With Panasonic recently announcing a
240GB camcorder, Canon has deemed this a good time to juice up the storage on its own product line with a pair of updated models. Both the HF 21 and the new flagship HF S11 double
their predecessors' integrated memory to 64GB, with the latter also adding in a new night shooting mode and more advanced image stabilization to the mix. The expanded storage will allow up to five and a half hours of recording at the top quality settings, which pales in comparison to the 30+ hours you can get from Panasonic's HDD-equipped beast. Other major specs, like the DIGIC DV III image processor, Full HD CMOS sensors, AVCHD format and SDHC expandability, have been left untouched. You can expect Japanese availability in early August, with the US and Europe probably joining in on the fun just as soon as the territory-specific
VIXIA and Legria labels have been slapped on.
[Via
Camcorder Info]
posted Jul 16th 2009 5:52AM
The HF S11 looks nice. A pity its 1/2.6-inch sensor isn't bigger so you could get some narrow Depth of Field action...
5 and a half hours of Full HD is amazing for a Flash memory based camcorder. Just bring along several SDHC cards with you and you'll forget about that HDD based camcorder in no time.
I have one 32gb SDHC card, and I still haven't filled the total 64gb (including internal). I think it's going to take the solid 18 years of my kid's life to fill my external.
...external... hard drive*
@Derek: So do you think that 64GB internal is a bit excessive then?
For people like me, who take 5 min video snapshots of random shit their kid does... yea probably... but, what can I say... I've never been a reasonable spender when it comes to tech.
Agree. I have an HFS10 and was a little timid about moving to flash based. Had used mini-dv for years. Needless to say I have not even come close to filling the internal 32gb or the 16gb flash card I bought.
In fact I changed from the default to record straight to the card because it's easier to pop the card in to my reader than to plug in the Canon via USB and have to plug it in the outlet as well...what the hell was canon thinking with those shenanigans?
Dammit, I hate technology sometimes... I just bought an HF S11 back when it came out!!!
THAT is the reason why I can never buy anything made by Apple.
Also inb4ohmygodhejustbashedapple
Wow, great press release. Doesn't say whether these things shoot progressive.
Never, never buy or use an interlaced camera. It's not the 1930s anymore.
Man, and I thought it was 1935...
Never buy or use an interlaced camcorder? How ignorant is that? You do know that interlaced is better for action, yes? But I doubt you do, if you were to make a comment like this. Progressive has its benefits, but it also has its downfalls. To say something along the lines of "progressive or nothing" is showing that you know very little about taking videos and get all your knowledge from marketing hype. Do some research, and you'll find that there are many reasons why interlaced is still preferred for recording and broadcast. Live up to your nick.
Nevertheless, pretty much all current Canon camcorders support both interlaced and progressive (and really, interlaced will not die anytime soon). But Canon, like a lot of other manufacturers, are doing the wrong thing, and taking away the EVF from nearly all its lineup. The LCD is fine and dandy for indoor work, but for outdoors it's downright lousy. It's also more of a drain on the battery. It's not because of a compactness issue, since an EVF takes very little real estate, and it's not a cost issue, since HD camcorders are in the premium range.
A better statement: Never, never buy a camcorder without an EVF if you're going to shoot outdoors.
I've been holding off on getting one of these, I've used the HF10 and a professional grade Panasonic, but never the one they metion here. I'm still trying to decide which one to get. though battery life will be better with flash mem....
I'm still trying to figure out this spec in the translation:
"Total pixels of about 389 megapixels,..."
So no chance for a Canon flash-based camera with EVF then? Being torn between HDV (HV30) and AVCHD cam, I hoped the HF21 would go the HG21 road, so the AVCHD would gain some advantage.
AVCHD IS GARBAGE!!! Why do companies keep making cameras with this Garbage?? Anybody who is serious about Editing video or is a Videographer is not going to use this shit. If you are serious about video stick with Tape. AVCHD is basically almost Uneditable and the compression ruins the picture quality. Why Why Why?? And Canon just dropped the ball by even babbling in this stuff. Stick to HDV Canon.
You have no idea what you are talking about. 24mbps AVCHD actually produces better quality than 25mbps HDV. Case in point, the HV series versus the HF-S series, which use the SAME lens. One is HDV, the other one is AVCHD. AVCHD, being mpeg4 rather than mpeg2, can cram more quality in almost the same bitrate. And they are both 4:2:0 anyway. So stop your illogical war.
Supporting what Eugenia said (it's amazing how many places online our paths cross, btw!), I completely agree. As someone who has and uses both a Canon HV30 (HDV-based) and HF200 (AVCHD flash-based), the quality is nearly indistinguishable. The HV30 has slightly better low-light capabilities, the HF200 is 1000 times more convenient (owing to not having to dump tape footage). Both are great cameras, neither format is easy to edit in its full HD on anything less than a quad core with 4GB of RAM, and either one will do a great job.
Head to vimeo.com or YouTube to check out some sample shots from both.
We see some conflicting statements here.
1) Original poster claims AVCHD is hard (or harder) to edit and possibly and its compression runis pic quality (motion artefact blurryness and blockyness, I'm presuming)
2) Second poster says AVCHD is better.
3) Third poster says low-light is better on HDV-based cam, which indicates to me at least one aspect of the HDV cam is better than newer AVCHD cam. Also claims neither is easy to edit without a quad core (but I'm still guessing AVCHD is far more processor-intensive).
Am I missing something?
@Tekdroid: The low-light is slightly better on the HDV due to the image sensor, not the compression scheme used. Not sure why Canon made that decision (probably saving something for the HF300 I would imagine), but don't blame the compression. And both formats are hard to edit with. AVCHD is slightly more CPU intensive than HDV, but realistically you're not going to have a fun editing experience with either unless you have a quad-core with plenty of RAM.
I have an HF200 and I love it. No more tapes, full HD...what's not to love?! (ok, the low-light picture leaves to be desired sometimes, but that's about it)
Dang!!! My HF11 is ONLY 2 weeks old!
Here's a nice sample of the quality these AVCHDs are getting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClSXAjHBFYA
Where's the Canon HF S110? Don't really care about built-in storage.