Canon VIXIA HF100 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder

very bad service from amozon and tigerdirect
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
we cancelled are order. steel we haven’t got refund yet.after three weeks we called tigerdirect and amozon. they hangup phone.then we called are amx credit card now they are going to investgateing.

HF100 – Excellent HD Camcorder
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I must admit, this is my first HD camcorder, but I have not ceased to be impressed since it was first purchased. On the “Pros” side, the video quality is amazing (actually looks better than some of the lower quality HD-DVDs I have seen, and low light performance is the best I’ve personally seen), the ergonomics are great, and the removable SDHC card is very convenient and never an inconvenience. Also, the navigation of the controls and settings screens are intuitive. The only “Con” is the battery; for a camera in this price range, I’d like a battery that can last more than an hour on the highest quality setting. However, I do understand the power consumption at such high data transfer rates.

Overall, I’d recommend this camera to anyone. I’d also recommend one of the higher capacity batteries

Excellent camcorder!!!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
small enough, light enough, high definition enough. It is the best camcorder that I have used!

love the camera – HATE dealing with the files
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I was looking for a video camera that used the SDHC card for its files with the hopes that I would be able to simply insert the card into the SDHC card into the slot in my laptop as I do with my digital camera and simply transfer files. Not so easy – computer does not reconginize the format. So after using the cables and the software that comes with the the camera, I have the videos on my computer and the quality is great, but as of yet, I cannot burn them to a DVD in a format that is readable by a standard DVD player, and windows media player doesn’t recognize the format. Also, the editing software is AWFUL!!

I do like the camera, it is small, easy to use, and the video quality is GREAT, but using the videos or sharing the videos just doesn’t work so far. I’ll be looking into a 3rd party video editing program that will hopefully solve my problems.

Awesome HD video
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This camera takes great video, is light and compact. controls are easy to use. SD chips are the way to go for storage. Can’t say enough about it. Had a Sony HD prior (lost in Florida) that didn’t compare. I am going to order a spare battery just in case – probably one of the cheap non-Canon ones.

Almost There
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I purchased this camera to record my Football Teams games with. The camera itself is very nice, I do not have one single complaint, and battery life is pretty good.

I do have a huge complaint with the crappy software that comes with this camera, it is junk. I have been searching high and low for some decent software, and it does not seem to exist. Some people recommend Pinnacle while some recommend others, the bottom line is for every good review of one software package, there is an offsetting bad review. This AVCHD format that all the camera manufactures are using has caught everyone off guard. I am able to suck the video down into iMovie, which is a junk program, and then share it with iDVD which is also junk, to then be able to burn a DVD that I can watch on an ordinary DVD player hooked up to a TV. If you want to just watch on your computer, then no problem, its when you want whatever you recorded in a DVD format you can watch on any old DVD player that things go to heck. It takes me about 2 hours to transfer a single football game from the camera to an actual usable DVD. So if you think hey, I am going to get this camera, and then burn some DVD’s for my family or friends, you need to think again. I am as tech savvy as they come, and it is a serious PIA. This problem exists for all the camera’s, so it is not a Canon or Sony problem it is all the AVCHD cameras that us this crazy format that none of the software makers have figured out what to do with yet. I use both PC and MAC and I found the MAC seems to do this smoother than my PC, but if you only have a PC, good luck is all I can say.

Great Camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Purchased as a Family Christmas gift.

Used to to record Christmas Morning.

Battery lasted over 4 hours.

Video files converted easily to play in Windows Media.

Sound is great; Video quailty excellent.

Would higly recommend this camera.

AVCHD Is Hard To Work With
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
One thing that was left out in all the reviews is that if you want to edit the AVCHD clips you’ve recorded, you’ll need a high-powered PC or MAC. The specs called for in the supplied software indicate that the user must have a Pentium D processor at minimum to edit clips. My PC was four years old with a Pentium 4 HD processor, and it was not able to play back the video clips smoothly enough for me to even edit them. I have an Nvidia GeForce 7600 video card with 512Mb of RAM and also 4Gb of RAM on the motherboard.

Also, the software only burns to DVD-R disks and my PC had only DVD+R capability, so I had to buy a new writer to burn the AVCHD DVD’s which did play in HD on my Sony PS3. As far as MAC’s go, there is no way to burn a DVD in full 1080i high-def on a MAC…even with Final Cut Pro. Yes, it will import the AVCHD files and you can edit them, but you cannot actually burn the edited movie in full 1080i high-def onto a DVD without having to use a 3rd party piece of software.

I visited the local Apple store and after 2 hours of them playing with it, they produced a DVD for me to take home to play on my PS3…and guess what, the PS3 would not even recognize the disk!

Don’t get me wrong, this camera takes beautiful, full 1080i high-def video, but once you’ve downloaded the files to your computer, it’s almost impossible to burn those AVCHD files back onto a DVD for playback in full 1080i high-def unless you’ve got a Blu-Ray disk player such as the Sony PS3. The people at the Apple store indicated that Final Cut Express would import the AVCHD files, but would then convert them into an intermediate codec which ends up downgrading the clips to less than full 1080i high-def.

They told me to actually burn the edited movie onto a DVD in full 1080i high-def, I’d have to buy Roxio’s Toast 9! Is amazed me that even their $1000 Final Cut Pro required the purchase of an $80 piece of software to complete the process!

The AVCHD format is the future, but I’m afraid there’s just too little in the way of a simple workflow to actually be able to import, edit, and then burn these AVCHD format movies onto a DVD for playback in full 1080i high-def on ones HD TV set. I have spent a month researching this, and decided that I was just not willing to upgrade to an entirely new computer with an Intel Duo Quad Processor to work with the AVCHD files that these cameras produce.

The new Sony Vegas 8 Platinum will burn the AVCHD files to a DVD, but again, check out the required hardware specs on Sony’s website and you’ll see that the minimum requirements for hardware are probably much more than what you have unless you bought your PC within the last year.

Based upon all of this, I finally decided to return the camera and wait until this newly adopted AVCHD format is easier to work with. By the way, for most of us, a Blu-Ray disk writer and the BD blank media are just too expensive to buy. Most people will most likely want to burn high-definition DVD’s instead, that will play in full 1080i high-def; 30 minutes on a single layer DVD and 60 minutes on a dual layer DVD.

You will see that virtually all of the software currently available; including Adobe’s just released Premier Elements 4.0 will NOT burn AVCHD files onto a DVD! In fact, it does not even support AVCHD files created by Canon HD camcorders that are in the AVCHD format! And Sony’s Vegas 8.0 Platinum also does not support Canon’s AVCHD files.

It’s all way to difficult for the average consumer. Pretty much your only option to see your movies in full 1080i high-def will be to attach the camcorder via an HDMI cable (not included) to your HDTV. This will allow you to watch your raw un-edited footage directly from your camcorder. However, the HDMI cable you’ll need costs about $40-$50! And don’t think you can use a standard HDMI cable…no, it takes a special one which has a MINI-HDMI at one end and a standard HDMI to plug on the other!

WOW…what a pain. The marketing information is very flowery in its description, but the reality is far different. Do your research and you will that the products out there for editing these AVCHD movies simply fail to mention anything about actually BURNING the results onto a standard DVD for playback in high-def on a regular DVD home player. Why? Because you cannot! You MUST own a Sony PS3 to do this!

In short, “buyer beware” on any HD Camcorder which records in the AVCHD format. And as a topper, each camera manufacturer who supports AVCHD format does so in their own way, so the editing software that will import AVCHD files from one brand of camcorder MAY NOT import is from another.

Even the Pixela SE software that Canon supplies (which is bare bones, but does work) will ONLY work with files from these “HF” series camcorders from Canon! Oh, by the way, the Instruction Manual for using the Pixela SE software that Canon includes with the camera IS NOT available for download on Canon’s website, but rather, one must buy the camera first and it’s included on a CD which you’ll find in the box! Only the Installation Instructions are posted on Canon’s website! Why you ask? Well once you see the manual you’ll find out that the hardware requirements probably exceed what you own, rendering the software almost unusable.

Again, let me repeat…this is a fabulous camcorder and the HD video is spectacular! It’s the bigger issue of “what do I do with the files on the SD card now that I’ve shot the video?” that will stop you in your tracks.

My first camcorder and the HF100 did not disappoint!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is my first video camera and I am a geek so please pardon me if I get a little technical as I’m the kind of guy who shops simply by comparing specs.

Before this, my only experience with video cameras where those that I borrowed from friends and family over the years to cover the occasional family event – I prefer shooting with a still camera. I have been shooting with SLR’s for the past 25 years (all Nikons from the FM2 to the D3) so I am biased towards prints presentation and web sharing. This makes me a johnny-come-lately into the camcorder world.

2008 saw the confluence of our first HDTV, Canon’s release of an affordable true HD-resolution camcorder, and cheap flash-memory storage. So it finally hit me that *right now* is the time to get into recording life’s sweet moments on “tape.” (And at 16:9 1920×1080 resolution at that! I’m a geek remember?)

I live in a developing country in Asia where new gizmos are always late to market and priced 30-50% more so the only way to find what I want is to shop online by specs. I’ve compared and read every user review of all the available models from Sony, JVC, Panasonic, and Canon and the recently-announced and released HF100 sure got everything right on paper! I received my Amazon package 2 days ago and I’m happy to report that this little gem is EXACTLY what I wanted and expected!

These are what I was looking for and which, happily, I got:

1. Flash-memory based recording on SD

I can’t deal with tape nor am I comfortable with a spinning drive inside a piece of equipment that I might drop. Sony’s Memory Sticks don’t fit my world and with Transcend Class 6 16Gb SD cards priced at only $74, the HF100 is perfect for my workflow! (I spend 10-16hrs a day in front of a PC.)

I’ve decided to shoot all my material using FX mode and a 16Gb card is good for 2hours worth of video. (Side note: the standard BP809 battery is good for only about 1hr so you better get an extra one.)

2. True HD quality

I still have to get myself a HDMI cable but the component-out signal on my LCD is crisp and more than what I expected! To my eye, it’s as good as the prosumer-level models that I’ve been wanting to get but can’t justify.

3. Fast focus

The focusing works darn well. It’s not 100% but it’s very close. And this is from a guy who’s spoiled by the fast- and multi-point focusing of pro-level DSLR’s and lenses.

4. OIS

Generally works, you gotta give it a half-second or so to stabilize and the LCD viewfinder is a great way to balance the unit with 2 hands. Once you zoom all the way to 12x though, I recommend using a tripod esp when shooting for long periods of time (like stage performances).

5. Output files

The files are saved in MTS format and after Googling for half an hour, I was able to download a couple of freeware transcoders and converted a 46-second 89Mb 1920×1080 clip and downsized it into a 16Mb 848×480 XVid AVI which is gentler on my Mediagate MG-350 hard disk media player. I intend to archive all originals on BluRay and downsample the files to make it easier to share, think YouTube, Windows Media Player, hard disk media players, iPhones, etc…

6. Size and build

Yep, it’s really the size of soda can and very, very insconspicuous. It has metallic gun metal finish and, although not as aesthetically pleasing as the black HF10, it’s better-looking than the pics on the web. The size is a welcome change from the routine harassment I get from overzealous mall security who thinks I’m out to make a quick buck selling pictures of mall scenes and/or architecture everytime I fish out my so-called ‘professional’ DSLR. I shot all day today and no one even noticed. The build is perfect, like what we’re used to expect from high-quality, super-miniaturized products from Japan. For what it’s worth, the unit I got is labeled Made in Japan.

7. User interface

I haven’t read the manual yet as the basic camcorder stuff is easy. But I concur with the observation that the START/STOP and CAMERA/VIDEO RECORD/PLAYBACK switches could have been designed better. I prefer the Sony approach where a rotating collar representing the different modes rings a big round red button. The on-screen menu can be better but it’s liveable. I’m so used to the intuitive interface of Nikon cameras so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that (just) some of the quirkiness of Canon’s camera interface design can also be found on their camcorders. For example, there are way too many clicks to get a clip deleted. I also wish that scrolling through the clips is fast as browsing through a digicam’s thumbnails.

8. Optics

Based on what I see on the LCD TV, they’re great! I’m a wide-angle shooter so my next purchase is a 0.5x wide angle converter, but I’m now hesitating against buying the $50 models as they may not do justice to the camcorder outstanding optics. Information on photographic lens quality such as resolving power, MTF charts, etc.. are readily available online but there seems to be less on video-related optics so I gotta spend some time finding the right one for this.

