Canon HF M4xx Owner's Thread

I'm waiting for the price to drop I don't really need it until the end of August, so I can wait. Best Buy dropped their price last week, so I'm going to hold off for now.

Yep, now its raised back up. I am still considering the Canon vs. Panasonic TM90. There are $100 bucks difference between these but since this is going to be my first camcorder I am hesitant about pulling the trigger.

Bought M40 a week ago when it was on sale at BB. I was initially a little disappionted with the low light performance. The room was dim, no light was turned on. The video looks no near like HD. Not sure if it's bad unit or my expectation was too high. Brought a HF 200 home from work to compare. The M40 did much better job in low light when it was compared to the 200. The M40 has much larger size than HF 200. Though I don't know if it's worth $300 more over the M300 ($299 at Costco), I'm going to keep it.

I have the M41 too. Out of the box the quality was set to SD. Seems odd but I changed it after I did a little reading. The M41 has more manual setting than I thought it did from all the info I read online. I prefer setting only one setting such as shutter speed and letting the camera do the rest. That's how I used my still camera without a flash. I consider it a high end point and shoot. The low light is nothing short of awesome. I filmed my 4month old son sleeping with the only light from a 42" HD tv. It was grainy but not as much as I expected. Then I turned the LCD screen around and used the view finder to sight the shot. At only two feet away, WOW, very clear. If you have the M41/40/400, seriously.... Read the manual!!! It's a must after spending all that money.
Low light IMO is the most important factor when picking a camcorder for family memories. If it does low light well then the rest will at least be good enough if not great.

How and what are you using to edit video with your .mts files. Are u making AVCHD dvd5 disks? I made one with corel x4. It was ok.

I have the same BD player, BD570. I store all my video on my 1.5TB HTPC and stream them to my player through the home network. I think it's called DLNA. However I haven't tried any of my Canon .mts files. I'm working on a straight DVD project right now. I want to check out the quality for this format.

so .mts is the same as .m2ts except for the extension?

I burned a high quality DVD using corel videostudio pro x4. wow is all I can say. This m41 is simply awesome. Corel made speed improvements only took me 12 mins to encode and burn a 9+ min DVD. Not bad. I prefer avchd but none of my family has bluray.

I didn't know where I could set it in SD mode. On my M40, I could change the image quality from LP to MXP. But they are all HD. I recorded my video in FXP and FP30.

Here's a video I shot in 30p and put together yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIVEtqMKSnk

I was on the fence about using 60i or 30p. I think I made the right choice.
For this type of video, I could definitely see where the Panasonic 60p would have come in handy. The slow motion clips would have been 100% smoother.
All of the girls are shot at 1/1000th shutter speed. Clouds rolled in and the boys were shot at 1/500th. The one still is from a video capture pic but looks the same as a native still pic to me.

I would like to figure out how to increase exposure while in Shutter Priority mode. When it got cloudy, the boys were under exposed because of the sky behind them. I'm not sure if the M4xx series can do it like the G10 can.

Btw, the 3sec record feature saved my butt.

Edited with Corel VideoStudio x4

I looked into the operation manual and it seems that the M4XX are not much different than older Canon camcorders. Set shutter speed with Shutter Priority, then adjust brightness with Exposure (p. 98 of the Manual). When you adjust Exposure, the camera will choose what to adjust: ND filter, aperture or gain, but it won't touch shutter speed as you have it fixed beforehand.

Yes, with 60p you would have a perfect single source for both regular 30p and for slo-mo.

Thanks, I'll try it. Looks like I still have lots of reading to do.

Mike50,

It appears that the decoration files were taken off my camcorder and erased by pixilar utility. when you have the time could you tell me which folder they are stored in on the camcorder and at least one of the names so I can search for it on my computer hard drive.

That's weird. I would have thought they were protected. or if anyone else has this info that would be super.

Thanks

Looks like you're correct. I'm thinking the only difference between the M41 and G10 as far as controls are concerned is the M41 has no manual focus by wire (does have manual focus on LCD menu) and can't set aperture and shutter speed at same time. Other features I've used are the same.

Another bonus, it seems that the low resolution LCD is brighter than the HiDef LCD of the G10. I had no problem using LCD in bright sunlight. Oddly enough, that was one of the main reasons I felt compelled to have a viewfinder. Although, the viewfinder is nice to have when wanting discretion. The almost non existent eye cup on the viewfinder makes it difficult to use.

Does the M4XX shows both shutter speed AND aperture (and maybe gain) when you set shutter speed and then locked and adjusted Exposure? If not, try the trick that works on older Canon camcorders: half-press the Photo button (um, not sure that the M4XX has a dedicated Photo button) and see whether the camera displays aperture. For this to work you had to explicitly enable photo snapping on older cameras, not sure about yours.

So, you CAN control both shutter speed and aperture at the same time.

This is a huge difference compared to stupid Sony cams that switch your shutter speed (or aperture) back to auto when you adjust Exposure.

No, only one and the camera sets the other accordingly. It works well too. so not a big deal.
if you don't like it $700 can solve that issue. lol.

added a lens hood, X-grip and wide angle adapter.
the WA lens was $13 on amazon. Cheap and pain less. Since I have nothing to compare it to, I will only say that it works. I considered a raynox 6600. their lens is only rated for use with 1-4x zoom though and this lens seems the similar as I notice blur beyond halfway (5x-10x). I didn't even consider the canon WA lens due to no filter threads.
the x-grip is very functional. low shots and using it seems to add stability when camcorder is mounted perpendicular. The lens hood is great for those sunny days or bright lights while looking like you paid too much for a camcorder. the 3000mah wasabi batteries arrived today as well. they stick out the back, making is difficult using the viewfinder but hey that's the price for power.
the canon dm-100 mic and "Ravelli AVTP Professional 75mm Video Camera Tripod with Fluid Drag Head" should be here this week. I'll update accordingly.

Icyman, your gear looks good. Please post video of your M41 with WA lense, I wonder how it ranks against its big brothers.

Here is footage with wide angle lens.
when zooming in, you can easily see the peripheral blur.
But as stated before the Raynox lens 6600 get the same issue beyond 4x zoom. For $13, it works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRqHt90UShM

Also, I used Corel VideoStudio Pro x4 and added to sound tracks to add to the recorded sound of the insects and water flow as not all the footage shot included these sounds naturally.

Wasabi Batteries 3000Mah after market for BP-827
they are big, size and power, without the big price.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0049VMMZ2

363 minutes vs 109 minutes. Both after recharge. I have seen the stock battery at 112 before.

Icyman, nice clip, I also noticed peripheral blur when you were zooming in, but it also looked like a nice shallow DOF...

Could you also do some low light test with WA lense please?

I'll see what I can do but there isn't much difference between this and without this lens when if comes to low light. At least nothing I noticed. To set up a proper test, I would need a light meter and I don't have one.

I will just say that if you need a WA lens, this is a good VALUE. Kind of hard to go wrong for $13. Is this professional? NO, but I would have the XA10 if I wanted professional.

If you are recording at an event with zooming in and out needed, this won't work for you but for home use to get that wider shot to include all of the family at the birthday party, it's worth it.

I'm coming from a SD camcorder, so its hard for me to complain. This is simply a work around for saving money on the camcorder and lens. Looks like my savings is at $687 over the G10.