This is apparently one of the most popular models currently on the market, and from my experience there is good reason for this.

First is ease of use. While it took me a while to browse through the instruction manual, when I actually started trying out the various functions, I found it surprisingly easy to set up modes/lighting conditions/resolutions/switch between still and movie/etc. The function button/+ key navigation took only a few minutes to get used to, and the on screen descriptions of what you're selecting have enough detail that you don't have to be a veteran user familiar with all the acronyms associated with picture taking to figure out what each item is. The camera is quite light and easy to hold, even for extended time periods, and the LCD display was quite visible even in bright sunlight. The zoom control is conveniently available to your fingers while holding it, and the zoom control itself is neither too sensitive nor too slow to react, and the zoom speed mode adjust is great for certain special situations.

I note that many have complained about shooting in low-light conditions causing excessive graininess in the results, but I have not observed this yet, shooting indoors with what I consider quite low light. The camera also seems to handle large light differentials quite easily: I had my wife take some shots of me while bowling (a feat in itself, as she is definitely not a camera person, so being able to do this is testimony to its ease of use). Bowling alleys have quite bright lighting on the alley itself, while the area behind the alleys is usually very dimly lit. The resulting videos that swing between both the dark/light areas and those taken from dark to light and vice versa show no flaring/glare marks or loss of focus. And the videos had more than enough resolution for me to be able to discern some mistakes I was making in my approach and ball delivery, which is very good as the critical items in bowling happen very quickly and in a very small area (wrist and fingers).

I was very pleased with the camera's close in focusing capability, finding it possible to film a beetle crawling on my rose bushes from just a couple of inches away. The 10x telephoto not only works well, it remains quite steady with the auto stabilizer on. Still picture resolution is more than adequate for anything except high-detail professional portraits, and compares well with shots taken with my 5 megapixel still camera.

I was a little unhappy with the audio quality using the built in microphone, as it seemed a little muffled and indistinct for any sounds more than about 5 feet away, while close sounds (i.e., me talking while filming) could be overly loud.

Battery life is a definite problem. The advertised approximate 1 hour on the provided battery is perhaps a little optimistic, and for any extended day trip where you expect to use the camera throughout the day I'd recommend carrying at least one and preferably two spare batteries.

Transferring videos from the camera to my computer was quite easy, and did not seem to take an excessively long time for the given file sizes, but I was not happy with the provided Corel software requiring an online registration to use it at all. Are they really so concerned about piracy that this step is necessary? The functionality of this software is ok, though it probably won't win prizes, but it does provide enough features to do most of commonly required editing and archiving tasks.

For a camera costing this much, I wish that they had included three very vital accessories: a miniSD card for still photos, a miniHDMI-HDMI cable, and a carrying strap. The cable is almost unfindable in stores, you'll need to order it on-line, but once you have it and hook up the camera to an HD TV, the results are truly amazing, looking like the demo shots you often see on the HDTV's in-store displays.

Overall, this is an excellent camcorder, with great ease-of-use and video results that are outstanding. It makes earlier technology camcorders seem positively ancient.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

Hi

I had a JVC miniDV that worked great but wanted to upgrade to HDD. I don't own HDTV or blue ray player any of those fancy stuff. Still I bought this (as who knows when I'll win a lottery and suddenly own all these :) . I was also scared that this thing will never work on my Laptop which has 1.66 GHz processor with 1 GB RAM.

Well results are amazing. I tested both video and photo. Tried all the modes like Cine with 24fps, night mode. Tried effects like Sepia . I was able to use the software provided by COrel to transfer the video to my Laptop without any issue. I even burnt a DVD thats playing on my normal DVD player and the quality is great ...

Moral of the story you don't need to be a rocket scientist or pro to use this or burn DVD's. Make sure you read the manual carefully before using

cheers

Jag

This is the 6th Canon camera I have bought these last 8 years, and the camera meets my expectations of performance. Its high quality definition is excellent, and is without exception much better than other similar camcorders around. However, I found a "Corel Application Disc" version 2.0 in the box, installed it, and found it did not work with the new .mts files properly, so I called Corel and found that they "did not support this product any more". I ended up buying Corel's DVD MovieFactory V6 and their Video Studio 11.5 Plus Download all for $150 to resolve this issue. Also, Canon supplied 5 separate wires to connect the camcorder to an HD TV when only the HTC-100 HDMI Cable is necessary. I threw the 5 wires out and bought the HDMI cable for $11 and it's an easy process now to quickly wire up my camera to the HD TV and show my pictures. Hopefully, both Corel and Canon will learn to work better together to supply improved accessories for their products.

Pros:

Much smaller than my old Canon Optura Xi

Fantastic 1080i HD @ 60 frames per second

Can convert to 1080p @ 30 frames per second (with help...)

