that PCs suck for AVCHD - you will waste a lot of time and pull your hair out. I'm sure PC video software vendors will address this eventually, but seriously folks if you want to do this the easy way get an Intel-based Mac (caveat: only Intel based machines using Leopard support AVCHD) and use either iMovie or Final Cut Express 4. Both of these programs (iMovie 08 and FCE4) just LOVE this camera (and two other Sony AVCHD cameras I've tried as well) and they work like a charm. Video making has never been this easy. FCE4 lets you mix AVHCD, HDV and SD video on the same timeline and save in whatever format you want so it's worth the $200 if you want to do that or have more exacting control over your videos. It is basically a (lightly) stripped-down version of Apple's excellent professional video software (Final Cut Pro) and it is very good. For most home videos iMovie 08 (which comes in iLife 08) will be just fine.

I've had no problem transferring the movies directly from the camera but, as mentioned earlier, you do need to have the camera plugged into the AC to do it. You can avoid plugging the camera into your Mac to transfer the files if you're only recording on SDHC cards, rather than internal memory on the HF10, but it works just fine. For this reason I would recommend buying the HF100 (over the HF10) and getting an extra 16Gb memory card or two. You will save money that way and have more flexibility. I bought the HF10 because I had to have it the next day and, at the time, the HF100s were delayed a bit. Transcend's excellent 16Gb SDHC Class 6 card comes with a nifty little card reader for only $78.98 here on Amazon, you can get two of them for less than the $200 difference in price between the HF10 and HF100 so you'll have 32gb to work with instead of 16gb for less money. I don't mind having the internal memory as a backup but you pay more than it is worth for it.

The video camera is just acting like a USB reader when you connect it to your Mac anyway - it is the file layouts that the software recognizes. When read in and converted to Apple Intermediate Codec at 1920x1080 they will balloon in size. If you want to store the raw video in a more compressed way you can simply copy the root directory of the card to another directory and copy it back again later. If you're working with AVCHD you need to buy the biggest hard drives you can afford. 60 minutes of video will use up something like 50Gb of storage on your Mac when converted to 1920x1080. If you just want great looking home video to show on your HDTV, but don't want to go broke on hard drives, Apple offers to import the movies at a slightly lower resolution (960x540) which takes up a LOT less space with very little drop in quality. I have been making home videos and showing them on an Apple TV at that resolution and they look stunning. The quality difference between that resolution and full HD isn't that big of a deal.

If want to try to get truly professional-quality video you should avoid AVCHD cameras and stick to the HDV format concentrating on cameras with larger sensors. But this is great camera for HD home videos at a great price.

The user interface on this camera is slow and clunky. Sony's AVCHD cameras have a better interface (using a touch screen) but you can still watch back the videos (which is the main thing you'll do) and it beats the heck out of a tape camera. I wish they had added a dial or button set for adjust exposure and/or backlighting control on the camera. The joystick works surprisingly well for this however in bright light the screen gets washed out enough that it is hard to tell if your exposure is really that great or not. This is where a viewfinder would really help. But these are minor nits because the camera does a good job at exposure control on its own.

As I said earlier this is a very compact point-and-shoot camera that shoots HD video and for that it's excellent.

I was instantly amazed at the quality of the video this camera takes. It even looks amazing on the viewfinder. I bought the camera for our business because we needed to make professional quality videos but we couldn't afford the $3000+ cost of a professional camera. So far, this little guy is keeping up with the big boys.

I just finished filming and editing an instructional video for a local school district and the quality is top notch. I was a little embarrassed walking into a professional shoot with this very tiny little camera, but the final product is nothing to be embarrassed about.

The quality of the stereo sound from the camera's microphones is also amazing. I set up secondary equipment for recording the sound for our video but used the camera's audio in most cases because it sounded better. My only complaint here would have to be that there is such great stereo separation from the mics that you lose the center channel where primary dialogue is usually played back.

Still photos are equally amazing quality even allowing still snapshots while recording video. My favorite is the high speed continuous shooting, though you have to be prepared to wait a few minutes for the camera to process the data at high quality before you can take another picture.

Battery life is about 90 minutes in top quality mode. The 16GB onboard flash memory gives you nearly 3 hours of recording in the same mode. I picked up an addition 16GB SDHC card online for about $75 to double my capacity. High capacity batteries and accessories have been hard to find or too expensive but I expect that to change as the popularity of the camera grows, which I am sure it will.

One final note on editing the video. I already owned a copy of Adobe Premiere and was disappointed that it wouldn't read the AVCHD format of this camera. In fact, there is very little software support for this format due to it being new. I'm sure that will change over time. The only software I found to edit AVCHD is Cyberlink's Power Director which is pretty inexpensive, easy to learn and does a nice job.

Summary:
Pros - Great quality video and sound, small and light, no moving recording parts to wear out.

Cons - Current scarcity of accessories and editing software. Manual focus using the joystick on the viewfinder is awkward and jumpy.

Canon VIXIA HF10 has been my first camcorder purchase. It has exceeded my expectations. I was little skeptical about the still picture quality (with no doubt about the excellence of motion picture quality), th photos hav come quite crisp in color as well as clarity.
I'm yet to explore all the features, however first feeling is gr8 !!
Thanks to amazon for the prompt service offered

After one day of use I'm pretty astounded that such a high quality image can come from such a small device. As another reviewer mentioned the video files stored on the SD card can be played using the PS3 directly off the card. I have a PS3 connected to a 1080P projector projecting to a 100" screen and the images are stunning from this camcorder. I see no obvious artifacts even on such a large blow up of the movie files.
Positives:
The size is very comfortable to carry and the ergonomics are great. The camera controls are easy to operate and reasonably intuitive especially if you have used any canon products in the past. It feels well made and solid as well. The use of flash for storage is great makes the camera very quiet (only focus and aperture motors running). I have a Xh A1 and although the hf10 doesn't offer the same low light performance and manual control, I think under good lighting it would be hard for most people to tell the image qualities apart. The size makes this camcorder very travel friendly and easy to carry just walking around for capturing spontaneous shots.
Negatives:
Editing the avchd files can be a little bit of a hassle to deal with. Once these files are added to the computer the captured files from the card are quite large. After one evening using the avchd files with final cut studio I'm still having some problems correcting the reverse telecine on the files (the files have a interlaced frame that makes 4th and 5th frame look jaggie). This may be just a small setting that I need to correct though. Interestingly on the free iMovie editing program the files are rendered correctly and play nicely on the computer. In the present many more software editing programs are supporting avchd and I can only imagine that going forward this codec will be supported on all new programs as it becomes more popular.

Well, guys I have been checking out this camera locally at my farvorite box store and made some observations you may be intereted in.

In this case I took a SanDisk UltraII type 4 2gig chip with me to plug into the camera. When I got home found out the AVCHD file will not work with Avid Liquid 7.2 or Pinnacle's NEW Studio 11. Pinnacle claims that Studio 11 is ready to work with AVCHD (NOT!). What a joke. I shot a 3 minute video - the file was recognized by Studio but took 10 minutes to convert so Studio could read it. Well guess what - on hitting "Play" the video would surge and pulse (in other words) play a little video then freeze - play a little then freeze. I have a HP Media Center PC m1180n with a 3.2 Pentium Processor with a gig of ram and still no luck.

Be Careful - if you buy this camera you may find your self shelling out a lot more for a new computer and if you can find a video software program that will play and edit AVCHD files.

It looks like we've got the cart before the horse again! So don't throw yourself on the bleeding edge of new technology at your expense. I for one am waiting till I know for sure that this new AVCHD video format will work with my PC and video editing software.

If you're smart you will take an SD chip with you and film some footage at the store and then take it home to see if it will play on your computer with your video editing software.

Good Luck and may the force be with you!

Love it. Easy to use amazing picture, works great with my mac. Light but hardy. The battery life is okay make sure u get an extra. I am using a removable 16G card and haven't filled it yet.
It's the best camcorder I ever used.

Don't let the few negative reviews out there fool you, this camcorder is amazing for family recording.
Pros:
- Just the right level of storage built into the camcorder, with room to grow in the SDHC card. Do you really want to come back from a vacation with 8 hours of video? Really? Cause I think 30 minutes into reviewing your footage you will be kicking yourself. I could be wrong, but I don't think so...
- This thing is tiny, about the size of a can of coke. Its so small in fact, all camcorder bags we looked at were cavernous in comparison to it. We ended up purchasing a Lowepro SLR Lens case to hold it. Fits like a glove.
- In bright to moderate light, the video quality is just amazing. It really is. Sharp as can be and the 12x optical zoom really grabs picture detail. HD really shines on this recorder.
- I was expecting poor stills, but they are actually pretty good. Not as good as a $300 camera, but so good I would think twice about bringing a regular still camera on a vacation.
- I have seen some complain about the ergonomics. I just don't get it. Pulling the hand strap tight so that the top of the strap rests directly below your knuckles, situates the camera so that it rests on the fleshy part of your palm, your thumb naturally lands on the record button and your index finger lands on the Zoom rocker. Perfect!
- It's dead silent. When you record in a silent room, you record silence. There is no click of a hard drive or purr of a tape unit.

Cons:
- Get the large capacity battery. Just get it. Don't debate, just buy it. Its not really an option.
- In low light you get some picture noise. It picks up available light very well, but also introduces noise. A Sony recorder is green in low-light, so pick your poison.
- On a Mac, there is really no way to nicely disconnect the device. I just eject the internal and SDHC mounted drives and pull the plug. No problems yet, but you do get the warning telling you not to do that...
- No travel charger. I picked one up, but this is an option because you can use the power adapter and charge via the recorder.
- Image stabilizer is just okay. At full 12x zoom, you really have to work to be still and pan slowly. The device is very light, so there is not much mass to keep it steady.

Notes:
- On the Mac OS, I found iMovie to work pretty well. It makes intermediate files which are about 5 times larger than the raw AVCHD files. To save hard drive space, I backup the raw files to DVD and delete the intermediate files when I have finished my edited home movie
- Interestingly enough, if you copy the video to the SDHC card and plug that chip into a PS3, you can browse your RAW footage directly on your HDTV. (I know many of you don't have a PS3, but if you do, its a huge Bonus). Instant reviewing of content!
- If you buy Toast 9 and buy the HD plug-in, you can create a Blu-Ray video disk. This allows you to put 20 minutes of HD Video on a REGULAR DVDR. If you put this disk in your PS3, it will allow you to watch your footage with DVD Menus. This uses the RAW footage, so you get very sharp video. This ONLY works on a PS3!!! As an added bonus, if you put this DVDR into your Mac and launch iMovie, iMovie will actually act as if that DVDR is a camcorder and prompts you to import the video as if you were pulling from the camera. Pretty Swanky if you ask me.

Overall, my opinion is that this is the best consumer grade HD Camcorder currently on the market.

My average review is based on the fact that I do not
have that much experience on this HD camcorder. I am
not positive I will keep this particularly after the
comments about the HF100 being the same only without
paying for the internal memory which is a premium
price but not a good tradeoff. My local store only
had the HF10.

So far the ergonomics are acceptable. I played with
the modes and at 1080p 24fps I seemed to get an
excellent picture outputted to my Samsung 52" LCD
display.

There seem to be many knowledgeable and experienced
people posting here so I will take a moment to ask
or confirm some comments I have seen posted in the
different reviews on the HF10 and HF100 boards.

1) Are the still images taken on this camera useless
for manipulation on a PC to common formats - GIF or
JPG? What good is that if it is true, which leads to
believe it must not be true. What good are images
that cannot me used on web pages or printed?

2) How to edit the video. Currently I just have a
PC and I want to be able to at a minimum trim the
scenes to take out junk. I do not know how to or
need to do fancy stuff just yet, but if there is
nothing that will edit the files on a PC in HD mode,
again, what good is this camera?

How often does one want to just play video from
a camera to the TV?

I was waiting a long time for a camera capable of recording 1920x1080, good video quality, small size, no tapes, ...
This is it!
Much of it is derived from the HV and HG series, so it is not version 1.
The videos I have taken so far are at par with the quality I get from FIOS TV HD channels.
The only drawback is the sotware. It does not work well with vista. I can only retrieve the content from the camera, but not play, the software hangs. M2TS files play well with PowerDVD 8, so it is ok for now.
The software works ok on XP, but my XP PC does not have the horse power.
The camera itself plays the videos best when directly linked to the TV with HDMI. HDMI is much better that component cable.
The battery is not enough to shoot and fill the 16GB, so I bought the 819, but for now it does last as long as they say in the specs.
I would recommend to invest in the clear filter, because the worst damage you can do to the camera, is get a spec or a scratch on the lens. You can live with scratches and dings on the camera body, but guard that lens like your own eyes. You can zoom and see dust from 20 feet away, that is how detailed the video is, imagine a spec on the lens.

The usability of the camera is great. I am amazed how they managed to pack all of the connections and buttons on that little body. You need to hold the camera on you hands to appreciate how small and funtional it is.
Pictures online would not do.

The video quality is great, indoors and outdoors. Indoors, I was surprised how well the video looked with just a couple of 60Watt bulbs in the room. I found that the CINE mode makes the video better indoors where the sensor tends to show atrifacts due to the low light. But outdoors it does not do much. The 24p and 30p modes need a tripod and very slow panning of the camera, otherwise the video seems blurry. But it may be because of seetings that I have yet to try.