9. Control layout

I think the layout is okay. The AV jack, HDMI jack, and composite jacks are on 3 separate sides, I hope they can put them all on one side in the next iteration. Oh, the tactile feel, location and size of the photo capture button is awkward. Coming from a DSLR, how I use/misuse this button often results in blurred pictures esp when in dim light. There’s just no way of releasing the shutter without causing camera shake. But then again, why use a camcorder as a camera?

10. Audio

I think the audio recording is okay, it records my narrative clearly. I haven’t shoot enough to judge how audio from the subject sounds like but I will attend a beach wedding in a couple of weeks, so I’ll report back on how the wind filter and audio pickup performs in such an environment.

I’m truly happy with this purchase. After 2 days with it and experimenting on post-production workflow, I’d rate this product a 10/10.

Get one!

—

2008.05.01 Update

Start up time from stand-by is 1sec. Start up time from dead cold is 6 seconds regardless of your flash capacity (I tried it on 1, 4, and 16Gb) and regardless of how many clips are already in it.

Finalists on my list before I got the HF100 are the Sony HDR-CX7 and the Panny SD9. They’re worth taking a look and the reviews should tell you why I chose the HF100 instead.

I’ve just finalized my AVCHD to DVD workflow and it basically involves transcoding from MTS > AVC (Using DGAVCIndex) > MPEG2/DVD (Using ConvertXToDVD & AVISynth). I don’t have a Blu-Ray player yet so I’ll figure out that workflow some other time. Checkout http://www.videohelp.com for all the tips and tricks you’ll ever need.

I think my DSLR’s will see a lot less action in as far as shooting family is concerned.

—

2008.05.03 Update

For easy 1-step conversion of AVCHD files to DVD discs, one probably has to use commercial software such as iMovie, Nero 8, ULead 11, etc…

The geek in me was somehow drawn to open source/freeware software I found via the http://www.VideoHelp.com forum, specifically as illustrated in this thread – http://forum.videohelp.com/topic346331.html.

I learned (over the past few days) that AVCHD recording saves your material as an MTS file which you’ll find in the STREAMS subdirectory. MTS files combine the actual AVC video (MPEG4/H264 format) and AC3 audio into a single ‘stream.’ As such, you need to demultiplex or split up the streams into their individual video and audio components before you can get any transcoding done (conversion from one format to another).

To demux the MTS file, I used a software called DGAVCIndex (downloadable via a link in the above thread) and a utility called AVISynth which acts as a frameserver or translator to a final software that creates your final output. The final software I chose to use are VirtualDub for creating DivX- or XVid-encoded AVI files which you can view on your PC. On the other hand, I use ConvertXtoDVD to create DVD discs that I can view on any DVD player out there.

Yeah, that made my head spin too!

Anyways, that’s DGAVCINDEX to split, if you don’t split you won’t get anything done. AVISYNTH to act as a pre-processor for the split files – add fade-in/out, resize, sharpen, adjust color, etc… CONVERTXDVD takes that pre-processed files and convert/burn the output directly to DVD.

Those are all freeware but the commercial stuff aren’t too expensive either. I just hope that the little explanation helps you better understand/appreciate the conversion process. I heard that it wasn’t this easy dealing with AVCHD files as late as a year ago.

Happy shooting!

EXCELLENT
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I can’t speak to the tech side of the camera, in the end it’s about, does it do what I need it to do at the price I’m willing to pay? After reading and reviewing 102 cameras (yes I did), I was more confused than ever. I finally I had to admit my short coming with this type of technology and consult a video/mac (I’m a MAC user) professional with no bias. After hearing what my needs are and I use MacBook Pro (with the Intel chip) he strongly recommended the Canon HF100. the reasons he gave:

Seamless with Mac computers and ALL PC based computers

Works very well will all editing software. (I’m using Final Cut Express)

No moving parts (were are sportsmen and want an HD that is durable (there is a higher risk with a tape drive or DVD camcorder of failure)

Removal of the 16gb SD(separate purchase $140.) Plug it in to a computer and download your video. While you continue to shoot by using a second chip (time saver)

Only 1 second between pushing the rec button and recording.

Lightweight (no hard drive)

The tech stuff and features are outstanding, however, what mattered is it going to perform for me. We took it out on our boat for the day with seas 3-4 ft. The Canon HF100 performed extremely well. The stability in relation to a lot of swells was great, the color (brilliance), longevity of the 16gb SD, the battery (BP-819 not included, Canon includes the BP-809) were also incredibly!

You can read all the tech stuff online and narrow it down based on specs. Sorry I can’t help with that. What I can share with you is what happens after you buy it and whether or not it performs. This camera is the new standard. It will perform.

This camera is featured on the apple.com website, confirming its compatibility.

Great Value, Great Quality
Rating:5 out of 5 stars

Pros – Very quiet, quality is amazing on my big plasma. Pleasantly surprised with audio quality and zoom stabilization.

Cons – Night quality is okay, could be better, but does have built in light to help a little. Not sure why the USB requires a Canon Specific ‘Universal” adapter. Can be frustrating if you intend to show your vacation footage to family and forgot to bring the Canon plug. The USB plugs from your Canon Elf won’t help you, neither will the other 10 plugs from all your other ‘Universal’ devices. If you forget the VIXIA cord, your footage is held hostage.

Great Camera but OIS is very sub par for this price range
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
This is a great little camera but the OIS (Stability) is really sub par compared to other cameras that are much older and cheaper. So if you want really steady video, you may not get it with this camera.

Good camera for the money, looks good on a big screen
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought this camera for it’s small for factor and convenience of the flash drive. It looks great on my home tv, which is a 42″ 1080p LCD. I was using a Sanyo CG6, whose for factor is awesome, but it looked like crap on my big screen as it only records in 640×480. The Canon looks great outside, whether cloudy or sunny, but inside it’s just ok. I’ve seen better low light cameras. It’s not unusable, just be sure to turn on some lights. It is a little jittery, as all HD cameras are, just pan slower. The image stabalization does help tremendously. The pictures are awesome. The battery life is medium, about 45-50 minutes @1080p, not as bad as people say. I have played it on my TV connected with the mini-HDMI and just plugging the card directly into my PS3. Navigating the clips works best connecting the camera directly to the TV. Using the PS3, it sees it as just one big AVCHD file with the different cuts being different chapters.

The Pixela software installed fine with my Vista 64-bit system with only one problem. I had installed after market codecs and it was causing problems. I found the video editor WILL NOT work right if you have HAALI codecs installed, usually comes with ffdshow. REPEAT, HAALI codecs are not compatible up the video editor. It has something to do with HAALI trying to make thumbnails of your videos in the uploading stage of the editor. I just un-installed all my codecs and reinstalled them, leaving ffdshow out, problem solved. The video viewer that comes with it is perfect for viewing the files on your PC, don’t bother trying anything else.

works but has issues
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Basically, it works as advertised. But with a few hiccups.

The image stabilization is poor. Combined with the light weight of the camera, it’s hard to hold without jitter, practically impossible at maximum zoom. Walking with the camera makes the picture jump all over the place. And these fast movements don’t make the compression algorithm happy. As a comparison point, my old Sony Hi8 camcorder can handle even the vibration in a race car without any of it showing on the screen.

Light sensitivity is poor. In low light it drops the frame rate and the video looks funny, blurred and stepped.

If you just leave the camera on without shooting, it still eats the battery like it is shooting. Turning it off and on takes a while, a few seconds. You’d think that this should not be the case in a device without mechanical moving parts but it is.

The file format is weird. There is a good reason why they sell a special DVD writer as a separate (not cheap) option. You can’t just copy the files to DVD and expect them to work on normal players, you need some weird codec (I had a whole pile of them already installed on my computer, so I don’t know which one did the magic). The format must be converted. This means that postprocessing and editing of the material is mandatory, I’m normally too lazy for this kind of stuff.

The editing program just hangs every time when trying to open the file, but this might be because of some conflicts with the codecs I had installed. I haven’t looked deeply into it yet.

For playback, there seems to be no way to set the screen ratio, and the picture looks compressed horizontally on the normal (not-wide-screen) TV. And it has no digital output that my DVD writer could understand (it understands I think DV but not HDMI).

I don’t know how does it compare to the other digital camcorders, maybe all of them have the same issues.

If you wonder, it has no inputs for external cameras (such as something you could mount outside the car), not that I had any expectations for that.

There was also a minor issue with the battery, that after a couple of days started reporting all the time that it’s running out but otherwise worked fine. This issue went away by itself after a week or so. The larger extra battery I bought separately didn’t have this issue.

Can’t go wrong with this one!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
It works great! Excellent HD picture quality even when shown on my 100″ screen. Worthy of note: When zooming in (full zoom) on a subject, there is a slight delay (5 seconds or so) before the auto focus kicks in. Just took this cam and lots of memory cards on an Alaskan cruise. The video is spectacular! The mic is quite susceptible to wind noise but it’s no major issue. Be sure to purchase a MINI HDMI cable as it is not included with this camcorder. Expect the following from your SD Cards when set to highest resolution: 4 gig = 30 minutes video. 8 gig = 1 hour video. 16 gig = about 2 hours video. And, this very positive note: You can edit & burn this AVCHD video onto a regular DVD burner. You don’t need to have a Blu-Ray burner! Then, the “regular” DVD will play back in 1080 HD on a Blu-Ray player! Is that cool, or what??!!

PS3 Compatible and Why not the HF10
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Ok everyone here is stating how great the HF100 is, they are right. So let me point out something that I love about it. You can pull the SD card out and plug it into your PS3 and watch the videos instantly. It is awesome, the PS3 also upconverts it to 1080p, and it looks GREAT. I save the file to me server and can stream them down to the PS3 anytime, no more searching for DVDs. Just thought I would through another curve ball in there.

Oh and a reason for going with the HF100 over the HF10. Besides the common since of shelling out two hundred dollars for 16gb of RAM (that you can buy for less then sixty dollars). The SD cards are much more convenient when it comes to downloading. With the builtin RAM you still have to plug the camera into your PC. There for requiring you to use the battery of the camera or break out the power cord. Then breakout the USB cord. The SD card you just plug them into the reader and go. I got the Transend 16gb with reader, it is less them sixty dollars (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0010Z28XG)

. I got three and keep a reader in my laptop bag, the wife’s laptop bag, and one in my camera bag.

Nice features…very poor editing capability!
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I bought this camera to use in our business, mainly to produce high quality videos for use on our website and some youtube videos, as well. I realize I didn’t have to have HD, but the camera was rated really well, so I sprung for it. The problem with most of the reviews I read is that almost none of them talked in depth about how to edit these videos. Essentially, you can’t edit them in Windows Movie Maker and many of the well known video editing software. There are a few programs you can, but the video is so choppy that you can’t effectively edit it anyways. You ca use VoltaicHD to convert it to avi or wmv then use common programs, but it’s coverted and worse quality, which defeats the purpose of editing hd video for high quality purposes. To me, AVCHD is only worth a darn if you have a supercomputer with an expensive software program to edit it, and even then, it’s not worth the hassle at this point, to me. So, I returned it, and bought the non-hd version of the same video camera instead, which I’ll be trying out tomorrow. I’ll let you know on the difference.

This HD Camcorder is great!
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I really like this camcorder. The only thing that I could complain about is that it is so small for my large hands. I’m amazed at how small it is, and the above isn’t really a complaint as much as an observation that the location of the buttons are more well suited to a person with smaller hands.

There are other reviewers who’ve commented on the technical stuff, so I won’t go into that here. I will say, that I’m glad I got this camcorder, and recommend it to others who want a simple to operate excellent quality camcorder.

the best of canon
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I love this camcorder, I did order one for my brother after I used my HF11.

the removable memory card is much easier to view right away on Playstation 3 instead of down load video to PC.

The built in memory in HF10 (my dady’s cam) or my HF11 are just back up memory. After the removable card is full, you have to manually set the HF10 or HF11 to buil in memory and it takes about 2-3 min depending on how good you are. The removalbe card take 2 second to change and shoot the video. If you don’t want to miss a momnent you should consider this.

Best Flash Memory Camera on the Market!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I debated between the HF10 and HF100 for about a week before I decided the dedicated 16GB memory was just not worth the extra $$$ and I ordered the HF100.

I have never been much into shooting video but with a new project I am doing I have been forced to do so – AND WOW!!

This camera (combined with a MacBook Pro) has made Video shooting (and editing) as easy as can be.

