The "Official" Canon Vixia HF10 / HF100 Owner's Thread

Well I was going to start one once I got mine...but I guess you beat me to it. There isn't going to be much to discuss untill the camera is released (which is Soon hopefully).

I received my HF100 from dell yesterday, I am far from an expert, my prior camera is a Sony Hi8. I did not test it yet because my memory stick is still in transit and should be here today. I did charge it and tried to get familier with it.

It felt comfortable. The mode dial was hard to turn with my thumb, cause it seems to close to the thumb. The menus are well laid out. I wish it had a program dial on it, instead of menu navagation all the time. I also wished it had a docking station, All the separate plugs need to be consolidated. Example is, It seems if I wanted to hook it up to my HDTV via component, I would need both the component and Audio breakout cables and don't forget the power cable.

I am still very optimistic for the HF100, I am over budget with this camera and the sony's will cost even more. I do have a question if anyone else gets this camera. When I shake the camera there is a very slight rattle. Maybe because the memory slot is empty? Seems like its working fine. I thought it would be solid cause it's memory only. Is it a defect? If it is I will have to exchange it, If it''s normal, it does not bother me too much.

Thanks,

I just ordered my HF10 from Dell, but it says it's out of stock now
I knew I should have done it yesterday.

I found out that the rattle is from the optical image stabilization. So hopefully I can move on to some testing.

Bearcat, try to hang in for a 20% E&A coupon from Dell SM. They post them on the site and they go fast.

Woo Hoo! Just ordered my HF100!

Got it from ZipZoomFly. 849$ Not a bad price....probably could have waited for a larger price drop.....

I expect the HF100 will be 799 in 2 weeks and 699 in a month......but I've been waiting too long(4 years!)for a HD camcorder!

Ordered my HF100 from D***.com SB with coupon for a total of $771. Site said would ship today. Just got email that said delayed until 4/8. In the meantime does anyone know: If full HD is 17mbps and the class 6 SDHC cards writes at say 13 will you be able to record full HD? Or will I have to buy a Sandisk extreme III that writes at 20?

Don't confuse bytes for bits. SDHC 6 means 6 MBytes minimum.

I'm sure the 13 you mentioned is Mbytes if it is a SDHC 6.

I am waiting for the HF10 which won't be available untill later this month (Cnet says 4/8, Best Buy says 4/14, and Amazon Says 5/1...so who knows). I am waiting to hear back from my CDW-G rep as to when they will have it since I can get it from them at a discount and they owe me

Just ordered the HF100 from A*****.com for $836. I also bought a Transcend 16GB Class 6 SDHC card with reader for $72.75.

Like others, I have been waiting for over a year. I would look at the Panny, then a new one was coming out, so I would wait, then reviews were mixed and yet a newer model was coming out, reviews mixed again.....
Then I saw Canon was coming out with a flash based camcorder and figured I would just pull the trigger and quit the never-ending "new model coming" wait.

Hopefully it shows up before our trip to Puerto Vallarta. I will also be using it in my race car for some great in car race footage. Can't wait.....

FYI- Order the Mini-HDMI to HDMI from Monoprice.com..... $5 bucks and some change.... Beats the $50 to $70 Canon cable.

ok folks,

I got a hf10. Just came back from a trip from Japan. The only diff is that the body is grey instead of black and a few labels are in japanese. but the menus are in english so no problems there. got it for 108000 yen. Good value i think.

Any questions ask away, haven't really learnt it yet but i'll try to answer them.

Marc

I sent an email to see if a 16 or 32 gb memory cards can be used in the HF10. Bellow is the response I got from Canon.


Thank you for your inquiry. We value you as a Canon customer and
appreciate the opportunity to assist you with the HF10 camcorder.

This camera has been tested to function properly with memory cards up to
8GB in size. Anything larger has not been officially tested and Canon
would not be able to guarantee that it would work.

We hope this information is helpful to you. Please let us know if we
can be of any further assistance with the HF10 camcorder.

Thank you for choosing Canon.

Will the larger cards work?

ok to be honest, i'm waiting for my 16gb cards to arrive in the mail. If i had known there was no guarantee, i wouldn't have ordered a 16gb transcend card. but it was cheap. I'll let you know asap.


Hopefully someone can answer this question of mine. Is the footage always in 1920x1080 60i even if it was recorded in 24p or 30p for that matter? its still early days but vegas is seeing it as that.

Or maybe i'm using vegas wrong.