I always shoot in the FXP mode, 1920x1080, I do not see a reason to use the 1440x1080.

The files are AVCHD (*.m2ts), and the from what I read online is a blue-ray related format. I save the files to hard disk and when software gets better with AVCHD, they can be burned to DVDs and played by blu-ray players. So it is a kind of future-proof.

I would definatelly recommend this camera. Most of the negative reviews are focused on specific features, like bad sofware, etc. You have to judge on the big picture, and the picture is crystal clear, 1920x1080, brilliant colors, that makes 1080p TV I bought a few months ago, even more worth it.

This camcorder really is quite fantastic. I previously had the HG10 and was disappointed by it mainly due to it's low light performance and it's tendency to produce smeared / ghosted images - fast moving objects seemed to leave a trail behind them, particularly in low light. Fast forward to the HF10 and I am a much happier person.

The HF10 has quite good low light performance and I have not noticed a problem with smearing or ghosting like the HG 10. The camera is very small and lightweight. Small enough to almost be completely unobtrusive, so much so that I've now got into the habit of just taking it along and putting it in the pocket of my cargo pants or cargo shorts. I could go on and on...

The only downfall of this camera is also the primary reason to get camera - AVCHD. Put simply, AVCHD enables you to take full resolution HD video with a tiny camera using removable memory in a relatively small file size. However, support for editing AVCHD is quite spotty right now at the CONSUMER level. The major vendors - Pinnacle, Ulead, Sony (Vegas), etc all have offerings claiming support for AVCHD, but all really only offer pretty weak and somewhat slow support. You can tell that their AVCHD support is still a serious work in progress. Adobe premiere elements doesn't support it at all as of this writing and when they do I would expect that it'll take a few patches to work through issues. iMovie on the Mac pseudo supports it. It can transcode the AVCHD to quicktime HD and work from there. This means a much, much larger file size and doing the transcoding is pretty painful on everything but a multiprocessor Mac Pro Workstation. I have a dual core 2GB macbook pro purchased in early 2008 and it works like a dream with everything BUT AVCHD... Then it turns to molasses. Windows Movie Maker doesn't even try to support AVCHD.

Canon does include a viewer app that can also export standard MPEG at 1280 * 720, but not 1920 * 1080. In other words, the software is good enough to create a version that most video editing programs can work with, but it can't do any editing with the AVCHD itself.

So, my final take at this moment in time is that the camera itself does a great job creating AVCHD, but you will have to suffer the poor AVCHD support by video editing software vendors.

We love this camcorder... very easy to use... amazing video and very easy to download and organize... battery is good... wish it had more memory, but 16G SDHC solves the problem... and quite handy...

This is the most wonderful camcorder. I was torn btw this and the HF100 for reasons I won't bore you with. I am not a professional photographer so from my point of view there are excellent options for manual settings. In addition it's flexible enough for my technology challenged mother to take great video. I was immediately pleased with clarity and depth, you can't beat a Canon lens. I own a Mac and have not had any issues editing, but again I'm just shooting family footage.

I just received the HF10 from Amazon. In a word - amazing. I did a lot of research over the last year into different formats and models. I was a little hesitant to purchase this due to the price tag. But I have no regrets. I would strongly recommend this camera. Next purchase is the underwater housing.

So I've had my HF10 for about a month now. I'm extremely impressed with video and audio quality. Provided you are shooting with enough light, playback in full 1080P is amazing. Low light performance leaves a little to be desired. Autofocus hunts a little too much, again mostly in low light. The onboard light casts a strange blue glow that my wife calls "The Alien Abduction Cam".

The camera is extremely light (other reviews have said the HF10 is about the size of a beer can - true that). Both my wife and I have no issues with the size. She has small hands, mine are a little ogrish.

The fact that the PS3 directly supports playback from the SDHC cards is a major bonus (I'm assuming other Blu-Ray players with SDHC slots will do the same). No need to burn off to a DVD just to check out something you've just shot.

As for the AVCHD codec. Argh, what a pain it is to try and edit this stuff. The codec requires lots of horsepower to edit natively and converting to HDV or WMV/AVI either takes too much time or lots of HD space. There are plenty of solutions out there that will edit AVCHD natively, but most of them are just plain garbage. I've tried several suites - Vegas, ULead, Studio Plus - but have found them to be unstable or user-unfriendly. I typically use Premiere Elements 4 on my PC for this stuff, but Adobe doesn't yet support AVCHD.

For now, I've been backing up the raw M2TS files to a couple of mirrored external back-up drives on my PC, then using iMovie 2008 on a MacBookPro to convert to Apple's Intermediate Code (dropping from 1920x1080 to 960x540 in the process - yes, you WILL notice). From there, its all easy editing but its still a painful workaround. Hopefully, Apple and Adobe will add direct support for AVCHD in the future, but then...I was thinking the same thing last year.

If you can overlook those issues (I almost couldn't, which is why I didn't get an AVCHD 'corder last year), you'll be rewarded with some spectacular video.

I've had this camera for about a month now and have really enjoyed using it. It is light weight and turns on pretty quickly. Here is my quick review:

Pros: Small, lightweight, nice view screen, lens gets covered automatically, internal memory holds 2 hours of footage but you can add another card, quality is really good. Pretty good in low light situations. Steady shot is okay.

Cons: Had to upgrade the battery because one hour of power is not enough with the standard battery. The auto color balance doesn't always do a good job, especially when in nature. On one of my shoots people looked a little purple. I took care of this by setting the white balance manually when I'm outside.

Overall: I'm very glad I bought it and I would recommend it with the above understanding.

This is an excellent camera, it fulfills all my needs, I'd have really appreciated a few more options but I can't really complain.(I wanted to be able to mount the camera upside down or sideways and would have liked a feature to flip the video so that the resulting pictures were always the correct orientation when played back... but the feature is not there... ah well), I'd also have liked a 'stop frame' mode, take a shot every 10 seconds and pull them together as a movie...
Other than these 'missing' features the camera is excellent, the small size, the ruggedness, the battery life, the video clarity, the image stabilization, and the low light behavior are all excellent (you will notice graininess at low light but all cameras do this and this is not the worst by any means)
My only gripe is that the video standard used in the resulting movie files is not very widely used yet so finding programs that can edit the video is difficult or expensive.

I am amazed with this product. Clear and very sharp images, lighweight and with a superb design. I'm glad I have bought this camera. Canon, once again, exceeded expectations.
I also bought, together with the camera, the SanDisk Ultra II 16GB/15MB SDHC Card and the Canon BP-819 Lithium Ion Battery, which I higly recommend.
Points for attention:
1. Focal Length: from my perspective, the camera should have a shorter focal length. 40mm is too limited. I'm considering buying the wide angle converter.
2. Video editing sofware: since this camera shoots in AVCHD, pay attention on the software you'll have to buy in order to edit your films. The one that comes with the camera is just ok. For Mac users it's a no brainer, but for PC user, like me, be aware that Adobe Premier does not edit AVCHD files. You'll have to chose either Sony Vegas Platinum or Pinnacle to do so. An upgrade in your computer may be also needed, especially for Pinnacle.
Bottom line? Buy it! But also order an extra battery and SD card to guarantee you don't miss anything!

I have quite a selection of HD camcorders from Sony, JVC, and Panasonic. I also have the Canon HV10 and HV20 HDV camcorders, which are as amazing as that sounds incompatible in HD mode. HD has creates the most amazing confusion on the format front. Also capturing became very painful with this mess. Enter AVCHD. After tremendous disappointment over the last year with AVCHD compatibility for video editing - particularly on the Mac - this has finally been resolved. I use now Final Cut Pro 6.04 and iMovie to directly import the AVCHD files into the editing software. The winner in quality, handling and usability is for me the Canon HF10. The picture quality in FXP mode - the highest quality setting - is excellent and beats both HV10 and HV20. Compared to the Pro-Camera Panasonic HVX-200 I see very little difference. The biggest distinction is low-light noise. But also here the HF10 beats all other AVCHD camcorders.

A bit unpleasant is the requirement to have the power cable connected while USB use, but that must be related to problems with potential file corruption should the battery fail. I would recommend the HF10 over the HF100 because of its internal memory.

Finally AVCHD has reached the mainstream. I wonder for how long until another format makes it obsolete ...

This is my first HD Camcorder. Picture is really good and I like the HDAVC format. You can play the HDAVC directly on PS3, just plug the memory card into the PS3 USB port, it instantly recognized and you can play the video with HD quality picture. You can also use the come along software to create a DVD or Blueray DVD. I done with the regular DVD, although the format is not bluray, it is 16:9 and picture is quite good on my 40' LCD. I did not render the Bluray DVD option, I can imagine the quality should be way better. But why bother, I just plug my memory card into PS3 and the result is the same.
The only thing I regret was, I brought the HF10, I should have brought the HF100 which is identical without the internal memory. I used the external memory card all the time so the extra money I paid for the internal memory model is a null point.

First of all I'm quite sure that image-quality-wise it's the best camcorder one can buy below 2K. It is also probably the best compact camcorder and a great value.
Downloading videos from internal memory is more painful than it should be and the included decoder cannot run smoothly enough on my new dual-core desktop. Some controls are well designed ... but these are fairly minor drawbacks.
One serious problem with it is the lens. It is very narrow. Horizontally is it's about 42mm equivalent at its widest end. This is bad in itself but is particularly problematic for a 16:9 camera. Basically you need to be about 20 feet away to be able to film a 5 foot person in full height.
I imagine that's the price for a fairly useless 12x zoom.
A wide-angle lens is a must. It does improve things a bit (by 0.7 factor) but at the price of significant distortion, loss of (so precious) light, extra bulk, about $150. It also ruins the nice look of the camera.
One more necessary accessory is 2 hour battery. I can't see why Canon is charging $100 for a less than 10$ battery. Do yourself a favor and buy a noname alternative for a fraction of a cost.

The picture is as expected for a compact HD camera. In full daylight very sharp but this is not a low light video cam. Import to Final Cut Pro on my power Mac was easy and uneventful. It just imported and that was it. Controls are a little awkward. Generally I am happy with this consumer level cam.

Wow, what can I say, once you go HD you'll never go back. Great camcorder from an ergonomic perspective and I mirror much of what others have said but I'm going to focus on a few things others have not yet said...mainly that I'm a MacPro user and yes indeed the SW to play & edit isn't included for Mac OS but it is for Windows. You'll have to buy something like iLife ($79.95 on Amazon) to play your video on your computer and then edit it. How crazy is that? Free for Win, but $80 for Mac! The bigger issue is that I can't seem to find an answer to what I think would be part of a normal workflow. That is, I want to simply use my Mac to archive my .mts (ACVHD) files and then bring them back (unedited) to the camera so I can view them on my HD TV via the HDMI cable. YOU CANT DO THIS! I spoke with Canon support and they said and I quote "We claim no compatibility with Macs WHATSOEVER" but the Pixma software included does allow you to download to WIndows, play and move it back to the camcorder". The only way to view a clip if you have a Mac is to burn the archived video on to DVD and then view it. HOW CRAZY is that!? My kids just want to occasionally view an old video now and then and what faster way than to simply copy the particular clip back to the camera temporarily to view? NO, you have to burn a DVD! Per Canon support "copying from a Mac is meant to be a ONE-WAY process".

If you use Windows, I'd say it worth buying. If you use a Mac, WAIT!! Same on Canon for not recognizing an important user base when releasing a THIRD generation ACVHD camcorder!

The camera is a dream: small (maybe too small?): fits in the palm of your hand. Pure memory storage of video is relaly quite nice, but have a large hard drive ready. Now that drives are cheap and plentiful, no problem. You will need a good software set to work the HD well, not to mention a fast processor. I got Sony's Vegas suite: works well. Still images with the camera are fine, though this is not a still camera with all the features you'd expect from one. Focus is great, auto exposure settings work fine, the display is great. Battery life is fine, though I did pick up an extra larger battery for field work. Works ok at night. Works better during daytime. Audio is ok for field work though wind sensative. Useful in many ways.

This is a marvelous camcorder. Rather than repeat what some of the other reviews have mentioned, I thought I'd explain how to import video on the Mac, because it wasn't obvious to me. First, you must have an Intel based Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). You also need iMovie '08, which comes with new Macs. If you're running an older version of Mac OS X (such as Tiger) or have an older version of iMovie, or have a PowerPC based Mac, you won't be able to import video from this camera.

To import video, attach the camcorder to the Mac with the USB cable that's included with the camcorder. Make sure you plug your camcorder into AC power, running from the battery won't work. Set the mode dial on the camera to video playback (the little blue camcorder icon). Turn on the camcorder. Now open the LCD display on the camcorder, and you'll see it's asking you a question: use the joystick to choose "computer" for where you're connecting the USB cable. I spent some time the first time I wanted to import wondering why iMovie couldn't see the camcorder until I finally tried opening the LCD screen and noticed this question. Once you've made this choice, iMovie will detect the camcorder and will be able to import video, and you can do the rest from iMovie.

The camera has met and/or exceded my expectations. It's light weight, easy to handle and the operation and functions are very intuitive and easy to learn. The sound quality of the built in mic was a pleasnt suprise. The HD playback is quite impressive! The free software provided is, well, free. The cost of a backup battery is a little stiff, but technology advances will most likely bring the cost down in the near future.

