Choosing an HD Camcorder

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After experimenting with a couple of HD webcams – the Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 and Microsoft Cinema HD – I was ultimately frustrated by them.  They suffered from generally poor quality, especially fuzzy at the edges of the frame, weird color saturation and white balance issues, auto-focus inconsistency, etc.  The built-in microphones were both terrible, the Logitech prone to massive distorted glitching, and the Microsoft with a consistent high-pitched whine.

So, finally I decided to take the plunge and get a real HD camcorder.  I can attempt to justify the huge difference in price by saying that I’ll also be using it for recording family and school events, etc.   🙂

I wanted a well built small camera, high resolution, and no tape.  Also, I require an external stereo microphone in (to allow me to record guitar and voice with two separate microphones).  With so many brands and models to choose from out there, it helps to narrow the playing field.   I’ve always been a big fan of Canon digital cameras, and their HD camcorders are extremely well priced, and well reviewed.   To get the equivalent features from a Sony or Panasonic, you need to spend almost twice as much.  I decided to restrict my search to the Canon HF11 (last year’s model), the current model HF20/200 and HG20/21 cameras.    The HF11/20/200 are flash based, while the HG series have built-in hard disks.

VIXIA HF200

Why even consider last year’s models?  The new HF20 series has a slightly smaller 1/4” sensor than the previous generation HF11 and HG20 which both had a 1/3.2” sensor – this has significant implications when recording in low light.  More on that below…

I actually spent a lot of time with the HF11, HF200 and HG20, recording a bunch of test footage and comparing.   I will be posting some of this split-screen comparison footage in a future post.  But first, let’s look at the differences between these cameras:

In bright sunlight, the HF20 looks the best of the three cameras – unbelievably high resolution and great colors.  However, it is very clear to me that the newer HF20’s smaller sensor results in worse performance in low light situations.  By “low light”, I mean anything less than sunlight.  Shooting indoors at night, even with all the lights on, still qualifies as “low light”.  Now, the low light performance is not great on the HF11 and HG20 either – I found some situations where all three cameras looked equally bad.  Generally speaking though, the HF20 consistently looked worse in low light.  For critical lowlight recording with any of these cameras, you’d probably want to use supplemental lighting.

Since I do a lot of indoor recording, and often at night, I first decided to go with the older HF11 model.  However, in the end, I found that there were too many other issues with the HF11 that drove me nuts.  Aside from low light performance, in every other way the newer HF20 is a superior camera.   So I returned the HF11 and bought the HF200 instead.

While the HF11 and HF20 are similar in many ways (full 1080p at 24mbps AVCHD, 24p cinema and 30p progressive modes, lots of cool manual features for focus, white balance, exposure, etc), there are some big differences with the new generation.  Following is my rather simplified comparison, which hopefully makes it clear why I ended up going with the HF200:

HF11 HF20/200
Sensor 1/3.2” 1/4”
Total Pixels 3. Megapixels 3.89 Megapixels
Bright Light Resolution/Color Excellent Amazing!
Low Light Resolution/Color Acceptable Not so great
Menu System Ugly, Sluggish Response Beautiful, Snappy Response
Zoom Lever Cheap, insubstantial feeling Nice, solid
Wide Angle Ok – 4.8mm (about 48°).  Not quite wide enough! Always having to move back for the shot. Great – 4.1mm (about 51°)
Zoom Good –12x Great – 15x
Battery Life on full charge 72 min record, 98 min play 87 min record, 136 min play
USB Transfer Speed About 6 MB/sec. Slooooow! About 12 MB/sec
Tri-pod mount Not keyed, shifts easily Keyed, locks in place
Photo/Still capabilities Horrifically slow (buggy?) Works well
Operating temperature Gets hot along bottom of camera Stays cool
Monitoring external mic Bad lag between external mic and headphones No lag, works well
Other good features Quick delete from record mode Face detection for focus.
Play mode features better – selecting items for delete, etc
Size (W X H X D in), Weight 2.9 x 2.5 x 5.1 – 430g 2.8 x 2.4 x 4.9 – 400g
It’s a subtle difference, but actually feels a lot better to me
Price in USA as of 12/2009 $599 $649/$549 (HF20/HF200)
HF20 is identical to HF200, but has 32gb built-in memory

About the HG20:  this is sort of a hybrid of the HF11 and HF20, for about the same price, which I thought might be ideal.  It’s got the older 1/3.2” sensor and lens, but the newer menu system.  It also has a 60GB hard disk in it.  Unfortunately, I found its zoom mechanism to be noisy.  Unlike the HF11 and HF20, the LCD screen is not vivid multi angle, and looks bad unless you’re looking right at it.  And it’s physically larger and heavier to accommodate the HDD.  Also worth noting, hard disks crap out above about 10,000 feet elevation, so it’s no good for mountaineering.The HG21 is like the HG20, but adds a 120gb hard disk, a viewfinder and the multi-angle vivid LCD. Costs $100 more.  The viewfinder would be nice, but I didn’t try this camera.

I think the guys at camcorderinfo.com do a pretty good job with their reviews, and I depended on their work for a lot of my early research.  But nothing compares to actually trying the cameras for yourself.   I spent time in the local stores, trying a camera crouched in the corners or under the counters trying to get into low light situations 🙂