A big debate I had was the quality of the video via a Flash Card. This camera allows you to shoot at 30 Frames per Second (30 FPS) which eliminates any and all quality for prosumer video shooting.

If you want to see some sample video’s cruise over to: [..]

Here is a few of the family video’s I have shot.

Excellent camcorder – requires external software`
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I purchased this camcorder about 3 days ago and have made 2 dvds and uploaded a couple YouTube videos. I really like it:

- Size – small & light – fits nicely in hand – on-off button requires a second hand to use – the ‘start video’ button may be pressed accidently

- ease of use – quite easy to use – has an ‘easy’ mode that you can select or de-select at will. Not a great selection of user-defined modes for the casual user, but sufficient for my purposes

- video quality – excellent in good light – adequate in dim lighting. I noticed that it shows better on my hi-def TV than on my computer monitor, probably need to adjust the color balance on computer monitor… The zoom in and out works very smoothly – much nicer than other camcorders I have used in the past 19 years.

- editing – took me a couple hours to figure out editing. I used the bundled software initially – but it is minimal in features, and I have used Pinnacle Studio and Premiere for at least 8 years… I tried Sony MovieStudio and couldn’t get it to import. I tried Ulead 11.5 and still couldn’t get it to import. I tried to import and convert using the bundled software, and that worked, but was not easy. Finally, I found a website that suggested the newest Pinnacle Studio – 11 – upgraded to that and it works like a snap. Easy to import multiple files, rename video clips that you import, editing is easy, output to whatever format you desire. Burns DVDs with great menu and titles options.

- hardware – battery life limited – I got the extra-strength battery as a backup, 2 16G cards, and am getting the external battery charger. The plug-in charger takes a long time to charge.

- others – i like being able to review the clips I just shot on the camcorder and delete ones that were mistaken ‘start recording’ button pushes… I also like being able to import bout 20 minutes of video files in a couple minutes, having them available to edit on computer shortly thereafter. MUCH faster than copying DV tapes using firewire… also nice having the clips broken down already into individual files for each start-stop in the tape – i think this makes the rendering easier… I also like the instant-on of recording – where it starts recording within a second of me pushing the button. No need for HD to spin up, or tape to start… just record to flash.

Would LOVE to have this in the shock-proof and water-proof model that the competitor makes, but will just have to be careful

An Amazing Little Camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This was an experiment for me as I had never played with a flash memory video camera. But I have used several tape based cameras, including professional equipment. The size is perfect it just fits in you hand and the unit is light. In fact it is so light you have to remember that it is there and avoid moving the camera too fast. A couple of minutes practice and I could smoothly and slowly zoom the 12x lens. Far better than any other tape camera I have used other than a $50K PROFESSIONAL SONY camera.

The camera comes on quickly.

A 16 GB SDHC class six card gives over 4 hours of video. Need more switch to another card.

The standard battery last 80-90 minutes. You may want a spare or a larger battery.

That “usability” which is great is still not the best feature. The actual video is stunning. I transcode the video into Final Cut Express for editing and I can create beautiful HD videos. I haven’t played with the PC video software yet but when I get time I will write another review. Meanwhile, I rate this camera A for Amazing.

WOW
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This camera is awesome. Flash memory and awesome video quality. It doesn’t get any better.

Canon HF100 review
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This is my first HD and flash memory video camera. The “out of the box” experience was very good. It is very small in my big hands. I found it awkward to hold in a traditional way using the included strap. I my case, it exacerbated camera shake due to the angle of the wrist – that just me. I found that I had better luck cradling the camera with 2 hands and bring it down to waist level for much better results.

The battery, as anticipated is minimal, but enough for the 4 GB card I got. The best advice I got was to use the 4 GB card, as I represents 1 hr. and can be burned directly to a DVD so you don’t have to put everything on your hard drive. Further, I had much better luck using a USB card reader vs. the camera, which is a mess of wires and not very convenient.

The screen was good. The controls good. The quality was great except low light, but I didn’t investigate further how to improve that. I don’t have anything to compare it too, but I found the experience, quality and the bang for the buck to be terrific.Canon VIXIA HF100 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

Best of the AVCHD Camcorders
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I spent a very long time researching small SD based high def cameras and ended up choosing the Vixia HF100. This after owning a Panasonic SD3 for a brief period last year. After a full weekend playing with the HF100 I am quite pleased with my decision.

My motivation for choosing this camera over the competition was Canon’s very wise decision to include a standard microphone input (and manual audio controls). Why other manufacturers are removing this feature from consumer camcorders baffles me since good audio is such an important part of making good video! Canon also includes a mini hot shoe on the top of the device, and there’s already a mini shotgun mic available (Canon 2591B002 DM-100 Directional Stereo Microphone for HF10 and HF100 Camcorders).

In many ways the HF100 is not much different from its competition. It’s about soda can sized (although not as tiny as the new Panasonic SD9), has no view finder, and records video onto SDHC flash memory. Flash memory is so cheap right now that spending the extra money for the HF10 (with the on board storage) really isn’t worth it.

VIDEO QUALITY & OPTIONS

Excellent and consistent with other cameras in its class. Color quality is rich and perhaps a little over-saturated (as most consumer cameras are) but there are settings to wind back the saturation a bit (like switching into cinema mode). Artifacts are minimal but remember that AVCHD is a highly compressed video format. Those looking for the absolute best quality in a consumer camera will want to look at an HDV tape based solution. There are settings for manual white balancing as well.

Low light performance is so-so.. Gets a bit grainy but you can make adjustments to compensate both in frame rate and shutter/aperture settings. There’s also a mini-video light that can be turned on but it won’t have room-filling range to it.

The camera has multiple video quality options but you’ll want to select the highest quality as it’s not on by default. I am getting about an hour of video on an 8 gig SD card in the highest quality mode.

The camera also includes three frame rate options: 60i, 30p, and 24p. All of these are processed at 60i so you’ll need an editor that can remove the pulldown for true 24P.

BATTERY LIFE

Like every other camera in its class, the included battery is pretty lousy. It charges quickly but you’ll only get about an hour or so of recording time. Canon does make an extended battery which I plan on purchasing soon.

CONNECTIVITY & EDITING

I am a Mac guy so those of you using Windows will have to comment below on your success with it. On the Mac side both iMovie ’08 and Final Cut Pro 6 recognize video from this camera even if I’m just popping the SD card into my USB card reader.

If you’re coming from the HDV tape-based world, capturing video from an AVCHD camera takes a little longer than you’ll be used to. I’ve found multiplying the original video length times two is usually about the length of time it takes to capture with iMovie on my Mac Pro (I haven’t timed Final Cut’s conversion yet but will update this review soon). I’m sure this will improve over time as computers and software get faster, but don’t expect instant gratification when you’re ready to bring some video over to edit.

CONCLUSION

I bought this camera to supplement some of the work I do shooting HDV video on a ‘prosumer’ Sony HDV camera. If you’re serious about producing HD video you might still want to consider an HDV tape based camcorder like the Canon HV20 or HV30. You’ll get better and more consistent quality along with nearly universal editing compatibility. Those cameras transfer video back to the PC or Mac over firewire, a standard that’s been around for over a decade. The HDV cameras can also run live video back to the PC for editing or webcasting, something you can’t do currently with an AVCHD cam.

If, however, you’re in the market for a small flash based camera look no further. The inclusion of a mic port along with the multitude of shooting options make this a great choice for beginners and enthusiasts alike.

Amazing Product
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
The Canon VIXIA HF100 Flash Memory Hi-Def Camera is excellent. It’ll be the only camera you want to use. Especially if you are on a tight budget. Plus living in a small apartment, space and size is a factor so I had to get something small enough to stow away without any hassle. Instead of tape, you shoot directly to a memory card (best is the SD 16GB card that’ll last for 2hrs of video recording). The HF100 shoots great in low light and the audio is quite good and even better with the shotgun mic. In adddition, also got the wide-angle telephoto lens that worked perfect shooting a live stage show. The only drawback is you’ll need a quad-core processor on your pc to edit the footage as it takes a long time to render hi-def. (A one hour live performance took about 3hours to transcode on my dual core desktop). Plus you’ll need a blu-ray or a hd burner to make cd’s. The good part is that the camera comes with basic imaging software to make mpegs, edit pictures and burn movies. With a little patience, you can make some nice DVDs. The HF100 also takes very nice stills but for that I use the Nikon Coolpix S550. So, if you’re looking for a good hi-def camera at a good price, the Canon Vixia HF100 is perfect for someone on the go.

art easy
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I shoot small-time art videos, mostly. Documentaries, dance performances, musicians’ performances.

I’ve owned numerous camcorders, my favorite being a tape-based top of the line Sony. Actually, my recent DV tape Panasonic is a sturdy and good camera. I use it for backup and for 2 cam shoots. But the Canon HF100 has been splendid and met every expectation.

Am using a Macbook and LaCie external hard drive. I think you know that with the SD-based system you’re going to want a ton of storage. I learned Final Cut Express. The books I ordered were somewhat of a waste inasmuch as I finally learned the procedures via video tutorials.

Anyway, the Canon has been a pleasure. At the highest-quality setting it has enough HD clarity to establish that you’re using an excellent camera . My sole complaint after months of shooting is that the trigger is poorly placed. But I like the toggle control and the menu is direct. It’s tiny and that means it goes with me everywhere. I don’t agree that the battery is inadequate. I bought an extra battery and rarely use it. Overall, it seems sturdy; well made. The mic works well, too. I’ve been happy with the all-important audio.

WOW – Best Camera in this price range
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I purchased this camera for multiple uses. I wanted a HD camera that would take great family movies at holidays and birthdays, but also a good camera to do video podcasts with. This camera fills the bill on both counts. With the external microphone input, it’s easy to hook up a lapel mike or a wireless mike. The camera was easy to learn to use and with the removable SDHC card, it’s a snap to transfer movies to your computer.

The software that is included with the camera is a little clunky at best, but is a good starting point. I didn’t use it very much, since I already own Cyberlink’s Power Director.

I purchased the HF100 instead of the HF10 because of the price difference. I couldn’t see paying more for the internal memory feature when you have to manually switch between the internal and external memory.

I give this camera a great bit “ATTABOY”

A Capable HD Camcorder
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is my first camcorder. Before my purchase, I did some extensive researches on what camcorders to buy and most of the materials lead me to get a HD camcorder to be future proof. Further research throws up more confusion as you have a choice of recording medium for HD camcorders – DV, HDD, DVD, Flash memory. My initial choice was between Canon HV20 and Canon HG10. I like the Canon HV20 for the quality of the videos, ease of editing but do not like DV as I feel that it is probably going to be obsolete in a few years’ time. I like the idea of having a HDD in a camcorder for the convenience and ease of transfer of the recorded materials but noted that it may be susceptible to loss of recorded footage in the HDD due to vibrations or dropping the camera. While I proscratinate, my prayers were answered when Canon launched the HF10 and HF100. It uses flash memory which is more stable than HDD and in view of the falling prices of flash cards, is getting cheaper by the day. After reading the review on the HF10 in http://www.camcorderinfo.com, I was sold on the camcorder.

I bought the HF-100 instead of the HF-10 as I like the gun metal grey look and also with the price difference, you can buy a couple of 16G Class 6 SDHC Transend cards. I also do not like the glossy black of HF10 as it is a figure print magnet. Although I am residing in a country where the TV system is PAL, I do not mind the NTSC model from Amazon as it is much cheaper than what I get back home (about USD500 price difference) and nowadays most people own a multisystem LCD or plasma panel anyway. The only drawback is that there are certain pull down issues for NTSC models (which do not bother an amateur like me) and that the warranty is only valid in the US which I do not reside.

I have the opportunity to try out the camcorder and my initial thoughts are that it is very user friendly. In fact, I tried thre various functions of the camcorder without much of a quick glance at the user manual. I tried the Easy mode and was happy to find that even with this mode, the video turned out nice and sharp without any editing. I like this mode as it enables my wife and friends to use the camcorder easily. For the same reasons, I normally have the set my DSLR to auto mode before I get someone to take a picture of me when I travel.

