So my Canon HF100 came in today...

[Hulk]

Purchased it from Amazon, $604 shipped plus $50 (shipped) for a 16GB SDHC memory card.

First impressions. Jeez this thing is tiny. The screen is kind of small but pretty bright. The video looks very good on my 52" Sony XBR4, even after being compressed to AVCHD at 12Mbps.

Video goes straight into Vegas Pro timeline no problem and editing is pretty snappy on my 3.2GHz Core 2 Duo so no problems there.

We have a baby girl on the way and I wanted to start her off in HD!

[ND66]

Congrats on your baby girl.

And keep us posted how the cam is working out for you...


Andy.

[Hulk]

Thanks. Setting up the room today a bit.

As for the camera I have to say I like it. It's very small and considering what it is the video quality is quite good. When viewing on my big screen I can definitely tell it is HD. This is a good thing since I did hope that the image produced would actually appear high definition. This thing will be great for shooting special moments here and there.

Some things I have learned thus far:

While the AVCHD compression doesn't show many artifacts under normal shooting conditions I will not be doing much color or brightness correction. The processing of the raw stream from the sensor in the camera only leaves what data is absolutely necessary for the image. There is virtually no headroom available for tweaking. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but you have to get exposure right while shooting. Luckily the auto mode does a great job and the white balance is quite good as well. The BIG decision in my opinion is whether or not to shoot in the Cine mode which basically tones down the saturation a bit. I'm still deciding if I like the normal mode, which is almost too vivid, or the Cine mode which is almost to muted.

As I said before editing in Vegas Pro is pretty snappy and I can recompress to 12Mbps with virtually no degradation in image quality from the original source.

I still have yet to experiment with the PF24 mode but for what I intend to do with this camera I'll probably just leave it in PF30 as I seem to like that straight out of the box.

[ND66]

Pretty much what I think of my Sony CX7 for the most part.

But… the firkin thing is so small and light, I’m experiencing a way bigger “handshake” problem then I ever did in my life!

Or is it me just getting older…


.

[Hulk]

Funny you say that because the first footage I took made me sick it was so shaky. I really have to concentrate to keep it steady. When it is convenient I'm just going to bring along a small tripod as the quality of video created seems well worth the extra effort.

[ND66]

I have this Monopod climbing to the top of my shopping list...


.

[Hulk]

Okay I've had some time to do more shooting with the HF100.

Here are my impressions.

The video quality is very good, remarkable considering the price point and size of this camera. The "HD" aspect of it is not just a sticker on the box. Play back on a large screen HD monitor is truly HD. You have to have decent lighting and hold the thing steady but that is pretty much par for the course for getting good video from any camera. As you go to smaller sensors though you have to be more careful about holding steady, lighting, and metering too. Luckily the program mode of the camera is excellent making the right decisions nearly all of the time. Even the auto white balance is pretty good.

My wife shot me swimming in the bay today as I've been wanting to get a good look at my stroke. I should have been in center weighted metering as there was a lot of glare on the water and the averaging lowered the exposure so I was a little darker than I should have been. Luckily it was a bright day so the camera sets the ISO low and the f-stop high so there is a little more in the image I can pull out in the editor. The point is you have to be sure that the metering mode is right so what you want correctly illuminated is.

Lots of water, lots of action. On a 52" LCD 1080p the native video in frame-by-frame shows a little macroblocking. Not bad and not really noticeable under normal speed. I am wondering how the HF11 with 24Mbps would do under these really tough conditions. I'm talking about me swimming, water waves all around, and water splashing from my strokes. This is the only video I have seen thus far that blocks, and only under stop motion on a very large hi-def screen.

As the light goes down inside the gain pumps up. The noise isn't too bad but you will lose resolution. 1920 quickly looks like 1280 and if it gets really dark you get back to SD. Still the low light performance is pretty darn good in my opinion.

I am very cautious about spending my money on a gimmick and I'm very happy with this camera. If this is the starting point for "real" affordable HD cameras then we're in good shape because as sensor technology, in camera processing, and compression get better so will the images these cameras produce.

Absolutely no problems with the SDHC card. The camera turns on fast, moves through menus quickly, and has no software issues I have encountered. All the big guys pretty much have that stuff worked out.

Sony Vegas Pro 8c is much better than version b at editing AVCHD. It takes the Canon files natively and will preview them at full frame rate on my rig. Editing is not bad. I wouldn't call it snappy but not painful by any means either. The SDHC card is fast enough that I can edit directly from the card is I want to.

If I could design an upgrade to this camera I would tell Canon to make a camera with a slightly larger lens to accomodate a 1/2" (instead of 1/3.2) CMOS sensor. Also up the bitrate to 24Mbps max like the HF11.

As I said overall I'm happy with my $604 investment. This is worlds better than my old Canon Optura Pi DV camera. Even under the best conditions the video just didn't look good on a large monitor.

Oh yeah. I like the PF30 frame rate for shooting things when you have to slow motion it to analyze. I shot some swimming in shutter priority in the PF30 mode and there are no interlacing artifacts that I can see.