This is a good solid camera. My only complaint is that when viewed up close on an HD TV some video compression artefacts are visible. I don't know how this compares to other HD cameras using AVC, I assume most of them would have such artefacts as well. Other than that the image quality is really good.

We wanted a camera and camcorder combined, that was portable and likely to be used all the time. The HF10 is great. We have already captured some great memories and find we use it everyday as it is small, light and easy to use. The colours it captures are pretty good too.

After a nightmare with Sony cameras, I've decided to go with Canon and I was very right. This camera is amazingly easy to understand. Canon did a great job with user interface. (If you ever had any Canon product, they all very consistent in term of user interface).

Quality is just outstanding. Having 16Gb build in and Flash makes it 32GB. I love the option of moving files back and forth between those two memories. Flash drive is definitely better and faster.

I have a mac and this camera couldn't be any friendlier than it is. Mac recognizes two Flash Drives as one for Photos and one for Videos so you not gonna import all in one mix media. All software works great with this camera.

If you been looking for simple, yet great camera, this is the one. Thank you Canon, you just earned yourself a loyal user.

I've had this camera for about a month and have shot numerous short videos in a variety of situations using the Easy mode. I'm very pleased with the results thus far.

The good:
Video quality - I couldn't be happier with the overall results
Image stabilization works well
Zoom is smooth and can be done very slowly or very quickly
Handles low light really well (I was able to get the fireworks the neighbors were setting off at 10:30 at night)
Start up time - you're shooting after only 5 or 6 seconds when booting up cold, faster if it's in suspend mode (which ends after 10 minutes or so of disuse)
The camera's weight and size are remarkable
Solid construction

The okay:
Still images
Audio quality with built-in mic
Software support (I use Premiere Elements 4.0 which to date doesn't support the native AVCHD files - I have to downsample to DV-AVIs... but I'll still have the originals for when the software catches up)

The bad:
Battery life (with the default battery, though isn't a problem with the highly recommended extended-life battery)
Once card or internal capacity is reached, you have to manually switch the camera over to the other through the settings

Overall - totally worth the money (even with the bigger battery and a fat SDHC card). I know that I'm going to be able to enjoy the quality of the video I'm shooting for years to come.

I am more than happy with this camcorder - perfect picture and very easy to use!

I purchased this camera about 2 months ago and my family has really enjoyed it. For a high-end general purpose home camcorder, I think the picture and sound quality are excellent. My friends have been very impressed when I plug the camera directly into my 40in. LCD HD television using the included component cable. Instead of worrying about HD DVDs, burners, players, etc., I just transfer the files to my computer, back them up on an external hard drive, and when I want to watch them I can transfer them back to the camcorder and plug it into the TV. The m2ts file format can be a bit tricky to work with, but there are free and/or inexpensive ways to convert to other file formats if necessary. Eventually I will probably make the leap to Blu-Ray for storage purposes when the prices come down.

This camcorder is simply great. Small, excellent video quality, and an extremely convenient storage. Like many other costumers, I was divided between the HF100 and HF10 models, but here is a definitive difference that, after two moths, made my choice the right one: I've lost a very important recording with a defective Transcend SDHC 16gb card when plugging it to my computer. So, first of all, I recommend buying cards from traditional brands, to avoid headaches. Second, as the HF10 has 16gb of internal memory, you're able to record to it and then copy the files to the SDHC card with the camera, before plugging it to the computer. With this simple procedure, the operation of transfering files to the computer becomes safer, as you have a backup.

The Canon HF10 seemed a good choice for mounting on a motorcycle during a vacation trip due to the flash drive memory. Few moving parts, light weight, etc.. Someone else had said that he'd gotten this camcorder and tried a handlebar mount without success due to vehicle vibration. Therefore, I bought a tankmount, thinking it might be less susceptible to shakes. Plus, shooting through the windshield would provide it some protection from bugs and rocks. Unfortunately, this lovely little instrument is so light and my V-twin engine so enthusiastic that most of the video that I shot while the engine was running is blurred from irritatingly to horribly. Perhaps I should have contrived a body harness or helmet harness? The thing took wonderful stills, although it is so small and light that when zoomed in it is like trying to aim a small handgun. My previous camcorder was a full size VHS unit, so I wasn't expecting to have to concentrate on steady aim quite so much. Handheld videos came out well. The bundled software is not good at viewing the videos. The rendition it gives on my computer screen seems to be a rough approximation of the actual content. Perhaps it's my computer and not the software? The software is very limited, too. It won't let you copy video files from the computer to DVD. It only seems to allow direct copying from the camera to DVD. I haven't looked for better software yet. The included battery charger requires plugging in to the camcorder itself with the battery installed. It also allows operating the camcorder on external power. To charge batteries while using the camcorder with a spare battery requires an accessory charger.

Long review: 20 min. | I got the HF11 video camera in urgent need for a specific occasion.
The 60th fireworks event of Suwako lake in the Nagano Prefecture in Japan on 15th August 2008. (the offical sale start in Japan)

---
Executive Summary:

Canon with its long term experience in Imaging seemed to me like "The natural Choice to make".

The navigation is intuitive and exactly as the digital camera products.
Most users are able to use the product within minutes !!
The video camera integrates a huge amount of intelligent functions that ensure the quality of your video experience. (image stabilizer, light sensitivity sensor, variable zoom speeds, etc.)

The weight with 380gr. is not the lightest in its class but well acceptable even from ladies or kids.

The HF11 comes with some minor usability hitches that I am confident will be solved with future versions.

Also, keep in mind that editing that data bulk might become resource intensive.
You might need to look into additional software codec solutions like Divx, Xvid etc. to be able to share the joy with your friends on DVD etc.

Nevertheless, the Imaging quality is unlike anything I have seen before and easily justifies the product alone.


--- more details below ---

I got the HF11 video camera in urgent need for a specific occasion.
The 60th fireworks event of Suwako lake in the Nagano Prefecture in Japan on 15th August 2008. (the offical sale start in Japan)

Everybody ever been to Japans Fireworks knows that especially on anniversary events there is supposed to be something special.
I wanted to capture the magic of the Suwako lake scenario, the blue sky and the fireworks.

I needed a video camera with

1) a small form factor (380gr.),
2) superb imaging quality (HD) and
3) SIMPLE intuitive navigation for first time users.


So I started with an overview of all makers that I was aware off (Canon, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sony, Victor).

Most Sony products are based on memory sticks, so that was a quick K.O. criteria.
Hitachis products are mostly Hybrid media based which means extra weight and more complexity.
Victors (JVC) products seemed to have to many features and also the usage of Victors products didn't seem to intuitive.

That left us with Panasonic and Canon as choice. Both good product makers.
Panasonic / National is known to create anything that has electronic in it.
Canon is doing only Imaging related products (Cameras, Video Camera, printers, Copy, fax etc.)

Again, as a first video camera I was looking for something that is simple and intuitive to use.
We already have used the Canon Ixy 2000IS Digital camera and are extremely impressed with the 170gr. ultra compact wonder that produces 1024*768 videos !!

However, I have read on the Web that CMOS Technology is not as light sensitive as CCD on the one side,
But cheaper to produce and less power intensive on the other side. --> That means a longer battery life.


Regarding Image quality I was not sure how high or low I should put my expectations - especially for recording fireworks.
You can imagine that recording fireworks at the dawn can be a tricky business.

For the start its all about getting right the contrast and dynamic between the background (sky) and the firework itself.
This requires a fast precise focus (similar dynamic to sports) , a high resolution and light sensitivity.

Luckily all I had to do was I unpacked the product, ( I charged the spare battery the night before) and set the camera into the fireworks mode.
With the included quick guide (little foldable instruction sheet) I was able to do it in a minute !!

The fact that the Canon includes 8 preset modes (Portrait, Sports, Night, Snow, Beach, Sunset, Spotlight, and Fireworks) reflects that they have spend a considerable amount of time researching the customer needs.

Canon is known for its vivid colours and so I am pleased to confirm that the colours are stunning.
I am unable to say how much the colours are off from the "real" thing but they must be pretty close.
That is true even - or should I say especially - for the fireworks, sunsets etc. or in short for environments with less light.


Simple navigation was required for below reasons:

A) Because as a first time user you don't want to study half day before actually being able to use a product
B) The product was delivered just 8 hours before the firework event and we had a 3 hour ride and a 2 hour walk in front of us with few time spare to study the product. (Spare Battery BP-819 and charger was purchased the day before)
C) My wive wants to use it ;-)

The display is easy viewable from any angle. It has a joystick like navigation on the left to it for your settings.

Under the display you will see 5 buttons (Funcs, Play/Pause, Rewind, Forward, Stop).

The video cameras mode can be chosen by a dial button (Play photos, Play Video, Record Videos, Record Photos).
If you buy the product in Japan (IVIS HF11) the included software comes for Mac and Windows in English and Japanese.

Up until here everything went without a hitch.

Whats disturbing:

1) The zoom button on top of the video camera feels like it has been used for years.
During the recording I often touched it accidentally, so I would really like to turn the buttons function off.

The same function (zooming) can be done with the buttons under the screen and the remote control (included).

2) Once internal memory capacity is reached, you have to manually switch the camera to the other memory.

3) One "Limitation" I encountered was that the lens covered only a third of what I wanted to record from the firework.
(We were 200m only from the ramp). For that special case you need the WD-H372 Wide converter set.

The sound itself was recorded beautifully (better than expected).

4) I consider the digital zoom (200x) more a gadget than an actually usefulness.That is because its only useful for very specific cases.
First you must have the camera on a hard surface in order to be able to focus and even than the digital zoom shows its limitations.

Instead of including a not so useful 200x digital zoom the lens range should have been chosen differently (wider) and the optical zoom should have been increased, but that was probably a cost question ;-)


The difference between HF11, HF10 and HF100 is the built in memory (32GB,16GB and no memory) and the additional bitrate of 24mbps (MXP) for the HF11. Please follow up on the web which quality fits your needs.


Finally, if Canon would apply the same colour palette to the video cameras as they did to the digital cameras (Champagne, Titan, Coffee cream, Pastell colours etc.) than even female users might start to make inroads with the ultra compact camcorder ;-)

The Canon VIXIA HF10 is a great camera. It has many pros and very few cons.
The pros are: the fantastic HD camera resolution and color, easy to use 3MP camera, beautiful LCD display, and general ease of use.
The cons are: the power cable needs to be plugged in to transfer video and pictures (why?!?), the display needs to be opened to use the camera (it shuts itself down otherwise), and the limited battery (only about an hour with HD recording).
All in all, a good purchase.

Long review: 10 min.| I got the HF11 video camera in urgent need for a specific occasion.
The 60th fireworks event of Suwako lake / Nagano Prefecture in Japan on 15th August 2008. (offical sale start in Japan)

As the overall package Canon with its long term experience in Imaging seemed like "The natural Choice to make".

The HF11's navigation is intuitive and exactly as the digital camera products.
Most users are able to use the product within minutes !!
The video camera integrates a huge amount of intelligent functions that ensure the quality of your video experience.

- image stabilizer,
- light sensitivity sensor,
- profiles
- variable zoom speeds,
- remaining battery status info,
- alignment markers in the screen


On top of that the video cameras body weight with 380gr. and the size of your favourite beverage is well acceptable even for ladies or kids hands.

The HF11 does not come with any major usability hitches but for video editing features you might want to look into additional software editing and codec converter solutions like Divx, Xvid etc. to be able to share the joy with your friends on DVD etc.


The major salespoints of this video camera are

- Imaging quality (resolution and smoothness of video)
- Canons colours
- Usability
- Usability and
- Usability

My subjective opinion is that the Imaging quality is unlike anything I have seen before and easily justifies the product alone.
The intelligent functions and the exceptionally good design make the HF11, the HF10 or the HF100 the natural choice for beginners, amateurs and professionals.

This is the quality customers are expecting from a long term Imaging company like Canon !!


As requested from comments I have shortened this review. Please see my How to guide for a more details.

So I am a dad taking video of my family. I wanted the best HD camcorded possible. I originally purchased the Panasonic HDC-SD5. It has beautiful color AS LONG AS YOU ARE OUTSIDE WITH GOOD LIGHTING. Any video shot indoors are pixelated. In fact, even outside shadows pixelate - like if somebody is wearing a hat and their face is shaded. So I spent the money and purchased the Vixia HF10, then shot side-by-side video inside and outside for comparison. Figured I'd return the HF10 if it didn't give the results I wanted. Results: the HF10 is MUCH MUCH better quality in low light conditions like indoors. The Panasonic SD5 has slightly (but noticeable) more vibrant colors in well lit outdoor conditions. For me, the low light advantages of the HF10 far outweigh the perfect/vibrant colors of the SD5 outside. In fact, if I wasn't comparing two videos side-by-side I would not notice the more vibrant colors of the SD5.

I've benefited from the great user reviews here at amazon so wanted to give back. Hope it helps others when making their purchase decision. Now I have an $800 Panasonic "stand-by" video camera I guess :)

Long review: 10 min.| I got the HF11 video camera in urgent need for a specific occasion.
The 60th fireworks event of Suwako lake / Nagano Prefecture in Japan on 15th August 2008. (offical sale start in Japan)

As the overall package Canon with its long term experience in Imaging seems like "The natural Choice to make".