I decided to turn off the Easy mode and played with the 3 different recording modes – 60i, 24p and 30p. In a bright environment, there is not much difference. The colours in 60i do however seem to look more saturated. In a lighted environment, the 24p and 30p showed their usefulness as the videos captured are brighter than the 60i, contributed no doubt by the slower frame rates. Colours as a whole are rich and tend towards slightly on the cooler side. I do not usually use the Cine mode together with one of the 3 aforementioned mode as I prefer brighter & saturated colours and shoot landscape very often. Cine modes do give you a slightly smoother and less saturated colour range means that it probably handles skin colours better. In any event, you can make whatever adjustments which suit your taste. The camcorder is certainly customisable to your needs. However, in an environment where the lightings are a tad dim, I noticed grains on the video which suggest that this is not a videocam which you want to use in dark indoors. I cannopt fault the camcorder too much as it only costs USD700 and you cannot expect capabilities like those of a professional camcorder. Given the proper lightings, it will not disappoint you.

My only criticism is that the stabilisation is not too effective. Maybe it is due to the light weight of the camcorder, which ironically is one of the reason why I bought it. To reduce vibration, I tried not to zoom in when I pan the shots. Although the autofocus is fast, be careful when you pan the scenes too fast as the speed may cause the autofocus to hunt and you will find that your videos will not be appear to be well focused as the camera moves. You can overcome this by using the camera at its widest settings and pan only in a slow and smooth motion. Further vibrations can be eliminated when you mount your camcorder to a tripod.

The camcorder can also take pictures at 3MP. The picture quality is acceptable although you cannot compare with a mid range PNS or digital DSLR camera.

As for the batter life, try to get an extended battery which allows at least twice the shooting time. The extended battery offered by Canon does not flush well with the camera and is in black. So aesthetically, it does not go well with the body colour and shape of the camcorder.

I also like the camcorder for having an automatic lens cover. However I bought UV filters as an additional protection for the lens although it may not be necessary. However I do shoot in windy conditions and byt he sea and do not want the dust or sea water to settle on the lens.

As for editing, so far I have yet to do very extensive editing. I tried the software provided by Canon and it is essentially only good for viewing the recorded materials. I invested in a Corel Ulead Studio 11.5 as it is cheap and I wanted something simple to use before I progress to sometime more advance in future. So far the software runs fine on my PC which is a 4GB Quadcore machine.

As a whole, I do like the camcorder very much taking into consideration the low price. I would summarise my likes & dislikes for the camcorder as follows:-

Likes

Affordable

Light weight

Comes with 24p and 30p

Uses flash memory

Hand strap not very comfortable

Sharp pictures in brightly lighted environment

Dislikes

Only stereo and not 5.1

Flash card can only record 1 hr of video

Rocker switcher for zooming feels loose and cheap

Location of flash not ideal if using convertors

AVCHD editing still not too stable.

Lousy software provided

No mini HDMI cable provided

Grainy video quality in dimly lighted environment

I give it five stars despite some shortcomings as it is a very good value for money camcorder.

not for still images but all the rest the best
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
PROS

+ SIZE: pocket like & no problems with handling (I got normal size hand)

+ VIDEO QTY: superb for nonprofs, even in poor light it’s very good and I am quite demanding in this aspect

+ MENU – you will not read the manual

CONS

- still images – pooooor qty

- battery could be better, but it is always good to have spare one

* IMHO best choice if you feel like video editing on your PC and want high value for money

* buy 16GB card speed 6, no use to spare on 8GB

* make sure you have good PC, otherwise no chance for editing, DVD burning etc. when you record in highest qty

* software ok, but nothing special

* don’t buy it when you want to have HD Qty on your TV without burning DVD/B-R or without PC, better get HV30 with tapes which are lot cheaper

Like a moving photograph…
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Rather than regurgitate what everyone else has said already, let me put it plainly:

The picture quality of the videos from this camera are so beautiful, so full of detail that it looks like a moving photograph. You can see the hairs on your childrens head, the texture from their sweater, the grains of sand stuck to their toes, the water drops landing on their face from the sprinklers…

Jaw-dropping.

Great camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The picture is excellent and the camera is easy to use. Video editing is a cinch using Final Cut Express. The only negative thing I could say about this camera is that the battery life is pretty short so you’ll have to buy a spare if you plan on recording for an extended period without being near a recharging outlet. Canon BP-827 Lithium Ion Battery Pack for Vixia HG 20/21, HF11/10 & 100 Camcorders is the battery it should have came with though it sticks out a little more in the back. Still I’m happy with the purchase and have no regrets.

Great Camcorder
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I really have enjoyed this camcorder. Easy to use. Small in size, big in features.

My only issue has been with my iMac in terms that it can take forever for iMovie to detect the camera. But I think that has to do with the Mac not the camera.

Worth every penny!!!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I recently purchased the Canon HF10 and wanted to give some thoughts for any perspective buyers.

First off the video quality is excellent. I took some video indoors at low light and then took some outside where it was a sunny day. Both scenes played back with excellent color reproduction and clarity. The outside video was very impressive, the color reproduction and clarity were spot on. Blue skies were a perfect blue and green grass was a vibrant green. The sharpness of the picture was very clean.

The inside pictures were not quite as good, but that is because of the low light in my house. I needed to do some tweaking first, but even at the factory settings the picture was very good.

The auto focus is quick and the image stabilization works like a charm. The 12x zoom really gets you in tight and brings in those distant shots fast. The camera really takes some fantastic video.

The menu is easy to navigate and gives you loads of options. All the controls fit well in my hand, and I would say I have average size hands for a guy. Love the small size and it hardly weighs anything at all.

One thing that really impressed me was the still photos, they are above and beyond what I expected. Now granted this isn’t a DSLR, but I think most people would be impressed with these photos, especially considering they are from a camcorder. Honestly for me this is all I need, why carry a separate point & shoot when this camcorder does it all. Very impressive photo quality.

Just to be clear, I am just a novice. I am in no way a camcorder pro. But as far as I am concerned the HF100 is worth every penny. Nothing better than being completely satisfied with a purchase. Awesome camera top to bottom.

Too Hard to Resist!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Somewhat long/complete review…get a cup of coffee.

Gotta check out the quality of this thing before you buy, it is amazing. Go to youtube or vimeo, search HF100 (or HF10, same thing but with built in memory and different color).

Pros: Video Quality!!!, Size, Weight, look, LCD Screen Resolution, Stereo recording (Left and Right Mics), Flash memory (so easy, cheap, reliable?), 3MP Stills, onboard light (for camera flash or somewhat lighting up your videos), lots of manual options (mic level, zoom, recording qualities), External Mic Jack(important for us music/band folks), Menu is ok once you get to know it.

Cons: Could offer better optical stability, wind interferes with sound, battery life, cost of official replacement batteries

Cons to AVCHD (not camera): Limited editing software, requires powerful computer (I’m running off a NEW laptop, barely keeps up…3GB Ram, AMD 2GHz)

The video quality is highly dependent on the settings you use…60i, 30p, or 24p? Cinema Mode, Portrait Mode, Auto, etc? LP, XP+, etc?

I suggest Cinema mode in 30p for most recordings. I tried the “easy” button at night, was grainy. I have yet to try the easy button in sunny conditions. I recorded a few scenes in 24p Cinema, came out pretty choppy, I’m guessing it would be best on a tripod, capturing movement, instead of moving the camera around (I’m no pro).

Some people have mentioned long waits between switching from Video to Still mode…I have tried this with both a 4GB and 16 GB disk…it takes 3-5 seconds with the 4GB and 9-11 seconds with the 16 GB. As other folks have mentioned, it appears to be inventorying the empty portion of the disk, to inform you how many pictures you could take. I suggest recording with a 4GB card if you plan on switching between modes frequently. (Note: I was counting, not official Omega seconds)

For Memory, I have a 4GB PNY Class 4 and the Amazon recommended Transcend 16GB class 6. They both work great, I haven’t been able to notice any speed difference.

As we’ve all read, AVCHD editing is limited. I tried the Sony Vegas 9 Platinum trial version, works well. The Corel Ulead trial software doesn’t include the capability of importing the mts/m2ts files. However, I have purchased Corel Ulead VideoStudio 11.5 Plus [AMAZON.COM EXCLUSIVE] from amazon. I hope it works well with the avchd files.

UPDATE: Corel 11.5 works great! I’ve posted a review on it, go find it.

Superb Camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I purchased this camera over a year ago for a trip to Jamaica. I also purchased a 16GB flash memory card to go with. This camera replaced a vhs-c compact recorder that I’ve had for years and finally went due to battery issues. I am an average user mainly taping my children and family significant events. For this purpose the camera is excellent, there are no tapes, dvds, cd’s (did I say tapes?) that you need to purchase once you have initially bought flash memory. During our week in Jamaica the 16 GB card held everything I taped. I recorded at the highest quality setting for the duration. Also of note, I only had to charge the battery once during our vacation as well. So the negative comments on the battery I initially encountered during my research do not really apply to me (1 hour is plenty!). This camera has plenty of recording space and plenty of battery power for the average user. I agree with others though with respect to the low light quality, it is on par with my old vhs-c, no worse no better.

Nice compact design, again partly attributable to the flash memory storage.

I still need to locate some good software for editing, but honestly haven’t done much with this. When clips are played back on my plasma, they are absolutely stunning, the audio quality has issues, but again I think this is a software and not a hardware issue. The camera is extremely easy to use and takes decent photo’s as well. I have very few negative things to say about this purchase. Highly recommend it to those of you looking to eliminate the “middle man” with respect to recording media, and/or are looking to upgrade to HD in the camcorder relm.

Plain sailing with the HF100
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I got this as a wedding present and it got some immediate use as it was used to film both our wedding and subsequent honeymoon. The low lit church was not a problem although we could have benefited from an external microphone. The picture quality was magnificent and I was extremely happy with it! The honeymoon came next and we charged off to New York City for a week with two 16GB SDHC cards (Great Buy: Transcend 16GB SDHC CARD (SD 2.0 SPD CLASS 6) with Compact Card Reader).

New York in all its glory on sunny days this camcorder just kept me happy. It was put to the test as well. Time Squre at night, views from the top of the Empire State Building, from ferries, during meals … it was great and the resulting picture quality was outstanding even coverted to regular DVD instead of Blue Ray. Image stabilization was a major boon. At one stage we were on the ferry going to visit the Statue of Liberty and a dragon fly landed on my wife’s purse. She zoomed right in it and the pictures we got afterward were quite stunning. From a distance shot to almost macro quality close-ups in the space of 60 seconds … fantastic.

Even the stock battery has served us well – the upgraded batteries were out of stock everywhere when we purchased this camera (kind of a bummer) but we never had a problem with the original … seriously how often do you really shoot hours a day even on holiday?

I figure when we upgrade to fanatical parents we’ll get the the beefier battery.

The gotcha for me was the software that came with it — it is basic and to be honest rather crappy but it gets the job done. The puzzler however was that I was having a hell of a time burning DVD’s and it took a significant amount of time to realize that the software would not burn to DVD+R disks, only DVD-R! Once I had bought a punnet of these I was good to go and have not looked back since!

You’d be a fool to buy a standard definition camera in this day and age, just in terms of future proofing. This camera appears to be one of the best, if not the best currently available and I for one have absolutely no complaints at all!

great video and audio – can use a better supporting software`
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Im not a master or even an amateur enthusiast. I got a sony 40Gig hard drive 1/3 ccd for a few hundred less than the cannon and was not at all happy with the video quality. So opted for the canon hf100 instead and got it from amazon. The camera is incredibly light and easy to use. I was blown away by the video and audio quality, even after converting the avchd files to dvd the quality is definitely noticable. I would definitely recommend this product over all the other HD, and the price is very close to some of the higher end SD cameras with hard drives.

The only downside of this product is the pixela image software, it doesnt provide any decent help to edit menus or video. I have an older centrino based laptop which literally hangs up everytime I try to brun a dvd or even play any of the recorded video

First Camcorder, very pleased.
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Disclaimer: This is my first camcorder.

Using with 2x Transcend 8GB SDHC CARD (SD 2.0 SPD Class 6), works fine.

I think MSenn “Max” (Miami, FL)’s review above is pretty spot on. Low light performance is really the only weak point of this camera is my opinion, but I don’t have anything else to compare it to. Reviews have given the camera an adequate mark for low light, and it’s certainly still watchable. (The frame rate seems to be lower than 25fps in dance floors from a wedding I attended… I don’t know if that’s because the exposure is really long) Certainly still watchable footage, but no where near professional quality.

Well lit scenes is a different story… very nice footage. Got better color from setting the white balance manually when filming in the shade however. (It seemed a little blue otherwise).

People commented that the audio from the built-in microphone was good, despite being 3m back from the ceremony.