Image stabilization works well at maximum zoom

Uncompressed AVCHD has much better quality than flash based MPEG4 cameras

Good low-light performance

Cons:

Stills are useless (just frame-grab from video - same quality)

Much bigger than my friends new Panasonic (it is only SD though)

Wish the camera did 1080p natively :(

24p mode is useless.

Notes:

I also bought a Sanyo Xacti 720p - the Canon is *way* better. The Sanyo has pretty bad compression artifacts including jaggies and macroblocking. On the other hand, the Sanyo takes much better still pictures.

Also, I tried using Apple iMovie '08 to edit - would not de-interlace at 1080p, only 720p. So if you want to convert to 1080p, you will need another video editor (I bought Final Cut Express 4, but have not tried it yet...)

I was concerned about purchasing the HG10 because of the controversial AVCHD format and the lack of computer software support for it. Fortunately for me, I'm a Mac user with an Intel Core Duo Macbook Pro and iMovie '08 (required for importing AVCHD files from the HG10) so I thought it'd be extremely simple to work with the HG10. It wasn't but I'll get to that momentarily.

Once I received the HG10 I shot sample videos at night and had someone shoot video of the outdoors while I drove to gauge high speed recording.

Night Recording - Recording at night is probably the weakest feature of the camcorder because the video quality is kinda crappy in low light situations. The HG10 does feature a night mode for shooting at this time but I still wouldn't recommend the HG10 if you plan to record in low light/night situations often.

High Speed Recording - After shooting the first videos at a high speed (60 mph) it occurred to me that most consumer camcorders aren't going to be capable of capturing quality video at high speeds. That being said, the video quality was decent enough given the price. If you plan to use the HG10 to record cityscapes or anything that requires driving, I'd recommend the HG10 only up to about 30 mph.

When I tried to download these clips to my Macbook Pro via iMovie '08 the software wouldn't recognize the camera AT ALL despite the Mac recognizing the HG10 as a hard drive. I eventually figured out (after reading the manual, of course) that you need to initialize the camcorder hard drive before it will be recognized by the computer. In fact, if you fail to do so you will have to erase the entire hard drive (and any videos on it) to initialize it so it is recognizable.

After doing this iMovie '08 recognized the camera but it took iMovie '08 about 15 minutes to see that the HG10 was connected. Every time I connect it iMovie '08 takes about 5-15 minutes to recognize the HG10 and bring up the import window.

Now for some general observations of the HG10 since I've only had it for about two weeks:

1) It's USB only to the computer so transferring video files can take a LONG time if you film in HD and use the 5 hours or so that the camcorder is capable of holding.

2) Buy an external drive to store the videos after working with them. The HG10 is addicting and lightweight so you'll be taking lots of videos in no time and will need a place to store them. I bought a Lacie 750GB external drive to store the movie files and so far it's exceeded my expectations (firewire, USB connections make for easy transfers).

3) Buy a tripod! I bought a Sunpak tripod from Best Buy for $35 and it serves as an excellent tripod for the HG10. I also use it for my Canon SD800 IS and soon will use it for my Rebel XTi. The HG10 is terrific at offsetting camera shake but no technology will ever compensate 100% for human error.

4) Sports Mode is my favorite mode. I like Portrait mode but I feel its too soft for most things that I do. Sports mode is designed to capture fast movement with as little ghosting and blur as possible.

5) I have relatively medium to large hands and I find the zoom buttons to be too far back on the camera to really be useful while the camera is in your hand. Fantastic positioning for tripod use though.

I hope to update this review as I use the camcorder more. I haven't used the still mode yet but as a rule of thumb I would suggest getting a good still camera (SD IS line or Rebel series) instead because I can see the HG10 being a bit awkward to use primarily as a point and shoot camera.

I picked this camera because it got rave reviews just about everywhere. I won't reiterate everything people have already said - I'll just break it down into likes and dislikes.

Pros

Very good image quality, color and saturation.

Love that Cine mode!

Very good ergonomics (love the zoom button).

Zippy "Quick Start"

Actually comes with a hot shoe adapter (many cams these days are missing it).

IS works very well.

Cons

Good luck finding support for the AVCHD codec (READ BELOW)

Would like to work with the RAW AVCHD files vs them getting cut down in size for PC

The Joystick/Wheel in idea was great (like EOS 40D) but it sux on this cam.

When is Canon doing to dump that stupid "Print Button" and give us a `new' feature?

AVCHD is not well liked or supported by Adobe at the moment and have no current (advertised) plans on getting up to speed anytime soon. I hated the provided software (it's a joke) and really need the tools available in Adobe Premier Pro CS3 so I broke down and purchased Sony Vegas Movie Studio Pro 8 so I can convert the AVCHD files if needed and work directly with the files if need be. This of course degrades the movies a little more.

