Santa Claus was good to me and picked out the exact High Definition video camcorder that I would have picked for myself this Christmas. Recently, a few friends had asked me why I selected … I mean, why Santa selected that particular video camera. My response…
The Canon Vixia HF11 (which will be surpassed in February by the new cameras that Canon just announced January 2009 at the Consumer Electronic Show) is a great all-around camera for my personal video needs (family video, children sporting events) as well as some light video production work (shooting video of speakers and for my video podcast). My main reasons for selecting the HF11:
- HD. I mean really, high definition video on a consumer camera is so much better than standard definition on a consumer camera. The first crop of HD consumer level camera were nothing to get excited about, the image processors were poor, the video was muddled, the media was often tape-based.
- Selectable frame rate depending on the desired effect. A “cinema mode” at 24 frames per second progressive scan, as well as 30fps Progressive and 60fps Interlaced. Video buffs will tell you that Canon is using a technique to simulate these modes and that they are note “true” which is technically true. However, this is a consumer level HD camera and I wouldn’t expect that level of performance, yet.
- Hot shoe for shot gun mic. The connector on the top of the camera makes it easy to connect the Canon shot gun microphone which is a must for those school performances that you shoot from the back of the room.
- Microphone in jack ( handy for the podcasting and production work )
- 100% SD memory recording. Fewer breakable parts, faster transfer to computer for post production work.
- Additional slot for SD media which complements that internal memory. Canon does sell another version of this camera that is exactly the same except it doesn’t have any built in memory. The built in memory means that you will never forget to have memory with you (pardon the irony of that statement please).
- Up to a 24Mbps recording bit rate – the best bit rate that you can get for AVCHD. Companies are still refining their video compression algorithms but generally speaking, the higher the bit rate, the better video quality. The encoding format that is emerging for high definition video is AVCHD and the best bit rate that is supported in the format is 24Mbps. Some previous generations of HD video cameras only support up to 17Mbps.
- Good enough image sensor (the latest Canons have denser image sensor – more pixels – but a 3.2 megapixel image sensor is good enough for HD video and I don’t need/want a 8+ megapixel image sensor to use the video camera as a still camera.)
- Canon Digic image processing. Good color reproduction and below average noise in the video.
- Built-in light for illuminating low-light situations.
Of course there are other considerations when making the jump to HD video. If you plan to do your own editing you need a computer with adequate horse power. In addition, HD video eats storage space for breakfast and lunch and dinner. Make sure that you have a plan of how to store and back-up all that data otherwise you will find your computer’s hard drive is full with video.
So far I’m very pleased with Santa’s selection and I’ve been putting the camera to good use.