Been using Vegas Platinum for editing to a DVD. As pointed out by Chris C. Topolovich “Chris” above, Vegas Platinum doesn’t write AVCHD, and only reads it for (time-consuming) recoding. Hopefully they update the output formats in the future. I’ve been outputting to windows media and mpeg2. I watch the AVCHD clips on a computer (haven’t made the HD TV plunge quite yet) The clips chug a little on my 2.4GHz AMD Opteron from time-to-time… it really is CPU intensive.

I haven’t used the included software for anything other than quick playback. Perfectly functional on Win XP SP2 (32bit).

The photos are fine (Using the photo button to take pictures while recording was off by default however), and it’s very handy to only carry one camera.

Summary: I love the camera, the software (which hopefully gets better in time) and low-light perf are the only things that come close to an issue. Debating whether to take off half a star, but I do really like the small size, flash memory, and other features.

With good lighting…stunning HD images
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I’ve had the camera now for a month. It’s pretty straight forward to use and all features seem to work as described. I bought a mini-HDMI cable (also from amazon) and played video back on my 50in plasma straight from the camera. Great pictures with good lighting…ie outside in the daytime and inside with all the lights on. The image deteriorates rapidly in lower light, gets very grainy. Sound is OK but if you want the sound to equal picture quality in good lighting, you probably need an external mic…I imagine this is the same for any camcorder.

I have yet to download video onto a computer however. I little apprehensive based on all the comentary about download speed and computer requirements. I actually am in the market for a new computer…so in the mean-time I bought a few of the 16GB cards. 4GB equals about 30 minutes in the highest resolution.

Summary. Very pleased. Worth the money. Straight-forward function. Need a good computer.

Excellent Product – highly recommend for HD cameras
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I agree with all the accolades about this camera and I highly recommend it for those people who haven’t purchased a camera in quite awhile and are looking for a very portable, high definition camera, but don’t want to pay extra for an internal 16GB HDD which the HF10 has.

Here are some things I found out after I purchased the camera:

-You don’t need to purchase a lens cap, there’s a auto-cover when you power up the camera, however, if you decide to get a UV filter or a polarized filter, yes, get a lens cap for the camera.

-If you had plans to take out the memory card and plug it into a SDHC card reader/USB adapter so you could copy the files from the memory card to your PC, don’t bother. I have attempted 3 times to manually copy the video files and all 3 times the files got corrupted. This occurred while reading the card and copying the card. I didn’t read the fine print in the manual, but apparently, the files on the memory card is not supported by any card reader and the only way to copy the files to your PC is through a USB cable to your camera and using Imagemixer 3 or a similar softtware program to read and copy the files, then you erase the files on the memory card by selecting the files from the camera and delete them. I’m hoping to find a way to get around that so I don’t have to wear out the USB port on the camera, plus I don’t want to buy an excessive amount of SDHC cards for a long trip if I plan to get a memory card backup device that’s not supported (like the Hyperdrive) by the HF100.

Good cam overall
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I used the HF100 with a 16GB Class 6 HCSD. Generally speaking, the color is very good, HD quality video is very clear, the pictures are very nice, all of which you may read from other reviewers. I just want to point out a couple of things which may be improved over time:

1) It takes “quite a long time” (5 – 10 seconds?) to start or to change between video mode and camera mode. This is annoying.

2) The small size of the camcorder has its side effect as well: harder to hold steady

3) When used in camera mode, the fastest speed I could get is 1/120s. Not too good in a very bright environment. I do not know if you can make it higher.

Beautiful
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is a beautiful camera, great to use, smooth operation, great build quality, wonderful video and pictures…would recommend it to anyone, easy to use flash memory, buttons are well placed, screen is crisp, might want to get a second battery…

Great video, but broke quickly
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
Bought this camcorder from Amazon in June. Took it on a vacation to Europe. The quality of the video is great, but the camcorder broke half way through my vacation. When turning on the camera in record mode, the screen stayed black, and the unit made clicking noises. Playback luckily still worked fine, so I could offload the video I had taken. Dropped it off at Canon (they are local). Hopefully will work better once fixed/replaced.

Great value HD camcorder but a few issues
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I was very pleased with the video quality from the Canon HF-100. I shot a live musical performance at the highest quality and played it back on a Sony 1080i 60″ LCD projection HDTV. Even though the lighting was less than optimal, the images were clear and sharp with no objectionable noise. The blacks were very dark and virtually noise free.

I was somewhat disappointed with the image stabilization. I don’t have steady hands and the jitter was noticeable, even with stabilization on. The stabilization was less effective than that on my still cameras.

The camera was easy to set up and use. I was able to record over two hours at the highest quality on a 16GB SDHC card. The supplied battery only lasted about an hour and I had to switch to AC power (with the supplied adaptor/charger) midway through the shoot.

The audio with the built in microphones was adequate but not particularly impressive. The drums and cymbals were a little harsh and the bass a bit boomy. Next time I shoot music, I will use an external mike and a tripod.

With the bundled software, I was able to burn AVCHD format to standard DVDs that would play in my computer (with the bundled viewer software) or on Sony or Panasonic BlueRay players. The disks would not play on several other brands. Burning standard definition DVDs was another story.

I was hoping to find a hardware solution to convert AVCHD h.264 on the fly to MPEG2. Canon’s own DW-100 doesn’t do this and Sony’s stand alone DVD burner will only accept a USB feed of AVCHD content from its own brand camcorders with hard drives or Memory Stick media! I’m sure they had to add components or firmware at a higher cost to cripple what would seem to be a natural compatibility.

A standalone DVD recorder allows creation of a standard DVD, but requires great effort to determine appropriate resolution (compression to fit the disk) and provide desired titles and chaptering. It seems as though a software solution is the best answer for now. I have tried ConvertXtoDvd3 and created a decent copy but was very slow. It also reported erroneous estimates of disk space used. I intend to try Pinnacle Ultimate 12 and assume the newest versions of Nero or Roxio would work if you don’t need to do too much editing.

Overall, a good product waiting for the aftermarket to catch up.

Video Quality Is Ordinary
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I bought Canon HF100 5 months ago and was surprised to find that the video quality (even when recorded at the highest resolution) when played back on my HDTV (via HDMI) was very ordinary. I mean it is no better than the video quality of my five year old Sony TRV22E. Not sure what the rave reviews are all about.

Excellent!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought this from Amazon about three weeks ago and can’t say anything bad about it (except the price keeps dropping! oh, well, gotta buy it when ya’ need it….). The AVCHD format is stellar, and this is using P2 as a reference. In fact, I’ve been using the company HVX200 but henceforth I’ll probably use my personal HF100, which is super small and super light, with just enough manual controls to make it prosumer. The images are sharp and the audio rocks! I was surprised by the warmth of the built-in mic, and being enclosed it has a cardioid effect. Instead of buying the DM-100 as I planned, I bought a Rycote Gustbuster so I can use the built-in mic outdoors where it’s usually windy in this area. The mic input and manual gain option are sweet, as I can run my wireless Sennheiser ME66 shotgun mic or any compatible mic, and it’ll even work with a mixer, as I have the Sound Devices MixPre (the mic attenuation option seems to invoke line input).

I have Final Cut Express 4 on my Macbook and Final Cut Pro 6 on a Mac Pro at my workplace. It’s so simple to transfer the files right off the SD card to a hard drive and “log and transfer” in Final Cut. One small caveat with FCE4 is having to render, but that’s not a big deal. I always use the Apple Pro Res 422 codec for ingesting and exporting.

A couple small items I find useful on the HF100 are the backlight button and spotlight. While the spotlight might be a bit harsh and blue, it’s better than no light in dark places, and I can always adjust the white balance. I bought the miniscule CameraBright X1-ER for more light when I need it. I haven’t decided yet what to put on the hotshoe, and I’m waiting for Canon to offer more goodies. Nevertheless, I’d be hesitant about putting too many attachments on the HF100 so I can keep it small. Even a tripod plate looks big on the camcorder.

The array of menu items is noteworthy, as almost any function can be finetuned. The controls under the screen are real handy and the joystick makes on-the-fly adjustments nifty.

Battery life is decent, about an hour, and I’ll probably buy another one. I have a tendency to shoot a lot when there’s action (I’m told you should edit while shooting, i.e., shoot only what you need), but with cheap SD cards (I have a 16gb), fast non-realtime transfers, lowcost 500gb SATA drives, and a stealthy HF100 that fits in my pocket, it’s hard not to shoot a lot.

Easy to use
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Got this camcorder to video kids sports..not a pro at all. Works great. Easy to use, turn it on and go. We dont use all the manual features, probably never will. But the picture on our 42 inch HD tv is awesome…which is all we want. Very happy. Decided on this model because it only uses flash disks..no hard drive to break down, or extra weight, or more battery use. Negatives….because it is so small, which is one of the reasons we bought it, it is difficult to hold still when using. But we use a tripod to video sports anyway. And the bundled software to use to download to your pc sucks big time. Difficult to use, not intuitive at all. I’ll probably buy a different application. And all I want to do is download and store it..I dont even want to edit..except to delete some stuff, which I do right on a camera anyway.

Outstanding Video Quality
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This camcorder is a joy to use. The video quality is really amazing especially for the price. This was my 2nd HD camcorder. The first was a convenience, impulse purchase of a Panasonic HD-9 from Costco. Took it back-the video wasn’t very good and image stabilization didn’t work.

Then I did a lot of research and concluded HF100 was for me. No HV30 because of tape issues and microphone picks up hi-pitch tape noise. No HF10 because SD cards are so cheap anyway.

This camera is easy to operate, though you will want practice if you plan to navigate through the plethora of very useful custom settings. The screen brightness is great, it’s useable in even the brightest outdoor settings. The image stabilization is really terrific. If you have somewhat of a steady hand you can take great video while hand held even with significant zoom.

I was a little apprehensive about the joystick control on the viewfinder but I find it is quite comfortable to use.

I use a Mac and it was no problem at all getting the video off the camera. If you have a 16 Gb card and it’s pretty full of video it can take several minutes for the computer to go into import mode-seems it has to read the whole card first. So, be patient-it’s working.

Though I’ve read some negatives about battery life, tri-pod mount and some about connector placement and such I don’t share any of those as negatives. As for battery, we all have so many gadgets that need charging or syncing these days you just develop the habit of making sure they are fully charged. To me the amazing compact size and light weight advantages of the camcorder far outweighs connector or port placement issues.

Excellent HD camcorder
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I must say, the quality that this camcorder produces is jaw dropping. This thing takes such good video I would not be surprised to see it used to film a low-budget film. Very easy to use and Canon quality – not much more you can ask for. The 30p made takes great video and the optical zoom is quite impressive.

The only complaint that I have, and the reason for the one star deduction, is that it forces you to have it plugged into power to do pretty much anything outside of filming. I hate that I have to plug it into the wall when I want to hook into a PS3 and show video. The means that I have to carry the AC adapter around anywhere I go if I think I might want to show video… I have an extra battery – why can’t I just use that??? It also requires it be plugged in when importing video to your computer (which makes a bit more sense since you don’t want it to die in the middle of that).

Other than this one complaint this is an amazing deal and product!

Excellent for sports
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought the Canon HF100 Flash memory and I’m very happy with it. I use it for my son’s track & field and cross country events and my daughter’s soccer and basketball. I don’t yet have an HDTV, but hooked it up to a 50″ HDTV using an separately purchased HDMI cable and the color an images are stunning. Wow! I’m glad I got the flash memory rather than the hard drive as I run around at times trying to capture some good footage. I purchased the Canon | BP-827 | Battery Pack for 4-hrs. of usage and use the original battery (1-hr) as a backup. I also got 2 Transcend 16 GB SDHC Class 6 Flash Memory Card with Compact Card Reader. They have capacity for 2-hrs each of high def video; plenty of space, and the card reader helps for plugging into a PC USB port since my memory slot does not read the high capacity SD cards. To connect directly to HDTV you’ll need a separately purchased mini-HDMI to HDMI cable. Get the cable for $11 at MonoPrice.com; it works great. I had bought a Tripp Lite Mini-HDMI to HDMI Cable (6 feet) and it had a very poor connector and did not work. Overall excellent camera with these extras.

Not perfect, but not too bad either
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
The HF100 is a good camcorder. It takes better photos than I expected, as Canon’s camcorders generally take anywhere from terrible to almost acceptable photos, and the video quality is nice and sharp. The image stabilizer is wonderful, low light performance is all right, battery life is okay, and compression efficiency and quality is very good. Let’s get more specific.