For those that use 24p, you better have a pretty powerful computer and have IS turned off in Cam. AVCHD is very processor intensive and will kill most weaker PCs with jerky video. Having a powerful video card with hardware decoding will help a little but AVCHD isn't MPEG-2 and won't get much benefit from these cards. In the future that will likely change.

Our 1st camcorder purchase. We needed a HD camcorder. We'd heard bad things about minidv tapes malfunctioning in high humidity and abrupt changes in temperature (for e.g. while in Hawaii on going from the A/C hotel room out onto the hot humid beach). So we decided to buy a Hard drive sort of camcorder. The plus side of this is the easy editing/deleting on the camcorder itself. Playback on a TV (regular TV or HDTV) is easy and it lets you choose scenes (rather than having to rewind a minidv tape). Battery life is good, focus and zoom adequate. Sound quality is good. The picture is very good especially in movie frame and HD mode.

Overall, a very good buy. Works well for a family needing a good point and shoot camcorder with user friendly features and HD quality. Paid $ 639 for it. Bought it from Marcus Audio Video - order arrived in time and was packaged well.

:: Overview

After much reviewing and evaluating we ([...]) found the HG10 to be the best offering on the market. Managed to get the camera here on Amazon for $[...] at the time which is a complete STEAL for what this piece of technology offers. Like all of my other Canon cameras (EOS 30D, SD20, SD870IS, EOS 650) I got the quality and performance I expect from Canon. The camera is compact and light and has a quick startup for power on and shooting quickly. The optics in the camera are stunningly clear and for those that love a big optical zoom look no further. The HG10's zoom is *massive* and to the point where I felt like I was spying on people while shooting clips of the highest residential building West of the Mississippi. Definitely make sure you pick up a decent tripod if you plan to use that zoom or you're going to make your viewers sick. Yes, the camera does have image stabilization but that only goes so far and is rendered pretty much useless in a fully zoomed in shot. When it comes to a full wide shot the image stabilization does a pretty good job of smoothing things out unless you get into a constant vibration//bumpy situation. I had the camera on a tripod shooting video of Ocean Beach in San Francisco, CA with a strong wind causing some shake that had the stabilization struggling to compensate for. Color accuracy is quite good as all Canons tend to be. Sony cameras typically over saturate color to make it more "punchy" which isn't accurate and rather obnoxious. Even when using a color mode like Vivid on the HG10 you still don't end up with blown out punchy color. If that's your thing - do it in post or buy a Sony. If you're looking for a consumer camera that behaves more like a professional camera the HG10 is your choice.

:: Playback

I'm on a 15" MacBook Pro 2.2GHz Santa Rosa with 4GB of RAM. RAM is cheap folks and I highly suggest making sure you have at least 2GB and 30GB+ of HDD space free on your machine. Ideally you'll have a backup drive because HD files are quite large and eat up disk space quickly. That said let's get into playback and acquisition of the clips from the camera. I used iMovie 08. I have Final Cut Studio 2, but since Viddyou is a consumer//pro-sumer focused company it was important to make sure I used the tools available to the majority of our users. It's straight forward getting the clips off the camera via USB over a standard USB to mini-USB cable. Launch iMovie 08 with the HG10 connected and set to playback mode AND *plugged into power* as Canon REQUIRES you to be plugged into power in order to transfer. It's the only highly annoying aspect to this camera, but once you grumble and grown a bit you get over it. The camera will appear in iMovie and when selected iMovie will pull thumbnail versions of all your clips for quick preview and selection of what you want to bring into iMovie. Select your clips and importing will take a few min depending on how much you shot. If you plan on working in Full HD (1080) then you need to make sure you tell iMovie to import the clips at Full HD 1080. I suggest doing that so you have the most data available when it comes time to export the video later. Make your movie as you would with SD footage. Again you're going to need a computer that's a year old or so to work with Full HD as it's a resource hog. Don't expect your slightly older machine to handle it because you'll be sorely disappointed. This is emerging technology and it requires the latest computer hardware to really make use of it. Once you have clips into iMovie you'll see just how stunningly clear, sharp and color accurate the camera is. Really, this is something you have to see to believe and since Viddyou is the first personal video site to launch Full HD 1080p online I can share some footage with you all here. Again you'll need a modern machine that's got some good amount of processing power and at least a standard cable modem connection. HD will get better as hardware and home internet connections get faster...

[...]