The HF11's navigation is intuitive and exactly as the digital camera products.
Most users are able to use the product within minutes !!
The video camera integrates a huge amount of intelligent functions that ensure the quality of your video experience.

- image stabilizer,
- light sensitivity sensor,
- profiles
- variable zoom speeds,
- remaining battery status info,
- alignment markers in the screen


On top of that the video cameras body weight with 380gr. and the size of your favourite beverage is well acceptable even for ladies or kids hands.

The HF11 does not come with any major usability hitches but for video editing features you might want to look into additional video editing software and/or codec converter solutions (f.e. DIVX, XVID etc.) to be able to share the joy with your friends on DVD etc.


The major sales points of this video camera are

- Superb Imaging quality (resolution, smoothness of video)
- Good Low light sensitiveness.
- Canons colours
- Sound is over average (better than expected).
- Usability
- Usability and ...
- Usability ;-)


HF11, HF10 or HF100 - which one ?

The difference between HF11, HF10 and HF100 is the built in memory (32GB,16GB and no memory) and the additional bitrate of 24mbps (MXP) for the HF11.

The HF11 is for those that can not take any chances and dont want to compromise. You can expect nothing less than the best quality from a number one maker.

This product will give you the peace of mind that you have the best product currently available and the extra stretch when you need it for extreme situations f.e. in low light environments.

The Imaging quality and especially the good low light sensitiveness is unlike anything I have seen before and easily justifies the product alone.

When you record fireworks and you watch VERY carefully you can eventually see every now and then the nuances the camera misses out but there is no product out there that can do it better at least for another 6-12 months !!

Unless you want to use the HF11 and its 24mbps feature you might find that the HF10 or even the HF100 gives you satisfying results for an even lower price.

The intelligent functions, the built-in usability and the exceptionally good design make the HF100, the HF10 or even the HF11 the natural choice for beginners, amateurs and entry professionals.

These products enable ANYBODY to produce stunning HD films.
This is the quality customers are expecting from a long term Imaging company like Canon !!


As requested from comments I have shortened this review. Please see my How to guide for a more details including ALL the pros and cons.

One terrific camera. Months of research paid of 100 times over with this little gem. A palm size HD camcorder that is user friendly, takes great movies, and under a grand. Enough said, buy one.

Long review: 10 min.| I got the HF11 video camera in urgent need for a specific occasion.
The 60th fireworks event of Suwako lake / Nagano Prefecture in Japan on 15th August 2008. (offical sale start in Japan)

As the overall package Canon with its long term experience in Imaging seems like "The natural Choice to make".

The HF11's navigation is intuitive and exactly as the digital camera products.
Most users are able to use the product within minutes !!
The video camera integrates a huge amount of intelligent functions that ensure the quality of your video experience.

- image stabilizer,
- light sensitivity sensor,
- profiles
- variable zoom speeds,
- remaining battery status info,
- alignment markers in the screen


On top of that the video cameras body weight with 380gr. and the size of your favourite beverage is well acceptable even for ladies or kids hands.

The HF11 does not come with any major usability hitches but for video editing features you might want to look into additional video editing software and/or codec converter solutions (f.e. DIVX, XVID etc.) to be able to share the joy with your friends on DVD etc.


The major sales points of this video camera are

- Superb Imaging quality (resolution, smoothness of video)
- Good Low light sensitiveness.
- Canons colours
- Sound is over average (better than expected).
- Usability
- Usability and ...
- Usability ;-)


HF11, HF10 or HF100 - which one ?

The difference between HF11, HF10 and HF100 is the built in memory (32GB,16GB and no memory) and the additional bitrate of 24mbps (MXP) for the HF11.

The HF11 is for those that can not take any chances and dont want to compromise. You can expect nothing less than the best quality from a number one maker.

This product will give you the peace of mind that you have the best product currently available and the extra stretch when you need it for extreme situations f.e. in low light environments.

The Imaging quality and especially the good low light sensitiveness is unlike anything I have seen before and easily justifies the product alone.

When you record fireworks and you watch VERY carefully you can eventually see every now and then the nuances the camera misses out but there is no product out there that can do it better at least for another 6-12 months !!

Unless you want to use the HF11 and its 24mbps feature you might find that the HF10 or even the HF100 gives you satisfying results for an even lower price.

The intelligent functions, the built-in usability and the exceptionally good design make the HF100, the HF10 or even the HF11 the natural choice for beginners, amateurs and entry professionals.

These products enable ANYBODY to produce stunning HD films.
This is the quality customers are expecting from a long term Imaging company like Canon !!


As requested from comments I have shortened this review. Please see my How to guide for a more details including ALL the pros and cons.

I love this camcorder. My previous one was a Sony, bought some years ago. I wanted to get a hi-def machine so I did some online research and this seemed to be scoring highly, and also had a good price from Amazon. I was also keen to go for the AVCHD as that is becoming more widely compatible. I am impressed with the picture quality. It is easy to transfer files to the PC, using the memory card or with a cable, but you need to use the software that comes with it. The flash memory allows the camera to be very compact but it has a nice feel to it, even though I have quite large hands. The menus could be a little bit more ituitive, but they are not bad. I would recommend this to a friend.

The camera takes fantasticly clear videos. The instruction booklet is worthless, and the software that came with the camera keeps freezing and booting me out. I purchased different software,and love the video. I still cannot figure out how to take still pictures while recording video.

Do not hesitate do buy the HF10 camera. It produces Awesome images.
Crispy, clear, good colors (little magenta in some images), but AWESOME!

My wife and I love this product! We used to have a MiniDV camcorder and extracting the film from the camera was always a headache. This flash memory camcorder allows fast transfer through USB 2.0 and makes life much easier. The capacity of the internal flash memory is enough for our family use, as I do not tend to make very long movies, and usually I do not use the highest resolution. The battery capacity is also enough for me.
The image stablizer is very helpful when shooting at high magnifications, if you do not want to carry a tripod. The performance under low light conditions is very good. Several white balance options and color temperature schemes give the user plenty of choices to approach the true colors.
The cons: 1. The accompanying software is too fundamental. I only use it to do the file transfers. 2. When doing the transfers, you need to plug in the power cord, open the LCD panel, and select "transfer to PC" every time because it's not the default selection. This is somehow awkward. 3. The joystick is not easy to press down (it can be pressed down as a button to confirm the selection). The touch screens on the SONY models are more easy to operate on, but I'm satisfied with the several hundred dollars I saved with this model.

I'm a longstanding fan of Canon still cameras having spend some significant coin on two point and shoot and one SLR so when in the market to replace my Sony digital Hi8 video camera, the Canon brand was the first I checked out.

My primary requirements were full High Definition, no media with moving parts. I did not want a CD or DVD burner, I did not want tape, and I did not want to gamble with a hard drive (I'm in IT and am very familiar with drive failure rates... good, but not likely to last the 5-7yrs I want to get out of the camera).

While I like Sony's home AV gear, I've not been a fan of their tendency to use proprietary media.... sure it's often great quality, but I don't want to have to buy a ton of accessories to integrate with current and future systems. The Canon offered nice support for SDHC media (of which cards I already own for a point and shoot and phone). It also introduced me to AVCHD which, from what I can tell is the next thing in HD video format (not media but file format) I knew I was going to need to buck up for some video editing software (went with Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 12) so that was something I conceded with any purchase.

Having tinkered with the camera for a month before taking the family to Disney World, I was happy with how it operated... very simple. I was very concerned about battery life as the one it comes with does not last long and the internal memory seemed quite small at 16gb so I bought extra cards for the trip in case I needed them. It so happened that I didn't use over 70% of the memory during the 5day trip and did fine recharging the camera every night. That was awesome!

Now that I have a new laptop and Pinnacle Studio for editing, I've overwhelmingly happy with the totalality of the suite of purchases. With sufficient PC horsepower and editing software, this camera really pops and has provided some great first video footage that has me thirsting for upcoming events to capture for future memories.

I highly recommend the camera, but only if you have or are going to buy a system and software that can handle the AVCHD formatted video.

What model is worth buying and sticking too i know HF10 has 16GB internal memory and SD/SDHC card slot but heard some great views as well as videos taking with both models on Vimeo.com. But i also hear alot bad on HF10 with internal memory that can wind uop breaking down wuth and without warranty is valid but thats why we all should get exteneded one on top of vendors but my question is which model is better in ways
1. do they both have or dont have ( MOVING PARTS )
2. are the video quailty the same when recording in SDHC card or Internal memory or it dont matter do to video be same
3. cheapest way to go almost all are saying HF100 is cheaper but how when u need to stock up on SDHC cards to start using HF10 u got internal mem to begin or leave for back up and just use sdhc cards

And most important Q ? i would be using a 2 yr old HP and ACER laptop with Pinnacle Stuido Ultimate ver. 12 along with COREL UleadVideo Studio 11 Plus But i been using those softwares with HG10 and works awesome no errors buit one thing im unable to use MAGIC BULLET LOOKS on either do to graphics card cant read but i ll never wanna use anyhow please get bk to me thanks

Bought both cameras to compare. Everybody seems to think that these two are the top consumer cameras to look at. I'll probably agree. Between the two cameras, I ended up choosing the hf10. Simply put, I was expecting the sr11 to perform better at 60i in low light(30-60 lux) based on online reviews. It was definity brighter with auto. However, If you turn up the exposure on the hf10 (in 60i) you could match the brightness of the sr11. Turning up the exposure on the hf10 also made the color saturation increase in low light to where the hf10 was slightly better than the sr11.

Another expectation based on reviews was for the sr11 to have less noise in the same low light range. This is partly true. What they don't tell you is the type of noise. Sure there is less noise, but it is large
chroma noise. It is easily seen on any tv or monitor from normal viewing distance. Medium to dark objects in a 17 x 17 2 story room lit with 4 100w bulbs off a ceiling fan all had very noticable color blotches. The hf10 in the same room produced more noise but it was much finer and it was more of the lumanence type. The noise was definitely more pleasant on the hf10 and you would not really notice it at normal viewing distance on a tv.

The last expectation I had was for the sr11 to produce better skin tones than the hf10. I have a sony vx2000 which I think produces very pleasant skin tones in the low light. Manual white balanceing both the sr11 and hf10 shows that the skin tones look about the same with neither looking better than the other at all in low light (same room conditions as discribed above.) The "peachy" skin tones of the vx2000 was more pleasant than either of these cameras but it is not an HD camera.

Outside, hf10 had a sharper image that is slightly more colorful on most colors except green. The sr11 does make greens look more saturated. The hf10 simply looks more clear however. Its raw performance is better in bright conditons.

Now the down side. My biggest gripe on the hf10 is the auto mode. It tends to underexpose-especially in low light but also applies outside in the shade. You constantly have to increase the exposure to make it look right in low light-many times adding 3 steps of additional exposure. On the lcd screen, some times it has to look a little over exposed to get the recorded video too look right. Fortunely, the recorded video has more detail in the over blown highlights than the built in lcd screen shows. The sr11 has the advantage where you can shift the auto mode to your liking. As an example, you can add 1 exposure level and it will keep that for all its auto exposure calculations. You can not do that with the hf10. You have to manually control it all. The controls are about the same for me except that the sr11 can use a LANC tripod. Handheld, the cam dial of the sr11 is smooth but it firm enough to where the camera will move when you use it. The joystick of the hf10 really isn't any better.

All in all, the hf10 has a greater potential to create better quality video in all lighting (including shooting at 60i) but requires more effort. You do have to turn up the exposure manually and manually white balance to achieve all this however. I actually wanted to like the sr11 because of LANC capability but once I manually set the exposure and white balance of both cameras in low light, my choice was easy. I could not accept the larger blotches of color noise and imagine it would not be very pleasant to record an evening wedding in a church. If you just want to point and shoot, then the sr11 is for you. If you are willing to adjust the camera, I think it is clear that the hf 10 is better. I don't want it to sound like a one sided review but I invite everyone to compare the cameras yourselves as I have done. There are too many times when the reviews are misleading. The sr11 is clearly better than consumer cameras
from the past, but if you don't mind setting a couple of parameters manually, the hf10 is clearly better when it comes to video quality. And to me, thats what matters.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3UQQGMIT8YFFA I recently purchased this camera when it went on sale. I initially struggled between the HF100 and the HF10. The only real difference is the HF10 includes 16GB of storage built in. Based on the price between the two and the cost of good (class 6, 17MB/s, etc.) SDHC it was a no brainer. Plus, I like the black better than the silver. :-)

The features are great. If you just want to point and shoot, go for it. It even has an 'easy button' (no joke). But if you want more control over the image, it's all there - quality, frame rate, effects, aperture, etc. I've only begun to scrape the surface of all of that. The video shows some shots taken at Amicalola Falls, GA. I did a long zoom to show the great 12x optical zoom.

This thing is small and light. I went on a hike and slipped it into my jacket pocket no problem.

Having a Mac, I had no problem whatsoever getting it into iMovie and importing the movies, editing and sharing. It was a snap. With iMovie I can distribute any way I want - HD, SD, YouTube, iPod, iPhone, iTunes, AppleTV, Quicktime, etc. iMovie recognized the camera and imported the movies quickly and easily. Even easier than I thought it would.

