Canon HF10

I have been waiting for some time to buy into HD technology, with a trip to the US looming I decided to take the plunge and buy the Canon HF10. Having spent a few days getting to know this product I an very pleased with the camcorder in general and the results, its not perfect, but certainly one of the best flash memory camcorders available.

The palm sized unit is small and despite its plastic case seems to be reasonably well built. I find it very easy to use, although Canons menu syatem is a bit different to what I have seen on thier still cameras. Image and sound quality of the HD footage is stunning, autofocus is fast, image stabilisation (optical) also seems to work very well.

The camera has 16gb of internal storage built in and accepts SD cards for additional capacity. Battery life is OK around 60-70 minutes, I got a spare battery to be on the safe side (higher capacity batteries are available but stick out of the rear of the camara and spoil the lines). Unlike many similar products, all the connections are on the camera itself so there is no docking station to mess with. Batteries are charged in camera via a mains adapter, you need to pay an additional £45 for an external charger. The camera also takes stills, these are not going to make you leave your normal digital camera at home, but they are good enough for general snaps and a lot better than I was expecting

You can play back the HD signal from the camera via composit connections for normal definition or via RGB and HDMI cables for HD.
If you intend to edit your footage on a PC you will need a fast high spec PC. The supplied software is adequate and allows you to view and perform some basic editing functions on your PC, sorry no experience with MACs