HDV showdown: Canon HV10 vs. Sony HC3

Sony's been doing this for a while, but Canon just finally jumped into the consumer HD game with their new HV10 HDV cam. To see how they well they've managed, David Pogue over at the New York Times got ahold of the camera and pitted it against Sony's latest: the HDR-HC3. He doesn't go so far as to name a victor, but the Canon does come out looking pretty good. With the recent bouts of HD-induced nausea consumers have been experiencing lately, Canon stuffed in an extra external auto-focusing sensor for near instant focus with quick camera moves. They also threw in some optical image stabilisation, and Pogue found both features quite effective. The HV10 also includes a built-in light, and better light sensitivity than Sony's HC3, but Sony does manage an accessory shoe, night shot mode and a quite notable HDMI port that are all lacking on the Canon. Both cameras suffer from a weak wide-angle view, and neither include microphone jacks or much else for the prosumer set, but with the HV10's list price of $1,300, and the $1,500 list-priced HC3 currently hitting $1,200 online, both cameras are quite the bargain for a tape-based HDV cam.

[Via HD Beat]

[Daniel @ Aug 14th 2006 7:43PM]

the HV10 looks awesome.

It's too bad they don't have nightshot, but I can get past that.

About the wide angle problem, does anyone know why that is? That might be a deal breaker for me, since 16:9 is pretty much made for shooting WIDEscreen content (landscapes, etc...)

I'm just wondering if it's a limitation of the technology, if they tried to cram too much in, or what?

[Michael @ Aug 14th 2006 8:00PM]

No mic jack on a $1200 camera!!!
These are simple things all cameras should have standard by now.

[Z @ Aug 14th 2006 8:20PM]

No headphone jack for privacy? On either?

No deal.

[BSW @ Aug 14th 2006 9:34PM]

#1 - I'm also wondering about "Both cameras suffer from a weak wide-angle view"

I'm thinking it's just poorly written and meant to refer to the viewfinder/LCD in 16:9. That would make sense since no HD resolution is going to be very pretty on a 3" LCD

[Daniel @ Aug 14th 2006 10:17PM]

BSW,

from the article:

"...a really pathetic wide-angle view. Even at the most zoomed-out setting, these camcorders are zoomed in, if that makes any sense; in camera terms, its zoom range is 43 to 436 millimeters. Fitting a whole six-foot person into the frame involves backing up 15 feet, which often puts you into the street, the sea or the restroom."

bummer

[Russell @ Aug 14th 2006 11:25PM]

It's rather hard to make a decent UWA/WA (ultrawide/wide) angle lens that zooms to a long telephoto with any decent quality in a small package.

It's much easier to do a standard (50mm) to telephoto (300mm or so) zoom in that size package.

I "think" they could do a 24mm to 100mm pretty easily in that package or close to it but then it would only have 4x zoom which marketing would get pissed about.

Too many products' engineering is controlled by the marketing people, IMO. That's the biggest problem with any new gear.

[Jordan @ Aug 15th 2006 11:52AM]

43mm? Ack, good luck taking family Christmas with that!

"And here we have the bottom half of the tree..."

[keith waddington @ Aug 15th 2006 10:40PM]

The Sony HC3 is the replacement for the HC1. What happened was Sony made the HC1 too good and was losing sales from Sony HVR-A1. The HC1 was there first HD consumer cam, so they were not sure at the time what to provide for what price.

So the newer HC3, besides being smaller, is worse than the HC1 in every other way. Given the choice I would probably go with the Canon. Also, the optical stabilisation in the Canon is much better,

However, I live in Japan, and discontinued stuff here is stuff no one wants, so I grabbed the HC1 for about 800 US and it really is a very nice camera in every way.

For those of you interested in seeing what these high def video cams can do there is a short sample of the HC1 on my web site in the travel video section. It is compressed using h.264 codec, but you can still easily see how amazing the clarity is.

peace

waddo
http://www.waddo.net/

[Michael Mills @ Aug 19th 2006 1:26PM]

The wide-angle issue can be worked around with an additional wide-angle adapter, like a 0.6 or 0.7, providing an approx. 28mm lens equivalence. Of course, the lens has to be high-grade, and there's less convenience with the attaching and removing of the adapter, but it is a solution. Still, the lack of mic/headphone input might be a deal-killer for me.

[Anthony Roggio @ Sep 14th 2006 5:28PM]

I just compared the HC3 to the HV10 on an LCD screen via the component connection (capable of doing this because I work for Best Buy). I have to say, the video quality of the HV10 is so much higher it's ridiculous! The HV10's colors are more vibrant and pronounced and the image is WAYYYYYYYY sharper. Once I went back to looking at the HC3, I was not impressed at all. Wouldn't even consider the HC3 now, because let's face it, anyone who is buying an HDV camcorder is buying it for the video resolution. End of story, that's my $0.02.

[Larry @ Sep 20th 2006 12:54AM]

I bought a Canon HV-10 2 days ago and am returning it today. I already have the Sony HC-3 and am happy with it. I have always loved Canon products and believe the GL-2 is the best DV camcorder out there. I have a Sony HDR-FX1 and needed something smaller to take on trips. The contrast is a little better on the Canon than the Sony but the video is quite grainy compared to the Sony HC-3. I will purchase another HC-3 instead. The contrast is not quite as good but the crispness of the video really makes up for it. I didn't notice any advantage of the optical stabilization compared to the Sony but the stabilization is not a concern with the HC-3 like it was with the original HC-1.

[Peter @ Sep 30th 2006 2:20PM]

I also own a Sony HDR-FX1 so I have a similar basis for comparison. I went to a Best Buy store and shot maybe 5-10 mins of video inside the store (poor conditions for testing, but I was still able to see the different video characteristics from the Canon HV10 vs. the Sony HC-3). When I brought the time back home for playback, the Canon appeared to have greater resolution and smoother video (slightly less edge contrast and slightly less noise) and the colors were very accurate due to good automatic white balance. The Sony had slightly oversaturated flesh tones and a warmer automatic white balance. In the end, I was very impressed with the Canon HV10's video quality for the size and I chose to purchase it instead of the Sony because the HC-3 has no manual controls to tweak the picture, is not as small, and visibly has lower resolution. This is our family's vacation camcorder and size and resolution were the most important factors.