I haven't used it yet for still photos. It has nice features around this. I have a Canon Digital Rebel SLR so I do not anticipate using the camera much for this purpose.

So far the only con is the lack of an included mini HDMI cable. An adapter is only $12, but I haven't been able to enjoy the HD on my plasma yet. The menus and prompts could be a little easier to use, but I was able to pick up things fairly quickly.

All-in-all, this is by far the best camcorder I've owned. BTW - The video has been compressed quite a bit to fit Amazon's guidelines - the video quality of the camera is so much better than what can be shown here.

I just edited and burned my first DVD with 1080 footage off of this camera using Adobe Premier Elements 7 and it was flawless! I have a Dell Inspiron 530 desktop with a 1.60Ghz processor running Vista Basic with 4Mb of ram. I will also test with Pinnacle Studio Plus 12 and report back.This is an area I think too many people neglect to look into, so trust me when I say that if you experience system and software problems when trying to edit and burn your videos you will go crazy and pull your hair out! It stinks. I was very pleased today, so much so I wanted to write the review.

I've been a Canon pro-sumer user for years. First with the XL-1, then the XL-2 and now Canon has done it again with the VIXIA HF10. Though the HF10 isn't really marketed as a pro-sumer camera, (for that distinction, at the least, I feel you need to have interchangeable lenses) this camera is far and away the best in its class.

I needed a solid performing video camera for everyday use and for when using the XL-2 just isn't feasible. Imagine lugging an XL-2 with you for documentary footage that's meant to be unobtrusive. NOT! Point being, my substitute camera had to be able to hold its own against the superior quality and craftsmanship I've become accustomed to with the XL-2. And that's a pretty tall order, so I really scrutinized my options. My second requirement was that the camera be Flash Memory based. No tapes. I really wanted the ease and convenience of skipping the tedious capture process. Given my requirements and high expectations, the only other camera in the running was a Sony. But I've had issues with Sony before, and since I've been using Canon for years now, I've come to trust the name and reputation.

Well, the HF10 doesn't disappoint. The lens is top notch, video clarity is superb and form follows function in the design. Button placement is intuitive and the feature set is abundant. Actually, you'll probably forget half of what this camera does. But the key features most home users would want are seamless and work well. Night mode, full auto shooting, 3.1mp photos are also a bonus. And with this camera, digital still cameras and video cameras are finally at the tipping point of being merged into one. I never use Stabilized Zoom on any camera for fear of lost quality, so that's one feature that means little to me. But for a commercial camera, there's some nice pro-sumer type features too, like histogram display, 24p and 30p shooting modes, built in audio meter, and an accessory shoe for better mics, just to name a few. Incidentally, the built in lens cover is a nice touch.

Hi-def recording has arrived for the home user with this powerful little camera. But just be aware that you need a hi-def TV to actually watch your hi-def recordings. Meaning, the camera needs to be connected directly to your hi-def TV or burned to a hi-def DVD and played on a hi-def player. A lot op people I speak to about this camera seem lost on that fact, so just thought I'd mention it.

Overall, I really have no complaints. This camera lives up to my expectations and Canon's superb reputation. And I'm pretty picky when it comes to video cameras, so that's saying a lot. So whether you're a casual user, professional videograper or indie filmmaker, this is a great camera. Way to go Canon, you've done it again!!!

This is an excellent piece of tech. A must for the digital photo enthusiast. It is loaded with innovative options and fantastic ideas. It is worth its price and more.

After doing a lot of comparative research between the HF10, the HF11, and the comparable Sony camcorders, I purchased the HF10 for the following reasons:

Video quality. Canon has always had stunning image quality. I viewed a few sample videos on the web. It was a close call, but I concluded that Canon's video quality is better than Sony's. As an added bonus, the camera has a mini HDMI out for the best viewing experience. (note: a mini HDMI cable is not included)

Best value. It costs hundreds less than the other cameras, with no compromise on video quality.

Flash Memory. The integrated 16 Gb isn't all that impressive, sure. But you can purchase a 16 Gb card for less than $40. The flash memory makes for silent recording - no whirr of the recording motor in the background.

Simple Operation. I recently had the chance to fiddle with an older Vixia camcorder. Canon has made many improvements in buttons, switches and menus in the past few years. Still no touch-screen operation, but I don't find the menus over complicated or cumbersome.

Non-Linear editing. My Mac still has to "capture" the video, but there is absolutely no loss in image quality. iMovie gives you the option of importing it at full resolution with an "observed" loss in video quality, or at a lower resolution with no "observed" loss in quality. I have a feeling that Mac is working on a fix to allow you to edit full-resolution 1080i/p video in iMovie. Of course, if you have a different application to edit your film, you may not have this issue.

I would definitely recommend purchasing this camera to everyone. It is easy to use, has great image quality, is compatible with computer software... the list goes on. You can't go wrong with this camera!

I have had quite the myriad of camera in the time I've been doing video. I started using my Kodak Z812 IS Camera, which is a great camera, but takes less than steller video - even if it is 720p. I upgraded to an Aiptek Action HD Camera that offered 1080p video along with a host of other features. While this was a definite improvement over the quality of the Kodak, it was sorely lacking in many areas. Namely, the video was extremely jerky, you couldn't zoom the camera without the sound of the zoom being recorded, and the quality was less than steller. So, with a big trip to New Orleans on the horizon and an increasing interest in video I sprung for the Canon HF 10. I read a lot of reviews before I made my purchase. For me I knew I wanted a couple features but didn't care about others. As you read below, you'll find out why I made the HF10 my choice.

But first of a summary. The HF10 is a AVCHD Digital Camcorder that records up to 1440*1080 (widescreen) @ 12 Mbps or 1920*1080 @ 17 Mbps. It records sound in stereo through front microphones or through a direct stereo in line and encodes video in Dolby Digital Stereo audio. It has a 12x optical zoom. It has 16 GB of built-in flash memory as well as a slot for adding a SDHC card. It is capable of taking still photos at up to 3 megapixels (2048*1536).

Here's what I like:

* Size: For me size was a huge issue. I want something I can carry around in a pocket, and the HF10 delivers. While it's a little tight to put into a pants' pocket, it does fit easily into a jacket. Although other models, including the Canon HG10 offered a lot more capacity with their built-in hard drives, for me size drove me to consider only flash-based models.
* Internal Memory/Flash Memory: I originally was interested in the HF100. It's identical to the HF10 except that the HF100 has no internal memory, therefore requiring you to always have a flash card on you. The problem was that I needed the camera fast, and Amazon couldn't guartee two day delivery on the HF100, so I got the HF10. In hindsight, this worked out. A number of times I have forgotten to grab a flash card out of my computer and have been really glad there was internal memory to record to. Although I prefer recording to flash drives (it's much easier to pull out a flash card and plug it into a reader than it is to hook the camera to my computer, plug the camera in, switch it into disk mode, etc.) the internal memory is nice to have in a pinch.
* Three different frame rates: 24p, 30p, and 60i. I hate interlacing - really really hate it. For me, most of my videos are going to end up on the web somewhere and therefore interlacing is just an annoying bother. I wanted a camera with a progressive mode so I wouldn't have deinterlace video before putting it to the web. The HF10 excels in this area, with three frame rates. 24p, which mimics film, 30p, which puts together 30 full frame images per second, and 60i, which puts together 60 half-frame images per second. I've used the 30p setting almost exclusively although I've messed around with the 24p setting for run and the 60i setting when shooting high-motion footage. This feature alone made it stand out to me.
* Varied encoding rates - You can record at 5 Mbps, 7 Mbps, 12 Mbps, and 17 Mbps. I've only used the two highest settings when doing video, but since I sometimes record audio only the 5 Mbps setting has been nice when I'm recording something just to strip the audio out since it allows you to store a lot more data on the internal memory or flash card. The advantage to the 12 and 17 Mbps modes is that depending on what your editing software allows you can either record in 1440*1080 (which is similar to the HDV standard) or 1920*1080. When I first started Final Cut Express hadn't been upgraded to support 1920*1080 editing so I had to use the 1440*1080 mode.
* Optical Zoom - The optical zoom on the HF10 is really nice. It allows you to zoom in and out at varying rates with varying acceleration. Combined with the nice image stabilization you can actually manage to get decently steady hand-held video.
* Picture Quality - For a consumer grade camera, the picture quality of the HF10 is outstanding. Not surprisingly it suffers a little bit at low-light levels but...
* Manual Adjustments - One feature I do like, especially for low light situations, is the ability to make manual adjustments to the video. The automatic settings often want to make dark scenes lighter than they actually are, and using the exposure control I can lower the exposure resulting in better quality video with true blacks.

Other Features I either don't like or could live without

* There is a built-in video light, but it's off angle and very white. If you're actually close to use it, it'll take every drop of color out of whatever object you're shooting.
* One could say that it would be better if the HF10 had a 5.1 Dolby Creator instead of just a stereo creator, but 5.1 single point microphones are somwhat pointless.
* The HF10 has a built-in camera, but it's not great. The built-in camera is nice in one respect, you only have to carry one camera. But it's only 3 megapixel at 2048*1536, which isn't ideal if you're looking to integrate photos into a HD video production. Plus, the flash isn't real good. Truth be told, video cameras are good at video, photo camers are good at photos.
* The LCD screen is nice and it rotates, but a viewfinder would have been nice as well. The nice part abou the rotating LCD is that you can do self-recordings real easily. The problem is that if you're using the rotating LCD to show the subject what you're taking video of, you can't see the subject through a viewfinder. I know a viewfinder would have added size and price though, so it's a very acceptable trade-off
* The battery life is alright, but not fantastic. The basic battery that comes with the camera provides about an hour of recording time at the highest resolution. They offer another battery that provides longer recording, but it's rather expensive (100+). I ended up being a third-party imitation that does the trick just fine.
* Other recordings modes would have been nice. By far my biggest annoyance is the lack of modes for shooting other than 1440*1080 or 1920*1080 content. The only one I'd really like is a 1280*720 @ 60 fps mode for handling high motion.

Overall I give the HF10 high marks - I'm extremely satisfied. A few minor quirks, and the simple fact that its a consumer grade camcorder aside, this has been a great camera for a home video enthusiast.

I bought this camera a month back as I needed a High Definition for best quality and Flash drive for light weight. Though I was very happy with the picture quality even on my 50inch plasma, but I was very very dissapointed with its very limited focus of 12x. Also when you zoom the autofocus doesn't work properly with blurred picture. You need atleast 25X optical zoom else you have to run close to every object and that's not why you need a camcorder. I immediately returned the product with full refund. I suggest buy a Non HD (DVD quality is equally good) and go for a descent zoom range or wait for few months to have High Defn camcorder with more than 12X zoom.

This is a great camera. Does everything I asked, and have created incredable videos of my grandkids. Makes professional quality videos. Software could use some tweaking, but I am sure that future versions will take care of that.
It is a camera worth the money.

This seems a fantastic camcorder. Unfortunately, I cannot use it because it is not compatible with other equipments I have which use the PAL system. So, I had to return it. I was confused because I bought in the past other Canon products through amazon.com which have the possibility to switch between NTSC and PAL. The Canon VIXIA HF10 does not have this possibility. This said, I think it is a fantastic camcorder. Too bad that the product description available on line did not specify this important detail (NTSC versus PAL system usage)

I studied the various HD Camcorder options and after three months settled on the HF-10. I almost got the HF-11 (24 mbps vs 17-18 with HF-10). but the HF-10 is so good that it really suits my needs. Superb video, great focus and zooming, Plays back in 1080i through Mini-HDMI to HDMI cable on my 1080i HD LCD TV. Component output looks great also.

I have been doing video editing as a hobby for about 10 years and I was concerned about editing the AVCHD on my PC. I am still learning various ways to edit and produce a video and then play back. So far

1. I have used Pixella Imagemixer software to trim and do limited effects and write back to the HF-10 to play over the HD TV. Works OK but the editing software is not very capable.

2. I upgraded from Ulead Video Studio 11plus to Corel's Video Studio 12 Pro X2 (Corel bought Ulead) The new package is excellent with many capabilities. I have a pretty fast Intel Core Duo with 2 MBytes of RAM

I have: Authored a 45 minute video after capturing from HF-10 and burned to an DVD+R as an AVCHD DVD. It plays great on my SONY Blue Ray Player. I used the same editing project to output to a 1080p wmv file that took about 8 hrs to render. I also could burn a regular 480p DVD so those without Blue Ray could view the video.

I understand SONY Vegas is a good package. Also Pinnacle 12 might be OK I have heard, but I have had problems in the past with stability of Pinnacle's products.

Has anyone else tried other software for editing AVCHD on a PC. What is a good fast PC and how much faster can it render video compared to the fastest core duos? Has anyone seen any benchmarks?

Anyway, I am extremely pleased with the HF-10 and plan to use it a lot for a good while.

This camera has a lot of appealing features, but the AVCHD format makes it very difficult to work with files using a Mac and iMovie for editing. The files become unmanageably large when imported to iMovie, and take a lot longer to import than 1:1 even. Perhaps there will be software upgrades or improvements to handle these files with ease in the future, but for now it has made use of this camera a chore.