I’ll just go in order of where I started and add anything else I can think of along the way. You don’t want to use this camera for still photos. In fact, you’d be better off printing a frame of your video in many cases. Nonetheless, the photos are usable in most situations and the flash doesn’t ruin them like it used to. It can make them less-desirable and I have yet to find an easy way to disable it (though there does appear to be one that isn’t working for me–yet). One weird thing is that switching to photo mode doesn’t let you take a picture right away. I have to press the video record button, let the camera tell me I’m not in video mode anymore, and then I can press the photo button with success. This may not be the case on all cameras and since I rarely take photos these days if not with my DSLR, I don’t really care. But it’s a nuisance and just bizarre. Lastly, it’s sort of annoying to have to switch modes to record/play back videos and photos. There are four modes. There should be two. There are two separate buttons for photos and videos. If I have to switch modes, the video button should work as a photo button as well. It’s just weird that they separated the buttons AND the modes. Two separate buttons is how I prefer it, without every having to switch modes unless I want to move between play and record.

I’m extremely critical about video quality, and my first impression wasn’t all that positive when I saw the video that came out of the HF100. After I shot in decent light, shot a series of different subjects and lowered my expectations a tiny bit I felt differently. (I’m used to shooting on a Sony PMW-EX1, so expecting that kind of performance out of a consumer HD camcorder was very unrealistic.) The video quality is quite nice. Comparing it to my previous, smaller handheld (Sanyo HD1000), it’s slightly sharper but lacking the nice contrast the HD1000 provides. That’s fine because it provides a lot more data to work with in post, but at first I felt like the video didn’t look that good because it seemed kind of…flat, I guess. Nonetheless, the video quality is quite good–especially after you’ve spent some time working with it.

Shooting modes are plentiful but not as good as they seem. The HF100 shoots in 30FP and 24FP modes, which is basically fake 30p and 24p. The footage it records is still interlaced, but once you de-interlace it looks pretty close to 30p and 24p footage. But it’s not, and you can sometimes tell, and that’s unfortunate. But I’m guessing 1080p didn’t make it into this camera because it couldn’t handle the heat of the sensors in such a small body with very little room for ventilation. The only 1080p camercorder offered at this physical size is a Panasonic, and it’s not actually 1080p. It uses standard definition sensors and up-converts the image. If you’re looking for the closest thing to 1080p in a small camcorder that you can get at the moment, this is what I’d go with (and did). Sony has a few nice options, too, but I like the images produced by Canon’s consumer sensors over Sony’s and Canon’s cameras use SD cards rather than MemoryStick, which ties you to buying Sony Products or throwing away your flash memory when you switch.

You can fit a lot of video on an SD card these days, even in high definition. The Sanyo HD1000 I used to own fit even more, but the Canon HF100 fits an even two hours on a 16GB card. Even if you don’t want to pay for a 16GB and go with an 8GB card, you can still fit an hour. I don’t think the battery will even let you shoot for two hours . Storage that large is more for if you’re not going to be able to import between charges.

Speaking of charging the camera, it does so fairly quickly. I think it only takes a couple of hours after the first one. It’s never been a problem, though I wouldn’t mind if the battery lasted a bit longer. What is a bigger inconvenience, however, is transferring the footage from the camera. The camera MUST be plugged in to the power adapter when transferring or it will refuse to do so. This is very aggravating because it means more cords and that you have to take your power adapter everywhere you want to transfer footage. If you’re a laptop user you will not like this. I wouldn’t like this as a desktop user either but that may just be me. Anyway, the trick is to get a card reader and use that instead. If you have a laptop with an ExpressCard slot this is especially easy. Either way, just make sure you get a card reader with support for SDHC cards over 8GB.

Moving on.

Coming from the HD1000, which is about as stable as Michael Jackson, the HF100 is wonderful. It’s about the best stabilizer you can expect from a handheld camera, and is amazing considering how small it is. No complaints, only praise. It makes your shaky shots look fluid.

And the instant auto focus they promise is, almost all of the time, instant. It’s pretty nice.

Low light performance is okay. It’s about what you should expect from a consumer-grade camcorder. It’s not bad by any means, but isn’t perfect. It’s done a great job in the majority of the locations I’ve had it. Unless people complain about the light being too low for their own eyes, the HF100 should do a pretty good job. I’d like it to be incredible and jaw dropping, but it’s a consumer HD camcorder. It does very well for that.

Battery life is sufficient, but it could be better. I’d like to be able to shoot for over two hours, maybe three. One and a half (give or take) isn’t as much as I’d like, but it hasn’t caused problems. Still, I’d like to see battery life–but who wouldn’t?

The video compression is hardly noticeable, and if you want to notice it you have to move the camera quite a bit. I’m making all my comments about the highest quality mode, by the way. It’s efficient enough to give you about 7.5 minutes of full-quality video per GB of storage. I think that’s fair.

As for the sound, it’s not bad. I might even say it’s good for a built-in mic. I think these mics are getting much better than they used to be, because I remember when they were painful to listen to. Now they’re loud, you can hear what you need to hear (in most situations), and the noise you get along with the audio you do want isn’t that bad. In fact, I would probably call the sound this camcorder records good.

Lastly, the controls are a bit weird at times but Canon’s been known for weird controls. I already mentioned the odd controls for switching modes. Menus are kind of split up in a strange way and the quick change controls, through the little joystick controller on the LCD, isn’t as quick and easy as it was most likely supposed to be. If you’re shooting in automatic this is all pretty much moot, but if you like to change things now and then you might find the controls a little frustrating. I’ve been through all kinds of HD cameras over the past couple of years and I think Sanyo does this the best with the HD1000. It uses a system that worked quite well in previous models, but made it more solid in the HD1000. Nonetheless, nothing is perfect. I certainly would not discount the HF100 because of the weird controls. For the most part, they’re good. There are just a couple of choices that seem completely bizarre and inexplicable.

Overall, it’s a very good camera. It’s not the camera I want, but it’ll do until they figure out how to do what I want in a mini cam . Ideally, I’d like something like the HD1000 but with a stabilizer and autofocus system as perfect as the HF100′s. The sharper image quality wouldn’t hurt, either. I’d like it to do true 24p, or at least 30p, at 1920×1080. In fact, if I could have 720/24p in the HD1000 (currently it does 30p and 60p, which is great) with the Canon autofocus and image stabilization I’d be very, very happy. But for now, the HF100 is a very good option for me and probably a much better option for people who aren’t as horribly picky .

Cannon HD movie camera==HF100
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Appears to be well made, sturdy camera. The difference in use between this and a DV tape presents more of an adjustment than I expected, but I think I will eventually be happy with the camera.

Issues I have with the design, software, and AVCHD

1. I miss a manual viewfinder

2. The supplied video editing software is worthless

3. I have Premier Elements 4 software and can’t use it with the format

4. Finding the correct white balance can be difficult.

5. Downloading from the camera to the computer has aggravating problems.

a. power cord must be plugged in for the camera to download.

b. can’t download to a secondary drive in the computer.

6. Can’t download the movies directly from the SD card, but must go through the camera.

7. I wish it had the option to record in SD with 4:3 ratio.

HD me
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
All I can say is wow. Great movies for the money and Im never going back to any other format unless its better than HD. Small lite and easy to use.

Excellent Camera – Mac Ps3 Friendly
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Hi all, I’ve been using my friends HV20 for some time, and I just picked up my own Canon HF100. This camera is amazing. I’m not going to knock tapes, but I simply can’t believe how easy this Flash Drive makes things. I’ve done some recordings around the backyard and house, then you just take the SDHC card out and pop it into the Ps3… they start playing and are simply gorgeous.

I’m using iMovie 08′ and FCE 4.0 for editing on the Mac. I also brought these files into my PC using PowerDirector 7, that was no issue at all either. On the FCE 4.0 side… I was shooting video in the 1440×1080 mode, instead of 1920×1080… the reason for this is that FCE is 1440 by default. So, the clips are copied in, using Log and Transfer, at about 1 to 1 speed. And you can add them all to the timeline and preview them, without the need to render them, which is awesome.

I have much to learn, I’m not that good at FCE yet, at all. iMovie works just fine, but it’s very limited. The HF100 also takes amazing still shots at 1920×1080 widescreen, they came out fantastic.

Hope this helps someone… don’t be afraid of the AVCHD, I’ve had no issues at all using the Mac or the PC so far… oh, one more thing. My SDHC 16 meg card came with a USB adapter. So, I just plug that into my Mac and FCE and iMovie both think it’s a camera… never need to actually hook the camera to the Mac. Before I even bring those files into the editor. I copy the whole directory, as is, to a Disk Image I created on the Desktop. Label the folder by date. That way, I have the full AVCHD files stored away for use later. When the disk image becomes 4.3 gig, I just burn a DVD of it, and put it away, or use a Dual Layer and make the disk image 8 gig… either way. You have the original untouched footage stored safely away.

Tom

Super light and small and great picture quality outdoors
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
When I first got this camcorder, I was amazed at how small and light it was. I’ve had it for almost two months now and every time I use it, I’m still amazed at how small and light it is. The picture quality is awesome on hdtv. However, I do agree that the colors are a little over-saturated and dynamic range is compressed. I haven’t noticed the highlights but the midrange and shadows are little too dark. When watching directly out of the camcorder via hdmi to the tv, I wish that I could do some post processing right then. When filming indoors during the day that is lit by the windows, the picture still looks very good. Indoors at night shows a little noise but it hasn’t bothered me so far. A friend of mine has the Sony SR12 and we also hooked it up to the same tv. The picture quality was either on par or slightly lower than this one. The Sony is bulkier and more expensive so I have no regrets going with the Canon.

One note about the audio is that when I film my son’s soccer game during a windy day, the wind sounded much louder than it actually was in playback. I don’t have a comparison point here since I didn’t get to test the Sony.

Another annoying thing I noticed is that the startup time is not instant but standby mode consumes too much battery. Startup time was about 5-6 seconds so you might miss some moments if you’re not prepared. It happened to me at Disney World. So, I just closed the screen to put the camcorder in standby so that I wouldn’t miss the next opportunity but when that moment came, I noticed that the camcorder was very warm and the battery was slightly lower. Correct me if I’m wrong but the it shouldn’t be warm in standby. Needless to say, I don’t use standby for extended time any more after that.

I also bought the Canon HD-W37C 0.7x lens converter that I used quite a bit at Disney World. The picture was still very sharp but you do get a bit of barrel distortion on the edges. Also, you can’t use the built-in flash with the converter. The main reason I bought this camcorder was because I needed more angle filming indoors but I guess I’ve found that it’s useful even outdoors. I intend on using it on my Alaska cruise too.

Overall, I couldn’t be happier with this purchase. It’s so light and small, I have no problems taking it everywhere with me. The picture quality isn’t perfect but it’s great for a hobbyist like me.

Great value at the current prices
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The HF100 is a great deal right now. Compared to my old standard def miniDV (Canon ZR-30) camera, the hf100 is a hands down winner. One big area of improvement is the image quality in “room lighting”. Under incandescent bulb lighting, the detail, color and sharpness are very good. There is still noise in low light, but it is much more reasonable.

The camera creates a new file on the SDHC card each time you press the record button. You can view and delete each “scene” in camera, allowing you to free up valuable space. Compared to tape, the non-linear nature of the videos is a big plus. No fast forwarding or rewinding required.

I have found the following downsides so far…

1) Battery life is just ok.

2) The built in video light is not that useful. It has a very blue tint to it, and is not very flattering to your subjects. An add-on light is still required if you are picky about this.

3) The built in microphone picks up the holders voice at a very high level. I find myself speaking much more gently when talking to my subjects.

4) There is no eye level viewfinder, just the lcd, which can be troublesome in very bright light.

5) The biggest issue for me is going to be the archiving of the raw files. Tape provides you with an instant archive that is missed. While you will save some money from not buying tapes, plan on spending some money on Hard Drives, or a Blu-Ray burner if you need more than just a burned dvd of your videos.

If you buy this camera, I’d recommend getting a second battery, a 16 or 32gb SD card (8gb = 1:05 hours at highest quality), and an SDHC card reader for your PC.

To sum up, this is a great product if you realize what you are getting into. High Def AVCHD video creates large files that require a powerful pc to edit. Archiving can be frustrating. With those caveats aside, the HF100 is hard to beat when compared to the competition, especially at the current price.