I would bet that 16GB (and future 32GB) cards will work. Those capacities are part of the SDHC standard. Canon would have to be idiots to only support up to 8GB. The availability and cost of large capacity SDHC cards is a big advantage that Canon and Panasonic has over Sony. Sony's use of Memory Stick puts them at a competitive disadvantage. 8GB MS Pro Duo costs more than 16GB SDHC.

I just got my HF100 Monday from Dell with 20% off. I have no other HD cameras to compare with so can't be very helpful in that regard; however, comparing to my Sony 3ccd TRV900, it is night an day in video quality. Tested Monday night and today and the image quality is pretty good, especially in good lighting situation. Still pictures are decent too. They show up on 46" lcd tv sharp and clear with good detail. Low light in 60i is okay, a bit noisy but okay... I have an PQI 8 gb SDHC class 6 $31.00 delivered, and it works fine. I was also able to crate AVCHD HD content on a DVD-R disc with Ulead 11.5 plus without any issue, and the DVD-R plays in my ps3 beautifully with soundtrack and other rough edits. With my untrained eyes, I cannot tell much difference between the DVD version vs. playback direct from camera. In theory there should not have been re-encoding. Although Ulead was a bit sluggish on editing (I have a q6600 box 3gb ram).

I believe that Canon website indicated that only a class 4 is required for the 1920x1080 HD recording at highest setting. page 32 of the owners manual also confirms this. There are 4 recording settings. Class 2 can record in 3 of the modes, but the 17mbs record rate is only available with class 4 or higher. I don't have a class 4 to test it out, but the owner's manual is pretty clear on this. You should be fine with your SDHC. FYI, newegg has a 16gb class 6 with usb reader for less than $70 with coupons etc.

I confirm that class 4 is highly enough for 17mbps (and even more).

I have 2 questions to HF10/100 owners:
-the enlargement when manual focusing: does it stay more than 2 seconds, or does it disappear if you stop touching buttons ?
-are the progressive files (24p/30p) accepted by Sony Vegas Pro 8.0b ?

bonus question: do you know if HF10/100's 17mbps is CBR or VBR ?

It's VBR according to the HF10/100 User Manual

Don't expect huge PQ increase by VBR. You can check the actual average and max bitrates and typically it's only slightly higher (which is expected since VBR works best with long duration to pick the low/high complexity frames).

The A-data 16GB ($59) work great. No problems so far.

I've started comparison tests against the HV20 and will post review eventually here: http://lucienk.spaces.live.com/blog/...6635!712.entry

And then I'm checking out for a while shooting video in Arizona.

I've got the HF10 and the HV20. Although I didn't compare them directly, I did compare my SR12 directly with the HV20 and then, over the last two days, the SR12 with the HF10.

Using these comparisons, I find the HV20 to produce a better picture than the HF10. I've found the colors of the HV20 to be more neutral and the HF10 to lean more toward a cooler rendition. I've also found the HV20 to have a better overall exposure compared to the HF10. I don't think there's much if any difference in resolution between all three cameras I've tested. In fact of all the important picture parameters, I've found the smallest difference between these cams to be sharpness & resolution.

I've also found the purple fringing issue with the HF10 to be a non-issue. I only saw two minor instances of it in the clips I've shot. I'm almost sure this is not CA of the lens, but rather a tendency to blow out certain highlights. It's at the borders of these blowouts that you see some evidence of it. But if I weren't looking for it, I doubt I would have even noticed it.

good news

http://zbaouw.bay.livefilestore.com/...ark_brown).jpg

Is that purple fringing on the columns? The HF100 is on the left and the HV20 is on the right. This is from Luc48's gallery.

I began some testing on the HF100. Outside footage was spectacular. Indoors was less then I expected but passable. I tried the preset "Night" (I don't no why there is not an indoor preset). It seems to have brighten up and improved indoor footage. Since I am a newbee, what are the pros/cons to doing this? Is there a better way?

Note: I did like the 24p. I can not tell yet if it or the other frame rates improve low light.

My other big problem is with the included software. Where the PS3 worked flawlessly. Just place the card into it and it played! My Vista Ultimate laptop played 2 seconds and crashed. And the program is not running since. I get ImxBrowser.exe has stop working. Has anyone else had this problem?

Dell has a good deal on both the HF10 and HF100 right now. It's not quite 20% off, but pretty close.

I call Pixela tech support and was told Vista is not supported. I called canon and they are researching the problem.

Nice Bryanb. Had to cancel and reorder because D**L sucks, but it saved me $200.

HF 10 users does a PS3 recognize the internal flash memory? Also does it detect a SDHC card inside a HF 10/100?