In fact, I am now planning to simply buy add'l SD cards for archiving of the footage we are taking of our new son, and will hope for a more user-friendly way to edit these videos in the future. At $25/8GB for Class 4 cards, which can hold 1-2 hours of raw footage, which is not unreasonable, but it beats the time investment required to deal with the files using current software.

Do some research before you buy this camera!

It's breaking mah heart, but I have to send this beautiful camera back.

The MTS Codec doesn't play nice with premiere pro cs3.

Since it doesn't have a firewire port, I can't use it on my mac and record with quicktime.

If, and that's a big if, I can get anything from this gorgeous camera onto my mac, I would have to recode EVERYTHING to edit, think .flv or .avi packed with xvid. Think hours of recoding and hours of extra defragging.

Too much drama. It looks like if one spends hundreds and hundreds of dollars on "video editing" software, you wouldn't have to buy more software to recode ANYTHING! I used to have the same problem with Sony Vegas. What the hell are they thinking? Internet video is a passing fad???

Anyway, the flash sounds great but it's not working for me. I'm trading it in for a HV30. Mini HD tapes aren't as sexy, but they are very cheap archival quality storage. Plus they record straight HDV no codecs.

Canon VIXIA HV30 MiniDV High Definition Camcorder with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

happy...ah whatever.

The best part is being able to randomly access the different recordings! No more tape to rewind/fast forward.

I bought the camara, and found that it is fairly easy to use.

I have some troubles with its software and manual.

1) The Manual cannot be openned up easily by Adobe PDF Reader 9.0, and got stuck constantly. As a result, I have to download another reader from other software vender to read manual.

2) I had a hard time to upload the video records from the camara to my PC, until I did a lot of research over Internet to find that I have to use AC power instead of battery to upload the recording.

I wasted about 6 hours to address these two issues. Other than that, everything seems working out okay.

Another complaint is that the battery life is too short (about 90 minutes).

this one star is for amazon, the item i received was with many scracthes around the body, with cables unhooked, even the battery for the remote controller was placed in. this is a definitely used camera. how could this happen from such a big amazon, unbelievable. i would not bother if they had told me this is refurbished item, but they sell it as brand new. the item could even be defective I do not know.

This is my second HD camcorder (Sony HC3 bought 2 years ago). This one beats the Sony. It is light, very small, easy to use, and the picture quality is superb. Because of the light weight a very steady hand or tripod is useful as camera shake is hard to avoid. The image stabilizer is quite good but when doing a pan shot can lurch at the beginning as it tries to steady the picture. The on board mikes are adequate, prone to wind noise but not great. Surprising that manufacturers go to great lengths to give you good video but don't much care about sound. The boom mike makes a huge difference but is expensive. An improvement would be to have a way of transferring scenes from the on board memory to the chip memory - you have to use your computer to do that now. On the whole however it is fantastic value for the price.

when I got it from Amazon, there's sth wrong with the Li battery or charge adaptor, I contacted the canon service according to the phone number on the pacakage,but I was told I can only return it or exchange a new one. ...Finally I return it to amazon.

Amazon's return policy is very good though.

I didn't expect to be able to buy a top-notch video camera for under $650 this year, but this camera has everything I want. I was originally going to stick with Panasonic, JVC, or Sony because they are well-respected names in video, but the Amazon reviews swayed me toward Canon. I'm very glad they did.

The 16GB onboard memory turned out to be more useful than I expected. After all the horror stories I've read here about SD cards failing and taking important videos with them, now if I'm recording something important, I record it onto the onboard first, then copy it to the SD card (which the HF10 makes very easy), test the copy real quick, and then erase the onboard.

The microphone input is an important addition that you only find on the very expensive models with other brands. A family member of mine has a Panasonic that he has been using to record the life stories of the older generation, and the lack of a microphone input on his camera has made some of the recordings almost unusable because of background noise.

All high-end cameras take high quality videos in well-lit conditions, but the HF10 does a very good job in low light as well. Running the component cable directly to a 52-inch HDTV, I was able to detect a small amount of monochromatic noise, but you have to know what you're looking for. Unless you're turning your video into a feature film, you won't be bothered.

And yes, the color quality is impressive, particularly in well-lit conditions. If you're used to video cameras from 5 to 10 years ago, you will be amazed. Canon has sample videos on their site if you want to check it out; vimeo.com is another site where camera owners and reviewers commonly post their sample videos because the site hosts high-definition content. Just search for the camera's model number.

Also, if you're worried about noise, this camera has the same "spotlight" (i.e. zero-gain) mode that HV20 users have been raving about, and comparisons say that this feature on the HF10 works just just as well as the HV20. By turning off gain, the camera doesn't add any noise. Then, in post-production with software such as Sony Vegas, you can use filters that increase the brightness without introducing noise.

The color correction is great if you know what you're doing -- as with all Canon cameras, you can do "custom" or "evaluative" white balance. It's the icon with a circle between two wedges. Just point the thing at something white and it calculates the right color correction, giving you true colors in any lighting conditions (assuming you bring along something white to calibrate it against).

Another useful feature that has gotten little attention is the recording light. This light does add a bit of a blue tint, but the effect can be neutralized using the white balance setting as mentioned above. The light doesn't seem to significantly reduce battery life; the blue tint leads me to believe that it's an LED. In absolute darkness, the light is sufficient for subjects from 3 to 6 feet away from the recorder, and passable up to 10 or maybe even 20 feet -- better than nothing at least.

Cons:
The recorder doesn't (but should have) come with:
* An HDMI Cable -- read the reviews before you buy one, some of them cause poor picture quality.
* An stand-alone battery charger. Canon makes one, but you have to buy it separately.

The battery is absurdly expensive--on par with laptop batteries. If you use an after-market (non Canon) battery you won't be able to see the estimated remaining battery time. The extended-life battery is considered non-optional if you need to record more than an hour or two between charges. Charging time is significant -- don't expect to simply charge between shots.

Altogether ---

Highly recommended if you're in the market for a video camera. This model compares favorably to the [...] price point models from other brands.

If you are looking for Home/personal use HD (compact) camcorder, this camcorder definitely should be in your list, unless of course there are newer models out there. :)
I use this almost everyday.
Plus:
1. Easy transfer. I use iMac (Leopard and both iMovie and FCE).
2. Enough manual control, and they are all works
3. Great image quality.
4. Easy to use
5. compact and looked gorgeous.
Minus:
1. (of course) battery life
2. drifting focus on some condition, can be annoying if you are serious hobbyist, but this is the issue with all other similar camcorder out there, I've tried Sony/Panasonic/JVC.

Not yet proven (I have this for only a month now):
Durability

IMHO, this camera perfect for it purposes.
A step above in quality would be HDV.
If you have the budget and like the look and compactness of it then I highly recommend this camcorder.
If you use windows based, there are few program out there that work with AVCHD, and I'm pretty sure this issue will be a thing of the past in just a few months.

The Canon HF10 is on amazing piece of technology wrapped up in a small and very versatile camera body. This camera along with a Mac will make you into a very proficient video artist.

Hardware:
From the start having a flash based camera is a tremendous advantage over the HDD and tape based cameras simply because of speed and reliability. Not to mention you don't have that annoying humming sound in your videos. More importantly, if you're going to take this with you on trips, you will drop your camera...but with a flash based camera it's no big deal, just dust it off and start shooting again. Lastly, you can record to the on board memory (16GB) or you can record to SD memory cards...instant expandability!

Video Quality:
I was extremely impressed with this consumer focused camera that shot very well for a 'point and shoot' camcorder. The cinema mode (24p) comes out very crystal clear and looks great on any HDTV (via HDMI or Component cables).

Software:
The PC Software is OK, but thankfully it works like a charm with my Mac and iMovie. It's basically plug, play and create a movie. It doesn't get any easier than this combination. Yes, it will take some time to export this in full HD format, but you get a great video that you can burn to DVD and share. Additionally you can export to a smaller resolution and post it on YouTube, or have it export to your iPod.

Overall:
This camera is great if you're going on a trip and want to take stunning video and have a simple way to share it. For this price point (~$680) this is a very good camera and performs unbelievably well. You will NOT have any buyers regret after you buy and use this camera.

Other Cameras:
I looked at the FlipVideo and the Kodak Zi6 but decided to spend a little more for a camera with Image Stabilization and a good (12x) zoom.

Very good quality, I played it on my samsung HDTV...the picture is stunning. A UV FIlter is definitely a neccessity. Must buy extra battery with more juice. The only bad thing is the software that is included, better buy Sony Vegas 9.0 the version that edits AVCHD and I will wait until BD Write is cheaper to burn it.

I purchased the Canon VIXIA HF10 a few days ago and wanted to mention a few things about it as well as some points about burning the video to standard DVDs in the highest quality possible using Video Studio 11.5.

What's hot: Amazing full 1080i video quality in good lighting; "easy mode" recording if you don't want to adjust the settings manually (seems to work pretty well); ability to save to cheap external SDHC flash drive cards for long-term storage (I use 8gb class 4 cards, which stores 1 hour of HD video and can be purchased on-line for about $10.00 each; just make sure you "initialize" (format) them before recording to them; the ability to watch the video recorded to SDHC cards on my PS3 - just plug in to the built in reader, pick the video in the menu, and play (note that not all versions of the PS3 have the SDHC readers built in and I don't know if a USB card reader will work, but I would think it should).

What's not hot: Although you can take still pics while videotaping, they are lower resolution shots; you can only take high resolution pics by switching the HF10 to camera mode (not a big deal for me as I bought this for videos - not still pics). From what some others have written (consumers and pros), HF10 video recorded in low lighting is superior to video recorded in low lighting by many other HD camcorders, though you will still notice a significant reduction in quality when shooting in low lighting situations (however, I have not tried making manual adjustments that undoubtedly will improve the quality of the video). The HF10 does not recorded in 5.1 surround sound like some of its competitors, though the quality of the stereo audio is excellent. Expensive proprietary batteries (but see this e-bay deal for an excellent price for a high-capacity battery and charger: [....] which was still available as of 12-26-08).

Notes on Burning AVCHD High Def Video from the HF10 to Standard DVDs:
Although I plan on storing my videos on 8gb SDHC flash drive cards (which reportedly hold 1 hour of 1080 HD video) and then burning them to Blu-ray disks in a year or two (after the disks and burner prices come down), I wanted to test burning AVCHD video produced by the Canon VIXIA HF10 at its highest setting (FXP mode) onto to a standard DVD. I haven't tried the bundled burning software yet (I've seen lots of complaints about it) but I have Video Studio 11.5, which handles AVCHD video recorded by the HF10. I noticed some people have stated that the quality of AVCHD video burned by Nero 8 is slightly superior to that burned by Video Studio 11.5 Although I don't have Nero 8 and thus can't make that comparison, my guess is that people who have compared the video quality produced by the two programs did not manually adjut the settings for Video Studio 11.5 to output the highest quality video possible (the default quality setting is 720 instead of full 1080). Unlike when burning standard video disks, the menus for making the adjustments in Video Studio are only available at the very last disk-burning step. They are located on the bottom left of the disk-burning window, on the same "row" as the Back and Close buttons (you can see some screenshots: [...]. Click on the Settings & Options tab, and then the Disk Template Options tab. Under Compression, set the Video Data Rate to Constant / 18000 and set the Compression value to 100. Under the General tab, change the Frame Size from 1440x1880 to 1920x1080. Then before burning click on the Project Settings tab and click on Change to make sure you see the new settings. That's it! I compared the video on the DVD to the video stored on the SDHC card on my PS3 and I am happy to report that I was unable to detect any difference in quality between the original video on the SDHC flash drive card and the video I burned to a standard DVD using Video Studio 11.5. Note that I rendered the video using Video Studio on a HP Pavillion m8000n PC with 2 gigs of memory, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Dual Core Processor, and an NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS graphics card. The size of the video was a little more than a gigabyte and it took several hours to render and burn it (unfortunately, I cannot say exactly how long it took as my PC went into sleep mode, probably for about 45 minutes before I realized it, so it probably took around 3 hours to render).

I bought a top of the line SD camera with a 50 zoom. I could not stand the "video tape quality" of the video so I got this HD one. I am new to camcorders but good with electronics. I am amazed with the quality of the sound and HD video. The controls seem quite intuitive and I think they have got their act together. I am not easy to please but if this holds up over time I will be further amazed as things are not built to last these days. This is not good. Have to have the AVCHD recorder DW100 to use this. Seems most Bluray players play AVCHD these days.

Rather than regurgitate what everyone else has said already, let me put it plainly:

The picture quality of the videos from this camera are so beautiful, so full of detail that it looks like a moving photograph. You can see the hairs on your childrens head, the texture from their sweater, the grains of sand stuck to their toes, the water drops landing on their face from the sprinklers...

Jaw-dropping.

