Gadget User Blog

First I have to go through a bit of background before beginning this review!

Upgrading to an HD video camera has been an interesting process. It appears that while Sony and Panasonic have been working hard on their AVCHD compression codec, they haven’t been thinking about the amateur video editor. This compression is, by all reports, very difficult to edit in programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro or Elements and awkward to edit in other programs.

It seems that AVCHD is not really designed for editing and is rather a format suited to the point, shoot and burn to DVD crowd. As it appears the only HD compression format that is readily available for use with flash memory or other non-tape formats, I was left looking for a camera that was able to use DV tapes.

I’m the first to admit that I may not have all of this info exactly right so please provide updates if you have them.

The other critical factor was price. That is the price of the camera itself. All of this led me to the HV20 by Canon. It seems to be a camera that is squeezed right in between the consumer and pro-sumer market. It is definitely nowhere near a professional camera, but you may be able to fool some people given the quality of its images.

Having taken some footage to test the camera I have no complaints. In good lighting conditions the images it takes are excellent. Noise becomes a problem in lower light conditions, but in general the footage looked great on the HD television.

Adobe Premiere does have a bit of difficulty carrying out the old ’scene detection’ function with the HD footage from the HV20 (although I understand it has a bit of difficulty doing this with any HD footage). This was solved with a quick google of the issue and voila, I downloaded a little program that does the scene detection and transfer of the HDV tape to PC.

It has a SD card slot for still images. These were fine and looked like still shots you’d get on other video cameras. Okay, but clearly not the quality you get from a dedicated still camera.

The features of the camera are fine. Please note, I don’t use this in a professional capacity - its use will be very much in an amateur film-making capacity. So from what I’ve seen it has everything you need for the straight forward ‘point and shoot’ user with a couple of extra things up its sleeve if you want to get a little fussy about your footage. But by no means does this camera have everything that opens and shuts.

All the features are reasonably accessible and because there’s not too many of them, you won’t be needing to carry the instruction manual around with you all the time!

Optical image stabilisation is good and the camera reduces hand shake significantly. It has an auto lens cover, which opens when you turn on the camera - this is quite handy although I can imagine it becoming problematic in dusty environments.

The other thing I like is its size. It’s compact, light and almost suitable to carry in your pocket. Great for taking on treks outdoors.

You can pick one up for around $1,300 to $1,500 - don’t pay anymore than that. For the price, I think this is a great buy. It is cheaper than the Sony or Panasonic counterparts and as mentioned, they seem to have committed themselves to AVCHD which is not yet an ideal format for easy editing.

I’ll update this review with some more info once I’ve had a chance to play around with it a little more.