CANON vixia HF 100
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I highly recommend this camcorder but you need to be clear what you are ordering. I have used this for over a month and the videos are of high quality, something you would expect from Canon. The camcorder is very light and easy to use; in fact it has an Easy setting for those who don’t want to use the many settings. It makes almost no sound. Canon has many options and some are quite involved. The standard battery that comes with it lasts about one and a half hrs., just keep it charged (takes about 2-3hrs to charge it). I use a 16SDHC flash card which can record for 1-2 hrs depending on the quality setting. This easily downloads directly to my computer through an sd port. The stills are very good, equal to 4-5 megapixel cameras if used correctly; they are also easily downloaded The Pixela Image Maker software is acceptable although there is better software on the market. You can view directly on a regular or HD TV using the camera through the appropriate connection. It comes with a small remote.

Now here is where you must be careful. To edit and store HD quality videos, you need a powerful computer with plenty of memory and the appropriate graphics card (check this before purchasing if you want to make HD DVDs on your computer). You can buy the optional Canon DW-100 to burn HD DVDs directly from the camcorder. Burning standard quality DVDs is no problem but then why buy HD? Of course you need an HD TV or computer screen to view it in HD as well as a HD DVD player if you don’t want to directly connect the camera. Think about all of this carefully. The Canon model that makes standard videos on a flash card is a lot cheaper.

The instruction book is written in a condensed format so you will need to read it carefully probably several times. I got the HF 100 instead of the HF 10 because I didn’t see the need for the built in functionality in addition to the flash card. Have fun but be prepared.

Quality is high and easy to use
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The image quality is prety good, and it is very easy to operate. its weight is very light,I like it. The battery usually can last 80-90 minutes, if you want to take a long time video outside, you may need a spare battery.

Great camera for the price
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Great camcorder – I got this to shoot a pod cast cooking show because my pro equipment is too big for my kitchen – this is light – fits in my pants pockets – shoots great video – newer units have a larger lens and cmos, but the price is also out of my range – for the money this is a outstanding unit. I recommend playing with all the settings to find the ones that work best for you – often I just hit the easy button and use it as a point and shoot, for pro work I use a light kit, wireless mic and this camera has all the inputs required.

I love it! but the editing software sucks
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Video quality:10/10

Sound quality:10/10

i dont know what else to say, but after searching and comparing all canon vixias, i settled on the Hf100. and now i have it!

superb
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
very clean and clear picture – works perfectly with my Macbook Pro and iMovie…

good color… needs a little fiddling to get perfect.

Great camcorder
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I bought this recently and so far I am quite happy with it. About a couple of ago, I had bought a Sony DCR-DVD610 DVD Handycam, but returned it in a month (Thanks, Amazon, for a painless process)as its performannce was not at all to my expectations. Then I saw a friend of mine using Canon VIXIA HF-10, and its recordings were simply stunning. Then I did a bit research and found that Canon’s VIXIA HF-100 was indeed identical to HF-10 (other than the internal memory) in its specs and performance, but quite a bit cheaper. So, I took the plunge and bought my first HD (and a Canon product for that matter) camcorder. Along with this I have bought a flash drive (16 gig, Transcend SDHC with card reader) that Amazon recomends, and it works great too. So far I have made sevral recordings of my kid’s garduation partys, camp performances, etc. and I am extremely happy with the quality of recordings–beautiful, bright color reprodcution even on a far away stage setting, and remarkable autofocus and image stability that I have seen for the first time. And, even the audio recording was not bad ata ll, just with the built-in microphone. Now this camcorder makes me feel like looking for every possible occasion to shoot video–prior to that I always hated home video recordings due to their low image quality and grainy appearance. Now with VIXIA HF series, it seems possible to get really great home video shooting. Very very happy.

The only reason I am not giving a rating of all 5 stars for this prouct is the following: 1) Haven’t had a chance to play with all the recording features–still using the easy mode for recording.

2) The supplied software to save recordings to a PC is not that user friendly, it seems. Esp. if we want to burn DVDs using those saved video files; I have spent a few hours recently and still not able to figure it out–grnated I am not as savvy with these things as some others might be perhaps, and it should have been easier–the software came with the SONY camcorder was much easier and intutive to use.

I might give another update on this in a few months, but for now this Canon VIXIA HF-100 is sinply the best camcorder I have used in the last 10 years. Don’t hesitate to buy this, and you will be very very happy, esp. for the price at Amazon.

Impressive video quality
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought the HF100 as a replacement for the 720p Sanyo Xacti HD-1. The Xacti is compact, but has poor video quality indoors, its smallness results in a lot of camera shake, and it required repair after a few months, indicating poor manufacturing quality. The Canon HF100 kind of fits in a jacket pocket or in the side pockets of baggy pants or shorts, but it weighs down your clothing significantly. But the key point is that the video is stunning when viewed on a 24″ 1920×1200 computer monitor. The sharpness is incredible, with good sensitivity for indoor movies. Image stabilization is pretty good as I was able to obtain sharp images of craters on the moon at full zoom. I was pleased that iMovie ’08 recognized the SD card immediately and I had no problem transferring and playing movies on a high-end desktop (Mac Pro 3.2 GHz). The 24p mode seems like a gimmick given that you have 30p, and the “cinema mode” merely gives you less saturation and the appearance of higher dynamic range, which is useful in sunlit situations. I like the video light, which is quite strong, and I consider an “effect” a la the Blair Witch Project. I wish that these types of camcorders had a better built-in wide angle capability, but the wide screen aspect does give you back some of that in the horizontal direction. Also, a 2-yr old SD card that I had worked fine, but could not record at the very highest data rates (yet the picture was still very sharp). Photos are very good, rivaling a 7 MP Kodak point-and-shoot that I recently bought (V712), which goes to show the benefit of having a good Canon lens.

Couldn’t Be Happier
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The camcorder is great. Very happy with optical stabilization, Flash memory storage, and image quality. I found that being able to quickly switch from video to stills and back was much more useful than I thought it would be. It is nice to have a series of high resolution stills to edit into a slide show with music to accompany the videos on a DVD. I am very impressed with the still images. Optical stabilization gives me sharp zoomed images that I could never get on my other camera, and with the capacity of an 8GB memory card, I can store thousands and thousands at the highest resolution.

Flash memory is the only way to go. It is so easy to transfer data to the computer. The absence of tape drive, mini-DVD, or hard drive motors really improves the sound quality. The low light video is not too good, but the low light still images are fantastic. Also, it is very difficult to tell the difference between the top 3 video recording modes, so I shoot most of my videos in the second-best mode, saving the best mode for tripod supported shots where the benefits might be apparent. That also saves battery life which is a little short, but I don’t find it to be a problem. I was originally thinking of buying a second battery, but after using it every day on a two-week vacation, I don’t need it.

At least for someone like me, I think this is a pretty fantastic machine.
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I don’t exactly know what people’s qualms are about AVCHD. I have used miniDV hd camera’s fairly extensively (a friend of mine loves them), but I really can’t understand why people like them more.

There are a few really nice features about this camera. First, and I think most importantly, it has absolutely no moving parts (except the zoom lens). Anything that moves, like a motor to power a little spinning tape, for example, is pretty likely to break. I don’t buy new cameras very often, so this is a pretty major concern for me.

The complaints that most people have with this camera, from what I’ve read in these reviews seem to stem from buying cheapy, crappy memory cards. It even says in the comprehensive manual that it is a bad idea to use anything lower than a class 4 memory card, because it might not be able to write all the information fast enough. I bought a 16gb Kingston SDHC for about $40, and have had superb quality.

The microphone that is built in is pretty good too. It offers some nice, stereo sound that is good for amateur film makers (though nothing will replace my nice little condenser mic).

The built in filters do a fairly nice job when working with different lighting, though I sort of wish this task was automatic.

The still camera offers some pretty good quality, but there are some problems. For example, if I want to take a picture, I have to switch to photo mode, press the record button, have the onscreen error that says I cannot record in photo mode, then press the picture button. I’m surprised that made it past product testing. I never much liked still photography, so I don’t really care, and I don’t usually use a video camera for stills anyway. This might just be my cam, though.

The included software is useless. I have not successfully been able to import anything with it. Actually, though, there really is no point. I have used this with Windows XP and Windows Vista, and I could simply plug it in and view my video files.

Another nice feature is that it seems to integrate pretty well into Sony Vegas 9.0b, and I am assuming Vegas 8 as well. This may not matter to some people, but I know in my Panasonic DVD Ram camera, it was a pain to comvert everything to mpg before I could edit it.

The only real complaint I have about this cam is the battery life. It doesn’t seem fair that this gets the same battery as my DVD Ram camera, but it doesnt have to power any moving parts. I get about 79 minutes of power, then it shuts off. If I am not using any power to spin a disk or a hard drive, why don’t I have more to use?

In the end, this is a very good camera, that I feel really does the job, especially for home movies or amateur film making. I really like it, and have found myself playing with it more than any of my other cameras.

reliability
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I thought I could depend on the brand name Canon. It wouldn’t record at all. I called the Canon technician and he said the menu wasn’t all there. My family was there for the holidays from out of town. We were very disappointed!

great, if you dont want to edit
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I purchased this for my aspiring film making daughter. Camera seemed like a very well engineered, but the goal is to do extensive editing of the stock footage. I should have done more research on the AVCHD format the new tapeless cameras produce. I have a pretty extensive video editing suite set up for DV and HI-8 (raid drives, fast computer, 2 screens, video monitor, firewire tapedeck…). the new tapeless HD format is high compression not frame accurate and needs to be transcoded before editing (slower than tape capture). I’ll stick with tape for now, I bought her a used 3 chip mini DV camcorder instead.

Incredible package
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
One of the neatest things about this camera is the ability to shoot a full 1920×1080 HD movie, remove the flash card from the camera and plug it directly into the PC. Plays back in full HD, with full stereo sound immediately.

As for the HD quality, it’s as good as anything I’ve seen on commercial TV.

And even though there are hundreds of options you can setup, I like the fact that I’m just two buttons away from shooting (the power button and the start button) … so it’s always ready to capture, even when I’m not.

The built in screen is incredibly clear, and the integrated joystick lets you set a custom option very quickly.

A unique feature that I’ve come to enjoy is the ability to take hi-res stills while filming a video. A separate button, on top of the camera, controls still shooting. Best of all, you can pre-set the desired resolution of the still image to be different than that of the video.

And finally, this thing is ultra-compact and ultra-light. That means I can take it anywhere and everywhere … always ready to capture full HD. And in addition, it imports into both Pinnacle Studio 12 and Sony Vegas Platinum.

Not perfect but perfectly good
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Have been doing photography for almost 40 years. I started at 12 with my own dark room but no darkroom needed with the new digital camera/video cam. Two weeks and all is well. Be advised this camera is tiny. Almost too tiny but that does make it easy to drag it along with you. It is light as well. The good: Great optical zoom capabilities. Recording on flash is easier and better than I thought. I like the seamless transition and not having to line my tape up to the last shot if I removed the media. I found a bonus with the format -take out the media card, insert into a USB reader and attach to your PS3… Instant HD video playback with no cords. Cutting a DVD (high def) was pretty straight forward with the included software but not a very full featured product. Guessing NERO or equivalent would have more option and FX’s . Ok it is not as good as your HD TV programs but it is good. Focus is fast. Some graininess at lower light levels but as a hobby photographer I have always given in to using auxiliary lighting. The occasional b-day cake filming in the dark should be just fine. On the bad side.. On screen menus can be confusing for a while, the battery as noted by other reviews is barely enough and looks like upgrades are pricy. The still camera is very good but not sure I will give up my regular digital camera just yet; However having both formats on one machine means my still camera will see more shelf time especially for everyday event picture taking. The included component video cable works fine at 1080i but the optional mini HDMI cable connector makes the TV default to 480p??. Not sure why just yet but guessing this can be fixed. Also when transferring data from camera to computer it forced me to connect the power cord? Not sure why.

Remember you will need some place to store the video long term and you will find 16gb of movie data can eat up hard drive space pretty fast. If you are thinking about this product get a bigger battery and buy a good 16gb flash memory card (or two) if you can.

All in all I like this camera. It is sleek, looks sharp and has a lot of nice features for a relatively inexpensive HD camera.

Great Camcorder- A small suggestion…
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
If you can wait a few weeks, the price may continue to fall. The price has fallen about 24 dollars in 12 days.

Anyway, overall I love this camcorder. It’s small enough to put in a large pant pocket, but fits nicely in my hand.

I filmed a birthday party last night. I felt like I could almost conceal it, it’s so small. Maybe it’s less invasive than a larger camcorder.