I have been researching HD camcorders for the past month. Debating weather to go with a Sony HD camcorder or the Canon HF 10. I usually go for Sony on electronics. I have a digital camera from them and it is the best one I have ever owned.
I just wanted a camcorder for just everyday shooting for fun. Such as possible YouTube, kids in my family, etc. I am also going on a trip to DisneyWorld in March and wanted a portable one for that. After reading about the types of camcorders available, I knew I would get a HD camcorder. It will become out dated in less time, and can have it for a least a few years. I also knew I didn't want to deal wiht buying tapes, dvds, etc.
After reading reviews, and watching reviews on YouTube, I decided to go with the HF 10. I didn't like the whole touch screen controls on the Sony, and that you have to hook it up to a dock to do everthing, such as charging, and uploading the videos. Also, the memory cards that they use tend to be more expensive then the SD cards the Canon uses. I campared the HF 10 with the HF 11 and decided the newer model did not have that much more to offer then the HF 10.
I recieved it yesterday, and I am so happy. It is the perfect size, and so easy to use. I didnt' even look at the instruction manuel. The controls are easy to learn. In minutes I had the settings configured, and was shooting. I have a SD slot on my Mac so I don't even have to hook up the camera to the computer. Works great with iMovie. I am so happy I didn't have to deal with the software that it came with and could just use my Mac programs. I haven't used the software that came with it, so I don't know how it is. The clips I shot came out great, and I had it posted to my webpage in minutes. This camcorder works great with a Mac. Definitly recommended for Mac users.
I haven't got a chance to use all the shooting settings, I just use the easy setting, and it seems to work great in a lot of different conditions. But, it does have nice choices for different settings. I am looking forward to trying the Fireworks setting in Disney.
It comes with cables to hook up to your TV, and a USB cable to connect to your computer. However, it does not come with an HDMI cable. I purchased it seperatly. The only bad thing about the HF 10 is it comes with the standard charger that you hook up directly to the camcorder. I purchased the wall charger seperatly, so I can just take out the battery and charge it. Most of the stuff that the camera came with I just left in the box, and bought the accessories I wanted. That it the only downside, it added about an additional $60 to the total price. I also think the battery could have a longer life, but that can be purchased seperatly. If you don't need the upgrades that they made to the HF 11, the HF 10 is definitly recommended. But if you have the extra money then go with the HF 11 since it is basically the same camcorder.

Had a tough time with the manual. Not user-friendly. The camcorder itself is very good, but I'd like clearer directions. Had to be intuitive to figure this one out, as it has features I'm not familiar with, and the manual wasn't a great help.

Compact. light, user friendly, instant respone, good - awesome high definition quality for the price! In additional, a megapixel camera too.

This is the first high end camcorder that I ever purchased and overall I'm pleased with the product and particularly the quality of video. Having said that, buyer beware and understand that you are purchasing a purely HD format camera. There is absolutely no 'standard definition' option to shoot for smaller size files for e-mailing. Video shot with this camera is very high quality resulting in monster size files for even the most briefly shot video. I created a thirteen second video shot at the LP setting and it resulted in over an 8 meg file. A ten minute video can easily take up 250 meg of space. Also consider that the AVCHD format is still very new and software to support editing is still catching up, so be prepared to punch out another $150+ for editing software. Be sure to purchase an extra battery or two and as you have an option for using either the internal 16 gig memory or external memory, be sure to purchase as big of SDHC card(s)in case you want to separate your work. Overall, a great product as long as you understand what you are purchasing.

When shopping for a new camcorder to replace my old MiniDV camcorder, I was apprehensive about going the flash-based, tapeless route. Especially to a camcorder that compresses the footage as it is recorded.

I bit the bullet, however, and got the Canon Vixia HF10, and I'm incredibly satisfied with it.

The image quality is fantastic (a bit grainy in low light conditions), and the internal memory can hold up to two hours on the highest quality setting! I haven't needed to purchase an SD card yet!

It takes quite a bit of storage space on the computer, but if you're using something like iMovie for the Mac, it's so wonderful to have all of your footage at your fingertips, ready to publish on YouTube, MobileMe, your Apple TV, or burn to disc.

Great camera, and I love flash-based camcorders for shooting everyday stuff.

I purchased this little gem last week. And it is a fine piece of technology. Fairly easy to use once you've familiarized yourself with the controls. Large fingers be aware the controls are small. Now the sad part. When trying to install the camera to my Windows Vista home premium machine it will not install. Keeps looking for software on the vendor disk. I assume it's looking for TWAIN drivers which are not present. Spent about an hour of frustration. Turned to my HP laptop with XP. Same thing no luck. One e-mail later to Canon returned the commment I need to talk to Windows folks. Canon support site is also not helpful. No mention of trouble shooting installation problems. They just don't wanna hear about them. I will try to talk to some tech folks at Canon on Monday and if they can't resolve the issue then the Camera goes back. Shame Shame Shame.

Great camera. Easy to use, yet has many options if you want them. Turns on and begins taping very fast. Great picture. No problems with battery life, yet...
The camera did seem to not realize you had changed modes from viewing video to shooting video very quickly.
I have already recommended this camera to a friend. It's very small and easy to take with you.

I work in an executive capacity at a fairly large Agency. I do a lot of video. Commercial work. Mostly interviews and work that ends up on the web. Lugging around the bigger cameras is a pain and I just could never do it. After I bought the first one, within two weeks I bought two more of these cameras. I carry extra ram, portable tripods, and along with a set of battery powered wearable mic's, two 15" Macbook Pro's, and a copy of Final Cut, I've pretty much got a studio with me at all times that will fit in a roomy laptop bag. All I have to round up is lighting, reflectors and cables.

I love Canon interfaces. Sony may produce good technology, but they do their user interfaces on some foreign planet. And as a company who produces digital interfaces I'm always surprised at how bad Sony's are. Canon and Panasonic are just the opposite. So, that said, this series of Canon video cameras is what we're using internally (I think we have a dozen now, but that number will creep upward.) And we use Canon E50 for photography.

I don't really have an complaints other than
1) the zoom 'floats' on one of the cameras, and I have to either get it repaired or tape the zoom in place.
2) the white balance on "easy" mode is too sensitive. In general, I like a camera to have white balance as a stand alone button.

There are some complaints about the use of the AVCHD format, but since it is so well compressed, and the software that I use recognizes it, and it is pretty easy to copy on and off of memory cards, I don't really have the same complaints. Sure I wish it would simply start in M4V. But I wish a lot of things.

Like others here, I was also in the market for an HD camcorder to take advantage of my HDTV, and because I didn't want to spend $300 for a standard-def camcorder now, only to have to upgrade a year or two later...so I took the plunge.

I actually originally purchased the Canon HG-10, because it received excellent reviews. Within a couple of days of playing around with that camera (which had a HDD rather than Flash memory), I was less than blown away by the quality. It was GOOD mind you...just not GREAT.
Amazon was EXCELLENT with their return policy, and I shipped it back and ordered the Canon HF-10.

As is ALWAYS the case with Amazon, not only did they give me ZERO hassles with my return, I also received my new camcorder fast and in perfect condition. Seriously, KUDOS to Amazon. They are my most trusted online purchasing site...hands down.

Anyway, I went with the HF-10, because I truly believe that Flash memory is the way to go. I've noticed recently in stores like 6th Avenue, the salespeople really are pushing the HDD camcorders, and their reasoning is recording time. That you can get X amount of hours on a 60GB HDD, whereas you only get X amount on a 16GB Flash.
Big deal. First, the battery is only going to last around an hour to an hour and a half. Second, most of my filming is done in about 1 to 5 minute clips. Thirdly, and the part they really don't like to mention in the stores, is that Flash memory is completely expandable. The cost of cards has come WAY down. So, if you're on vacation, and you don't have a computer to transfer your video to...just pack a couple of extra memory cards. With an HDD camcorder...if you fill it, you're screwed.
Of course, I don't mean to say HDD camcorders are not good, they're great. I just prefer the Flash. It's more versatile.

Another reason I went with Flash memory, is its resistance to damage.
We've all had computers whose HDDs have crashed at some point, or gotten corrupt.
I wouldn't feel too good spending $600 bones only to have my HDD fail on me. If that goes, the camera is useless.
If your Flash memory goes...pop another card in.
Less moving parts = less chance of failure or damage. Pretty simple.

Now as for the HF-10 itself, it's a small, comfortable, elegant design.
The built-in 16GB of internal Flash is PLENTY of space for day-to-day use.
If you go on vacation, you will probably want to pack 1 or 2 more cards with you...but honestly, how many hours of tourist movies are you going to make?
The video quality is SUPERB. Beautiful colors, but best taken in adequate lighting. Low-light quality is not that great...but it's really not that great on ANY consumer-level camcorder. At least I haven't found one.

AVCHD. This is the real issue with HD recording. The new ULTRA-compressed video format.
The one that wreaks utter HAVOK on most computers. In fact, I had to buy a new computer just to edit my video. I was using a 4 year old, single core Emachines computer that just wasn't up to the task of editing my HD video.
But the HDD was going anyway, so I had to buy a new computer recently.
I picked up an HP Pavillion Elite Quad-Core with a 750GB HDD.
Now, I can edit AVCHD EFFORTLESSLY.

So, bottom line...if you want to take HD movies, the Canon HF-10 is a beautiful, elegant and powerful camcorder for the average consumer.
But make sure your PC is up to the task. Believe me...it makes a HUGE difference.
You WILL be frustrated with an older computer.

If you have the PC...this is a MUST BUY.

I placed an order for this camera several days ago. My friends and I are making some fun videos for you tube and wanted another camera. Now after I ordered this I assumed I was all set. But wait whats this? The camera I ordered for $830 was canceled and now costs $999.99???

Thats pretty lame is you ask me. I will never buy from this company again. I do not blame amazon. I blame greedy sellers.

Easy to use with iMovie '09!!!
like the 16GB built right in no need for space consuming tapes or DVDs!!!
like having the option of changing size of movie (all though I never do!!)
screen size is perfect!!!

excellent and very easy to use so far. Just ordered the HDMI mini cable so haven't connected to our HD TV yet.

Great Video Quality
OK Audio Quality
Very light weight (Some times it's an issue to be light weight)
Easy to use menus and operations

Love It.

I wanted to take only HF100 but just because of the color i refrained from it. I like BLACK :)

Between, i have to buy BP-827 battery for sure.. This only comes for 90 mins. But for now i am fine with 90 mins battery and 16 GB internal memory.

Later i will buy a 32 GB SD Card (when it comes) and BP-827

I did my share of research on camcorders. This is the best bang for the buck as of early 2009.
The camera met my criteria,
- it needed to be a true HD
- have supperior picture quality within competition of the same type of camera
- have solid state memory storage internal and removable

Sony came close in a lot of ways, but the huge price difference was a big turn off. Canon makes great products, no one is perfect, but when you need/want an HD camera, this one provides a good meeting point.

Things to consider, the flash memory is fairly slow, so when you are taking still images, unless you are in a sports mode of snapping large number of shots, do not expect to have an image preview immediately (like most still shot cameras do). In addition, there is significant delay when switching modes, for example from camera record to picture play, or from picture record to camera play. These can take up to 10 seconds to complete (mostly due to writing data on to flash), during this time the camera appears to frozen and does not do much and may confuse the user from time to time. I see this as a small price to pay for a solid state storage. Do not confuse this with normal operation, these delays only occur during mode switching when you have a lot of data to write. During 'in mode' operation, it is very peppy and does great.

Number 1 complaint from purchasers online about the HF10 is the battery life. If you are using stock battery that it came with and are recording at the highest video quality - the battery life is shorter than the length you can record. The expanded version of the battery with greater charge capacity is available out there, and I might purchase one along with a charger. Charger is desired if you have more than one battery, since you can only charge them on the camera. Not a big deal for now, you can always operate with the power cord plugged in.

Amazon.com had the best price with consideration of vendor ratings. You can find it cheaper by about $25, but then you are running in to hassle of weird or crazy return policies and "special item" disclosures. The $25 is not worth the headache, Amazon is a very good, trustworthy source.

The Canon HF10 and HF100 are the best camcorders in their price range, and arguably the best consumer cams up to a price of $1250. The cams are basically the same, the HF10 has built in memory, and possibly a better grade of the same sensor, although this could be sample variation. The cam is small, lightweight and easy to use. At the 24p setting, it has excellent low light capabilities. The sharpness and range of the lens are simply outstanding. Do not be fooled by the HF200, the HF100 has a better and bigger sensor. The next upgrade in quality is the Canon HF S100, which sacrifices a very small amount of low light quality for broad but incremental improvement in all other areas. If you plan on editing the video on PC, be sure to buy Cineform's Neoscene for $99. This program will allow you to edit your video easily--the included software is useless. Get a Transcend 16gb SDHC if you need more recording space.
Other pluses: The Spotlight mode is perfect for recording concerts or theatre events for you kids. The Easy button gives good results for the point and shoot moments. You can take pictures while shooting video if you first set the camera to 1920x1080. Purchase a BP819 clone on eBay for extended battery life for $25. Surprisingly, the imager is superior to the HF11 (though the HF11 has a faster bitrate possibility) and to any of the Hard Disk models, even if those models have the same imager. This is presumably due to the internal electronics. For higher quality, look to the HF S100 or the Panasonic GH1.

The camcorder almost upholds Canon's tradition of quality equipment. The video is very good quality and the device is amazingly small and functional. The areas I've had difficulty in with menu operation and extracting the videos to my PCs.

