Excellent video quality and performance; nicely designed interface; fast battery charging
No eye-level viewfinder; expensive; lens cover rattles when closed
SD cards
The Canon Legria HF S100 is an excellent SD card-based, prosumer, high-definition camcorder. The lack of an eye-level viewfinder may put some off though, but you might find it a better buy than its almost identical -- but more expensive -- sibling, the S10
8 Excellent
Reviewed by Lori Grunin
Many companies turn out SD-card-based camcorders simply because flash-based technologies allow for much smaller models than those based on tapes, hard disks and Mini DVDs. While Canon continues to offer compact AVCHD models -- the Legria HF20 and the HF200 -- the company's branching out with slightly more 'pro' prosumer offerings in the form of the Legria HF S10 and HF S100.
These two models, which record 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution 60i video, feature a larger and faster f1.8 10x high-definition lens and a relatively large, high-resolution 1/1.26-inch 8-megapixel CMOS sensor, along with higher-end capabilities, such as SMPTE colour bars, the ability to manually boost gain up to 18dB, fixed 70 and 100 IRE zebra stripes, and a user-assignable button/control dial combination. They differ only in internal memory and price: the S100 has no memory -- relying solely on SD cards -- and costs about £1,050, while the S10 has 32GB and costs around £1,200. You can read our full Canon Legria HF S10 review, which will tell you everything you need to know about its sister, the S100.
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