:: Encoding (Transcoding)

iMovie converts all of your content from AVCHD to the Apple Intermediate Codec which results in large files that can be edited. To the common user you don't ever see these converted files and probably would never need to know this except for the fact this camera shoots in 1080i - interlaced. If you don't deinterlace your video you will end up with "jaggies" in the output. This is where things get a bit tricky and it's an issue with iMovie//QuickTime. If you export Full HD 1080p (non-interlaced) and tell QuickTime to deinterlace the video there's a slight issue where QuickTime thinks the video is already deinterlaced and ignores the deinterlacing option. I can't tell you how many times I tried a variety of settings to make this work. It was only after scouring the web that I got some answers and it adds quite a bit of time to the process. You need to export from iMovie using QuickTime still, but set your output to a different codec that supports scan lines. I export using Apple ProRes422 HQ which results in a 1.61GB file for 2min of content. I then bring that into Final Cut Studio's Compressor and export to H.264 1080x1920 HD with a deinterlacing filter. Compressor isn't available as a stand alone application however so this really isn't an option to most users, but sadly this was the only way I've been able to get perfect deinterlacing of the 1080i video. In theory you should be able to take the 1.61GB file and check the deinterlace box in QuickTime and export to H.264 there, but for some reason QuickTime STILL ignores the deinterlacing command. Frustrating, but it's new tech and consumer software so it's an issue with the video tools and not the camera itself. There's another gotcha here too. You MUST have QuickTime Pro which is $[...]. Honestly if you're going to be doing any kind of video work on Mac or PC you *should* buy QuickTime Pro period. It's a $[...] investment that will last you for years and is completely worth it. Included below is an example of what interlaced footage looks like and why it's a problem. Oddly when exporting to 720x1280 (720p) QuickTime DOES deinterlace. Yeah - figure that one out...

1080i ::

:: Online Hosting of Full HD Video

Full disclaimer - I'm one of the founders of [...]. Aaron and I have put an astonishing amount of time into bringing Full HD to the consumer//pro-sumer market with the best balance of playback quality and download speed. It's been quite a challenge making this happen yet the results have been more than worth it. If you're looking for a place to host and share Full HD 1080p video Viddyou is your only option as no one else offers Full HD services on the consumer level. Even if you're looking for only 720p hosting or top quality SD (standard definition) you'll find us hard to beat. Putting the video quality aside for a moment its our privacy controls that let you specify exactly who gets to view and even download your original video file that make Viddyou the standout choice. Personal video is just that - personal and privacy is as critical to Aaron and myself as it is to many of you. Your uploads are archived to Amazon's own S3 storage system which powers the site we all love so much here. The Canon HG10 was our test camera during development and remains our best answer to anyone wanting to get into HD. If you have any questions about HD and Viddyou feel free to contact me on [...]and I'll happily help.

This is my first camcorder and I really like it. After spending weeks researching hi-def camcorders I decided on the HG10. 5 1/2 hours of hard drive storage is more than enough for the average vacation. Takes nice video, and when connected to my 52inch HD TV thru the Mini HDMI cable(bought separately) it outputs a fantastic picture. You really need a powerful computer, though, to use the software given, or any of the software for Hi Def for that matter. The software is the only thing I do not like. I highly recomend this camcorder.

I bought this camcorder mainly to use for videoing wildlife in the field. After 2 months of use I can say that it does a good job but has a few minor problems. My first concern was the auto lense cover, I like it over the manuel cover but it is a bit noisy when you turn the camera on and off. I have had close game react to it on quiet mournings. It also is exposed to the elements, so I would recomend a filter to protect it from dust, drops of water, and twigs. The filter also muffels the noise of the lense cover operating, a little. The camcorder is capable of some extremly sharp stills and videos, when the camera is focused properly, but I noticed that the auto-focus was a little off at times, not much, but enough to notice when you print it out. Like all other small camcorders I have used, the image stabilization is a bit overrated. It is ok but at higher zoom levels it doesn't seem to be much diffrent than any other small camcorder. The camcorder was not very impressive taking telephoto video under low light conditions ( 20 munites before sunrise or 20 min.after sunset ). It was able to record, but if you tried to record at any zoom distance the recording came out distorted and out of focus. It did do better than my friends sony sr-1 that at the same time wouldn't record at all!

The thing that I really liked, mainly the reason I chose the hg-10, the hard disc drive with 5.5 to 15 hours of recording time. I set mine to the next to highest (7.5hours) with excelent resolution results. The life of the battery. I recorded about 2 hours a day and would recharge the battery at night, I didn't even need a spare battery. The 3 position adjustable zoom speed. The still image transfer from captured video, I was suprised with the quality of the still images that were transfered from the video to the sd card. The size, it is small and lightweight real easy to carry I found that it will fit in a quart size zip lock plastic bag for protection in case you get caught in a rain.

Like all new gadgets,it will take time reading understanding and use to gain it's full potential. I have worked a little with downloading and printing a few still pictures with good results. I am having a little trouble downloading video to my computer. I don't know if it's me (probably), the program, or the acvhd format, time will tell. I have used other camcorders (3 diffrent brands) and consider this camcorder to be well worth the money for my use. I would recommend it to anyone. (it works well indoors too) My big problem now is that I have to buy another one because my wife now wants me to buy her one also.