Menu Operations: Fairly decent controls and functionality, but navigation and usability are not up to par as with other devices. Canon tried, but it takes too many hands and fingers to figure things out, especially when you're in the heat of the moment with a good shot or scene. Just to use the fade capability, you have to use your left hand and click a few things to activate the fade properly.
Software: This is its true shortcoming. Getting the video off of the camcorder can be a nightmare for someone who isn't technically savvy. The software used for their digital cameras is very intuitive and friendly to use for the most part. The camcorder software however isn't even developed by Canon, nor do they support it. ImageMixer by Pixela. If you have trouble with the 3rd party software, Canon refers you to Pixela and offers no assistance with the application. I was struggling with the video stuttering after ImageMixer imported the video onto my PC. The video was fine when viewing it on the Camera, but when ImageMixer transferred it to my PC, the video was choppy. ImageMixer-Pixela is of very little help and will take the first opportunity to get you off of the phone. Without any help from ImageMixer, as they differed the issue and told me my chipset wouldn't work with their software?!?, I resolved the issue with some trial and error. There were evidently 1 or 2 windows settings that need to be changed to fix this problem. Why Pixela didn't know this is well...typical. Unfortunately I did not get to record these settings...sorry. I installed one of the programs listed on the AVCHD site of Wikipedia.org (CyberLink Power or Sony Vegas did the trick). The Canon camcorder creates .mts files for High Def which may not play in Windows Media Player without downloading 'The K-Lite Codec Pack 4.1.6'. I now just copy the .mts files directly from the Canon via Window Explorer as the camcorder shows up as a device under My Computer when attached by USB. I just click into the CANON\AVCHD\BDMV\STREAM folder and copy the .MTS files to my hard drive. Then I use Pinnacle or Adobe Premiere to edit them and burn them to .AVI files. Another great program to view and organize videos is Google's Picasa.

Canon Phone Support: If you do have a problem with the actual camcorder, Canon has excellent phone support. When you call you can get to a human who can help you with your problem.

General Items: Battery life is not that great but is sufficient for most day trips. The memory storage is also very good. Overall I like the camcorder itself.

Pros: Sharp video quality, full HD, no moving parts!, records to SD cards, sound quality is good, simple and intuitive.
Cons: POOR battery life, AVCHD is quirky, editing your video requires a lot of expensive hardware.
Summary: I love this camcorder. It is a top performed in my opinion, especially for a price tag under $600 including a carrying case [...]. Great bargain.

The video quality is very good. It is as sharp as you could possibly expect for the small footprint of the camera and the low sticker price. For home movies, I couldn't really ask for anything more. Make absolutely sure your shooter has a steady hand though, because the more the camera moves the more artifacts and glitchy digitalisms you'll see in your video (a product of the AVCHD file architecture which I don't have time to go into here). In any case, I'm very pleased with the video quality. Sound quality is good, though subjects are hard to hear in noisy environments. This complaint, however, is about how microphones work in general, not this particular camcorder.

If you're like me - a geek looking to do every geeky thing with every gadget he has - you're going to be very interested in editing your video. This is where the camera gets more tricky because of its video format (the following should hold true of all camcorders recording in AVCHD). You CANNOT edit AVCHD natively on Mac. I'm using Final Cut Express and it first must be converted to either ProRes or AIC format before editing can take place. This conversion drastically inflates the size of your files. Your editing size is about 40gb per hour, give or take 10gb depending on the nature of your video. Therefore, full HD editing requires a FAST hard drive, preferably Firewire 800 if you can swing it. This said, however, my videos come out in outstanding quality and the extra cash to make all of this happen is money well spent.

I'm a big fan of flash based products in general because, in my experience, having hard drives in particular but moving parts in general is an invitation for unwanted problems. So long as your HF10 doesn't experience a long drop or hard impact, it should continue to work for a very long time. It uses SDHC cards, which are relatively cheap and take up a lot less space than HDV tapes!

Technical observations: the camera starts quickly, but takes about 5 seconds to think before allowing you to record. Sound is generally good. Included battery will only yield 60-70 minutes, but for 125 bucks you can get one that lasts over four hours (if you need it). Menu system is easy to use. I don't really know my way around manual settings so I can't comment there. The autofocus, however, is amazing.

All in all, a great camcorder if you want to take the HD plunge. I highly recommend this product, especially at the new lower price since this year's model is set to replace it. You should, however, do your homework before making this purchase! Happy shooting.

I wanted a General Porous HD Camcorder to shoot Vacations, Exhibits, Family Video and for my own video production team that doesn't break my budget.

In My Review, I'll explain the Pros, Cons and how to over come the cons + other Camcorder tips (AVCHD Vs. HDV, Sony Vs. Canon).

== Intro ==

- Basically It's a High Definition camera using AVCHD codec which it consists of: Video encoded with MP4/AVC H.264 and Audio encoded with Dolby digital.
- It uses on board Flash (16GB) to store footage.
- It has lots of options and manual through it's menu which is accessed with the joystick located on the left of the screen.
- It uses CMOS sensor to capture video.

== Pros ==
- Capable of Full HD 1080x1920 recording.
- Capable of Recording with different Frame rates : 60i , 30p , 24p
- Image is clear and crisp (Best In Class).
- Very good low light performance.
- Very good image stabilizer (Optic).
- Importing Video footage From Camcorder Into PC is very easy and fast (Because it's tapeless) Via USB.
- Can Use SDHC to increase recording time.
- Light weighted and small sized : easy to hold up for long periods (considering other HD camcorders)
- Has a verity of ports, can use professional accessories (including lenses, microphones, tripods, video light, etc..) with it (directly or indirectly with converters).
-Sound encoded with Dolby Digital Codec.

==Cons==
-Compression artifacts sometimes are visible when you pause the video footage (due to highly compressed video).
-AVCHD codec is very heavy on the computer especially If you are planning to edit the footage.
-No Slow Mo capturing.
-Battery life could be better (80-90 Minutes)
-Although the camcorder does capture at 30p and 24p, but it is encoded within the time frame of 60i (which is good for viewing directly on TV, a living hell if try to edit with out converting to true 30p/24p) don't get me wrong, the camera does record actual 30p/24p but to edit it you need to convert the video files first , especially with 24p (requires converter capable of inverse telecine).
-Audio is only 2-channel (stereo).
-Microphone is medicore .
-Manual controls could be better (but I suppose that's why there is the HF S10 model)

==Special Notes==
- Best AVCHD consumer camcorder is HF S10, Period.
- The HF11 is a better option than HF10, why ? because it has double the onboard Flash (32GB instead of 16GB) and it has lesser compression artifacts (because it encodes the video at 24Mbits instead of the 17Mbits of the HF-10) the following tips is also used with the HF-11.

- Buy an external Microphone if you want top notch sound quality.
- Buy an additional battery (get BP-827 or BP-819).
- Buy a wide angle lens (if you need to record within a small area such as inside a car).

- If you are planning on editing the videos, then you must have a very powerful PC (Intel Core i7 is recommended and a Strong GPU at least ATi 4800 series or nVidia GTX200 series, preferred ATi FireGL or nVidia Quadro), a large fast HDD (7200rpm, 500GB at least, don't use RAID). and for more ease of editing, convert the AVCHD footage into RAW-coded footage (neo scene is the easiest way).

- To back up the footage I recommend that to you Get a Blue Ray Burner.


==AVCHD Vs. HDV===

--AVCHD is true 1080 HD (1080x1920) while HDV top resolution is (1080x1440)

--AVCHD is far more superior codec than HDV in terms of quality per Bit Rate.

--AVCHD footage is easily and quickly imported into the computer, while the HDV takes forever.

--HDV is easier to edit than AVCHD because it's lighter on computer resources (older MPEG2 codec).

--HDV suffers less than AVCHD in terms of compression artifacts (key-frame related issue)

--HDV camcorder footage are the simplest to back up (using the mini-DV itself as backup material) while AVCHD footage needs to be backed up as any computer Data (BD is preferred)



---===important note concerning the battle between HDV and AVCHD====---

== the main Issue with AVCHD is the difficulties during editing, BUT this is to change soon, I'll explain:
- Fisrt to understand , a GPU is the graphics card, there are 2 main manufacturers that worth the buck: nVidia and ATi, But Intel GPU are rubbish (not to be used with video editing, too slow).
- HDV is encoded with MPEG2, which is decoded by most GPUs available today (that's why it's easier to edit).
- AVCHD is still being decoded by software (that's why it's a demanding Process) but AVCHD hardware decoding is one step away as GPU Production companies announces that AVCHD (H.264) hardware decoding will be implemented within the upcoming Drivers .

=====Other Notable Camcorders======

-Canon HF-11 : the better choice due to its 32GB Flash and 24Mbit encoding option.

-Canon HF S-10 : more professional camcorder similar to the HF-11 but with more manual gadgets such as: traditional collar controlled exposure and focus, and it has a larger CMOS sensor (1/2.6" compared to 1/3.2" of the HF10/HF11).

-Canon HF-20 : The n00ber choice, why ? because it has smaller CMOS sensor (1/4") which reflexes in the lesser video quality of this camcorder in comparison to the HF10/HF11 .

-Canon HG21/HG20 : these are the HDD twin of the HF11, Heavier but has more storage room (120GB/60GB)

-Canon HV30 : This is the HDV camcorder versions of HF11, same features but with larger CMOS sensor (1/2.7") and with lesser artifacts and lesser resolution (1080x1440) of the HDV encoding

-Canon HV40 : this is the newer model of the previous HV30 with some neat additional features such as Native 24p support.

-Sony Camcorders : In general they are better in termes of features, Most sony camcorders have zoom microphone, Infrared shooting capability (for dark scenes) and Slow Mo capability, which canon camcorders lacks. BUT still the canon camcorders footage is sharper, better in darker areas with normal shooting modes (color, which the infrared lacks), has different frame rates to choose from (60i/30PF/24PF).

This is an exceptionally well-designed little camera that does everything you could possibly want for the amateur videographer, and would even be serviceable for smaller scale professional work. The HF10 has 16GB of memory onboard, which is enough to shoot for well over two hours at the highest quality, and you can add an extra SDHC card with up to 32GB additional memory. There are several automatic features for those who like it simple, but the camera allows for a good deal of manual tinkering. The joystick on the LCD panel can be used to quickly toggle between focus, mike, and exposure levels while shooting - or to select from several other more advanced functions. I like the ability to select between aperture priority, shutter priority and "cine mode" - which automatically sets things just right to give (in most situations) a range of shading that looks pretty close to cinema. I've tested with lots of different manual settings but the "cine mode" usually does give an image that is as nice as I could have chosen. You can add an external mike (either by buying Canon's mike that fits into their proprietary "mini advanced shoe", or by plugging any mike you like into the external mike mini plug), but except for outdoors in the wind the onboard mike does a pretty good job for most non-professional situations. All in all, a very fine camera, and one that fits so nicely in the hand it is a delight to work with.

So you can get very good video, but figuring out what to do with it may take a little bit of research. No matter what quality you select to shoot in, the video will be recorded in AVCHD format, which is an HD playback format. AVCHD allows you to record very high quality footage using a relatively small amount of memory, but the problem is that most editing programs can't do anything with this footage directly. Basically, AVCHD is highly compressed but still high quality video, which records only a few full frames of video per second and then records the differences between these frames, which forces the AVCHD player to "fill in" the bits that are left out to create a complete flowing image at, say 30 or 60 "frames" per second. With most editing programs (and here I'm speaking only of programs that I am familiar with on my Mac) you wouldn't be able to work with the AVCHD files until you convert them to an uncompressed format that includes 25 or 30 frames per second, allowing the editor to "cut" on any given frame.

There are three good options (right now, but certainly more on their way as AVCHD storage becomes more popular) I've found on Macs (note: AVCHD only works on Intel Macs) for converting the unusable .MTS (AVCHD) files that the camcorder records into files that are editable (and that, on Macs at least, have the extension .mov). The first is to open the files in iMovie '08 or '09. iMovie will convert the files to "Apple Intermediate Codec" files that can be edited with iMovie or Final Cut Pro or Express. Another option is to import the files using Final Cut Pro 6 or Final Cut Express 4 (I've tried FCE and it works beautifully with AVCHD files). If you don't have either of those programs or if you don't like how big the files get when you convert them that way, you can use Roxio Toast Titanium 9 or 10 to convert the files to something you can edit - the best setting is still Apple Intermediate Codec but when you convert using Toast for some reason the files only blow up about 3 times the size of the original, which is pretty manageable given how cheap external drives are these days. Every Mac user ought to get Roxio Toast anyways, since it is extremely useful for all kinds of video and data management.

Anyhow, I think it is worth knowing (I didn't know, but soon found out) that when you buy an AVCHD camcorder that the size and convenience of the camcorder come at the cost of compressed video files that will need to be uncompressed before they can be edited. I think it's a small price to pay and love this camcorder, but if you bought this and didn't have an Intel Mac and weren't willing or able to get the right software you'd have some very limited options for doing anything with your video. Judging from some other reviews, it has caused some other people difficulties. Before long this won't really be a big deal since the major editing programs will adapt to AVCHD, but for now in spite of the overall simplicity of this camera's design and usage there is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to "postproduction" or the process of making something watchable with all that quality video that is so easy to shoot with this handy little camera.

(Note: there are other AVCHD conversion programs that can be found on the web. Most of these got their start when Apple's software couldn't handle the conversion, and they don't seem to have improved much over the past few years. I tried the trial copies of every such program I could find on the web, and as far as I can tell Roxio Toast's converted images meet or beat the quality of any others out there.)