Canon HF100

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/camcorders/0,39029967,49296559,00.htm

Reviewed 29 April 2008

Reviewed by Lori Grunin

Canon may not have been first out of the gate with a flash-based camcorder -- or second, or even third -- but one of its debut models, the high-definition HF100, gets it right the first time.

A sleek, matte-grey compact model with a well-rounded feature set, great video and excellent performance, the £600 HF100 definitely deserves a spot on your short list of potential home-movie camcorders.

Unlike its brother, the HF10, the HF100 lacks built-in memory, including just a slot for SD/SDHC removable flash. Aside from that and the colour, the two models are identical. This review is based on our evaluation of the HF10.

Design
The petite HF100 weighs around 380g with SD card and battery and measures 73 by 63 by 129mm -- small and light enough to fit into a large jacket pocket, which is about as good as it gets on the horizontal designs. It's significantly more compact than its cousins, the hard-disk-based HG10 or tape-based HV30. The plastic body feels quite solid, too.

By moving the power button to the top and the capture-type dial to the side, Canon was able to shave quite a few millimetres off

Fortunately, the HF100 doesn't seem to suffer from the usability issues that usually accompany shrinkage. The controls remain large and easy to operate, though Canon has relocated many of them. The Function button and joystick, which call up and navigate frequently needed shooting settings, now live on the LCD bezel.

We're not big fans of designs that do this, mostly because we find it more difficult to simultaneously operate the controls and hold the camera steady when they're on the LCD than when they lie under our right thumb. In addition, manually focusing with the joystick on the camcorder's smallish 69mm (2.7-inch) LCD can be a pain, regardless of the zoom-view focus assist.

Features
Its optically stabilised f/1.8-3.0 12X zoom lens has a longer reach than the typical 10x lens available in this class, but the rest of its features are pretty common in Canon's prosumer models. For video, these include aperture- and shutter-priority exposure modes, three fixed/one variable zoom speed options, a video light, Instant AF and a wind-screen filter.

Despite its small size, the HF10 includes a pretty broad feature set, including a microphone and headphone jacks and HDMI and USB ports

For still photos, metering, flash and burst and exposure bracketing options become available as well. The camcorder also supplies a complete set of ports and connectors: component or HDMI out for direct-to-TV playback, mini headphone and mic jacks, and USB for downloading to computer.

Performance
It records AVCHD video at a maximum of 17 megabits per second -- 2 hours 5 minutes of video -- and can hold up to 6 hours 5 minutes of video at the lowest bit rate of 5Mbps. That higher bit rate goes to support the full 1,920x1,080-pixel capture, the norm for most of this year's new models, compared with 1,440x1,080 pixels for older AVCHD camcorders that required only a 12Mbps maximum bit rate.

You can record best-quality movies to the card as long as it's a Class 4 SDHC or better (Class 6 is currently fastest): the Class 4 16GB Kingston card we tested with worked fine.

The new lens performs surprisingly well. Not only does the SuperRange optical image stabilisation system work satisfactorily all the way out to the end, but the lens focuses quickly and holds the lock in both dim and bright conditions. Images look sharp, too.

The HF10's dial for switching between photo and video capture and playback modes strikes us as retro -- and clunky

On the downside, high-contrast edges show more fringing than usual. The stereo microphone sits beneath the lens and generally delivers good audio quality. However, in recent models Canon changed the wind filter option from a forced-on to automatic, and ever since we've found it far less effective.

As is usual with compact designs, Canon provides a new 890mAh battery with the HF100, the BP-809, which is rated for about 55 minutes of typical recording time. The company offers an optional double-capacity battery, the BP-819. The larger battery likely ruins the svelte lines of the camcorder design, however.

Though the HF100 incorporates a smaller, 1/3.2-inch 3.3-megapixel CMOS sensor than the HV30, the video still looks quite good: properly exposed, nicely saturated, and sharp. In low light the video displays more noise and a somewhat compressed tonal range, but retains a significant amount of detail and fares above average compared with the rest of its class.

Conclusion
The HF100 is an excellent choice for flash-based HD recording. But then the real question becomes which model is the better deal -- the HF10 or the HF100. The cost difference between the two closely reflects the current pricing of the HF10's internal 16GB of flash memory, which makes it tempting to recommend buying the cheaper model and springing for an additional card when the prices inevitably fall -- or paying the same for a larger card, when they inevitably ship -- later in the year. On the other hand, the HF10's black body is more attractive than the HF100's grey. Decisions, decisions.

Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday