SOMEONE recently asked me which was the best format of videocam to get. My response? It depends. What is most important to you? Video quality? Ease of sharing? Length of recording?
If ease of handling and speed were your top priority, get a flash memory recorder. Canon's HF10 is an example. With a secret weapon - 16GB of memory built-in - that's already good for slightly more than two hours of top quality 1,920 x 1,440 of video at 17Mbps. Dial down the quality to 7Mbps and you can shoot 4 hours and 45 minutes of still full HD video.
You could also plug in a Class 4 and above SDHC card. The 32GB cards are coming on the market.
But short of doing National Geographic-type documentary, the likelihood of shooting for more than two hours in a day is remote. An easy gad-about solution: a portable storage device, as large capacity SDHC cards are still expensive.
A flash memory videocam works faster as there is no need to crank up a tape, hard disk or DVD before recording or playback can begin. It took less than 5 seconds to start up the HF10. With quick start, it's less than 2 seconds.
The HF10 uses the Advanced Video Codec High Definition format. It was a leap taken by manufacturers because of the sheer size of HD footage. Without the efficient AVCHD codec, a camera like the HF10 wouldn't make sense.
An easy test of a videocam's quality is the zoom speed. The HF10 covered its 43-515mm range (12 times zoom, 35mm equivalent) in 1 second. On slow zoom, it took more than 20 seconds. The zoom lever could be better damped. Handle it carelessly and you will hear the zoom lever snap.
The amount of manual control available is surprising. Focus, white balance, exposure and even audio recording level can be manually controlled besides the aperture and shutter priority mode. You can even plug in a third-party external microphone and monitor audio level via your own headphones.
If the lens were smaller, I would have re-enacted the Death Star run through the salad I was having at a Japanese restaurant: the focus at macro range (1cm minimum focus distance) held firm. A pan of the grilled mackerel came out beautifully down to the translucence of the lemon slice.
Image transfer to a computer was easy peasy. Connected through a standard USB cable, both the internal memory and SD card were recognised. After that, it?s just a matter of drag and drop.
Despite the limited real estate on the HF10, Canon has made connections easy by offering a full range of ports ranging from HDMI to component and even composite video. So no worries about hooking up your HF10 to anything from your wall-sized full-HD plasma to the prehistoric spare TV in the kitchen.
FINAL SAY: An impressive full-HD videocam the size of a drink can and weighing less than 450g.