Low light filming is Ok. I would like to see a larger sensor on the next iteration, but this thing is already very small. For what it is, it does an excellent job. With proper indoor lighting, you can get some very nice results.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s ok for recording with normal indoor lighting, but when you go outside with this thing, wow!

The other day, I filmed outside in bright light and this little tiny camcorder is AMAZING. I’m not an expert, but it seems close to broadcast quality. That’s impressive for such an inexpensive little camcorder with AVCHD compression recording to a regular class 6 SD card. Funny, because the camera only recognizes it as a class 4. It may not have the ability to recognize class 6 cards. Still, It turns on almost instantly, and is ready to record in about 1 or 2 seconds!

Can you say 30P? I havent tried 24P, but should be good in low light situations without fast movement.

[...]

I use Sony Vegas Platinum 8 to edit the AVCHD files and it works very well. HD does require a pretty fast computer, but it still works on my Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz single core computer. Playback can be a little choppy, but I only have 1 GB or Ram.

You may want to buy a HDMI to Mini HDMI cable to connect to your HDTV.

One last thing. You may want to look into the Canon DW-100 DVD recorder. It’s very easy to burn HD dvds on regular dvd-r discs. It holds about 30 min of HD content on a single layer dvd-r, and I believe it burns close to real time. So 30 min of content should take about 40 min to burn. I’ve been using mine, and have found it to be an excellent companion to the Canon Vixia HF 100.

Good Luck!

Great piece of technology
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I was pleasantly surprised by the very usable low light performance (I expected it to be lousy) and excellent autofocusing.

Cons: Can’t record lower resolution footages. (However compression is pretty good,). The still mode is not as good quality as a dedicated Canon photo cameras (more purple fringing and tracking), but it is still acceptable.

When connected (by usb), Linux recognizes the camera as a memory device and one can mount it without problem. Mplayer, mencoder (and all other open source players) play with a lot of artefacts, which makes the videos look quite bad, in fact buggy.

However I bought the CoreAVC codec for Windows for $14, and the CoreAVC for Linux project allows it to be used in Linux for mplayer and mencoder.It works great now and the quality is excellent. mencoder can be used now to transcode the videos to lower resolution mpeg that can be viewed by my relatives with slower computers.

AVCHD playback consumes around 20-30% CPU time on my 2GHz Core 2 duo with nvidia 8600 graphics chip, encoding to high quality 720×405 video runs at about 10-20 frames per second.

For Windows users, Sony Vegas studio Platinum edition seems to be worth buying.

HF100 experience of a first-time camcorder owner/user
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
As a computer savvy photographer buying my first camcorder, my experience with the Canon HF100 is quite mixed

The quality/color/resolution/etc of the video is surprisingly good. Unfortunately, you can only take short clips using full quality/resolution because importing the video is very slow, and exporting high-resolution video after you’re done editing is slow as well. I have a macbook pro 2.2 ghz core 2 duo (still fairly fast by June 2008 standards) and it takes iMovie 3+ hours to export 1 hour and 15 minutes of 960×540 video (1/4 the pixels of 1080i). I don’t recall the import times, but they are similar/hours. 1080i resolution requires approximately-forever to import anything bigger than very short clips

A few specific things to be aware of ->

1) The built-in microphone is okay for subjects right in front of the camera, but otherwise poor. If you want audio, the 12x zoom is useless. And, in my brief experience, audio quality is at least as important as the video for “capturing the moment”. I am going to experiment with external microphones

2) The image stabilization doesn’t work very well either. And again I don’t have other camcorder experience to compare it to – but the HF100 requires a lot of attention to avoid sea-sickening video. Similarly to the audio, the problem worsens as you zoom in (eg, fully zoomed-in, you will most likely have little or no audio, and very shaky video)

3) At a “widest angle” of 43mm (35mm equivalent) this camera does not capture a wide angle of action. I would much prefer a 35mm equivalent range of 20 – 240mm, which would (hopefully!) mitigate the problems both with the short-range-only microphone and the clumsy image stabilization – in addition to improving indoor options

To summarize, the camcorder does provide the opportunity to capture *amazing* video footage in the 10-feet-or-less range. However, even in the best case, it takes a long time to import and export – and, otherwise, it’s very easy to get shaky video without good audio. For me, this means I’m using it less than I would if it were faster and easier to shoot/edit good video – and I can’t count on it to capture events in a reliable high-quality manner. In hindsight, I would wait for the next generation of AVCHD camcorders to come out – as it seems the Canons are the best of the June 2008 solid-state camcorders

Cameras does very well in low light!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This camera produces excellent visuals inside, no need for a flash or any other lightings, it adjust itself perfectly!

Plays well with my Mac
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This was a gamble that paid off. It is the first flash-based camera I have ever had. Some reviews said that it was difficult to use with a Mac. In fact, this camera is easier to use than my previous Canon HV20, takes a great picture, and is easily edited with both iMovie 08 (blah) or Final Cut Express. I can bring it into iMovie 08 or FCE, save, and edit it in iMovie HD , as sometimes I find FCE too complicated.

The only real con I have with it is the fact I cannot re-upload to the flash card, and since I sold my HV20, I have no miniDV camera to upload to. I sometimes do shows to put on local community tv, and it needs to be on miniDV. The sound from wind is a little worse than with the HV20, but I usually tape indoors.

The pros include small size, no tapes to lug around, 12X zoom, superior sound from forward facing mikes, the ability to use sd cards from my photo camera, and an easy button. Often I find the easy button gets better shots than when I do the work of setting focus etc. I absolutely love the integration with Apple’s FCE, as I can pull up log and transfer, and choose what clips I want to transfer over to my computer. And watching something on a high-def tv from the hdmi connection on the camera is a joy.

Awesome Camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is the first camcorder I’ve ever bought. This camera is awesome!! It looks great with a HDTV. The files are very big if you record in high def so I bought two 16 Gig memory cards. These are kind of expensive. Also, the battery the camera came with lasts about 80 minutes and you have to charge the battery while it’s in the camera. I do suggest buying another battery and the separate battery charger. Also, the pictures that this camera can take are very high quality!!! If you have the money, buy this camera. You won’t regret it. Flash memory is the way to go for camcorders.

Very nice little camera!
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Perfect for shooting video of your kids and their events. Easy to use. Easy to copy to PC using card reader or provided USB cable. I use Sony Vegas Studio to edit and place on DVD which results in a very nice picture. Do not own a BluRay burner, so can’t comment on its HD quality, though I did connect it directly to the TV once and picture quality seemed very good. Only problem is the file format isn’t compatible with Windows Media Player for quick viewing on PC. The software that comes with it isn’t the greatest, but what is that comes with cameras?

Excellent camera – great results
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This camcorder is light-weight, and works very well. Exactly as advertised. Video quality is perfect, features are easy to navigate and manage, working with SDHC card is effortless, battery life is as expected (about 50 minutes with built-in and 2+ hours with extended) and transferring video/pictures to the computer is easy with the software provided. I strongly considered Sony HDR-SR11, but felt the HF-100 was a no-brainer because of lower cost. I figured I could always add 60GB of storage (built-in the Sony HDR-SR11) for the $$ I will save by buying the HF-100. As someone else mentioned here, I like the color of HF-10, but not having to deal with internal memory is a +ve point in my opinion too. Especially when I can get two 16GB SDHC cards for the price of the $$ I save by buying HF-100 instead of HF-10. On the negative side, I think the wind filter could have done a better job. Overall, a great product. I totally recommend it.

Good Quality, Terrible Support
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Quality of video is good. Agree with all the other reviews on quality. My disappointment was with the support I got from Canon. I use a Mac and the video software included does not work on a Mac. Windows only. When I called Canon and asked what I should do, their response was pretty much “Sorry, can’t help you out. We just throw in the software for free thru a partnership with Pixela. Canon does not support the software. You’re on your own as for software.” iMovie (or Final Cut Express) on a Mac can import AVCHD and edit it, but cannot output to Blu-ray or HD-DVD with iDVD. So what’s the use of a high definition camcorder if you cannot show High-def?

Very impressed with the Canon HF100
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I guess I am somewhat of an expert having co-written a few books on high definition video so I did quite a bit of research before deciding on this camera. With a baby on the way I knew I wanted a HD video camera and I also wanted it to be solid state based. My last video camera was the Canon Optura Pi. Standard definition of course and tape based. I don’t like tape. I don’t like having them around, buying them, tape dropouts, jamming in the transport ($300 repair), or storing them. I like shooting video on the card, transferring the video to the computer and then putting the card back in the computer.

With adequate light the video quality of this camera is pretty amazing. I have viewed video from it on my 52XBR4 Sony LCD TV and it really is HD. Only when the lighting gets really bad does the apparent resolution go down and the noise increase. Still the picture remains very usable in all but the darkest conditions. Considering the fact that this is only a 1/3.2″ CMOS sensor the picture quality is very good.

Despite what you may have heard about AVCHD compression is it quite editable with the right computer and software. I would say that if you have at least a 2.5GHz dual core you should be fine. I am editing with Sony Vegas Pro 8 and the editing experience is quite snappy.

At the maximum bit rate (16Mbps) the recordings are very clean with macroblocking only visible on really fast motion scenes or other difficult scenes like water waves. And even then it is minimal. I would like to check out the new HF11 with its 24Mbps data rate and see how much better it does than the HF100 on tough motion scenes. I just hate to have to pay the extra money for the built in memory, which I personally think is a waste. Why be locked into the rate that Canon charges for the memory when it’s going down every day?

What would I change on this camera?

1. Make the zoom control a rocker.

2. Increase the max bit rate recording to 24Mbps like the HF11.

3. How about the next generation having a 1/2″ single CMOS sensor and a larger lens to match for better low light sensitivity.

4. True 30p mode that doesn’t use the 60i wrapper to store 30p video.

Best AVCHD bang for the buck!
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Review of Amazon’s Customer Service: I received my HF100 very quickly. It was backordered and shipped out (I assume) the same day that more came into stock. I paid for one day shipping (3.99 with prime), and received my order the day after Amazon got more in stock. Great job at a great price!

Review of HF100: By FAR, this camcorder is the best I have used of any solid state memory camcorder or hard drive-based camcorder. It’s not really fair to compare this product to tape or DVD-based camcorders which are in a different (and in my opinion, lower) class of product. The video quality is excellent for the price. There is some noise in low light, but you will never find a camcorder that gives you no low light noise at a consumer price point.

I chose the HF100 over the HF10 for several reasons: 1) I like the silver color better, 2) a 16GB SDHC card is less than one third of the $200-300 premium you pay for 16GB of onboard memory with the HF10, and (MOST IMPORTANT) 3) one of the advantages of using removable memory is that if the camera breaks, you don’t lose the stored footage. If you have 3-4 hours of video “trapped” on the HF10′s internal memory and have to send the camera in for repair, you can be assured it’s gone forever. If everything is always saved to an SDHC card, then you can just pop out the card and send in the camera and wait for the inevitable refurbished replacement unit to arrive.

The camera itself is ridiculously small for a product that produces such high quality results. In fact, I don’t think any company could make a smaller camcorder that was actually useful (the exception being the “pistol” shape of the Sanyo Xacti series which are nearly the same size anyway). If you have very large hands, then this size may even be too small, and the button placement will be difficult to get used to. I have average sized hands, and the ergonomics are very good. The zoom and start/stop are in just the right place. The screen frame controls take some getting used to, but considering the number of options/settings Canon overall did a good job of arranging the controls. It would be nice to have a “wheel” type control for the manual focus, but using manual focus is probably going to be a rare occasion for me.

The zoom is virtually silent (and since there is no tape or DVD drive, there is no “whirr” sound in the background either . Most people don’t realize this, but there is a 400x digital zoom on top of the 12x optical zoom. Obviously, if you zoom in digitally 400x, the picture quality is going to be awful, but until you get over 150x, the picture quality is fine and just starts to show lots of grain. It is also nice to be able to take pictures at the same time as video (about 3 megapixel), so you don’t have to choose between having a camera or a video camera anymore.

The screen is adequate given the size constraints of the overall size of the camcorder. It does do pretty well in bright sunlight. Some washout occurs as expected, but you can still tell whether or not what you are trying to capture will be in the shot.

Sound quality is also quite good for objects/people close to the camcorder. The wind noise reduction is good but not great, especially on a really windy day. If you’re shooting a play or a ballgame and really want to hear what’s going on wherever you are zoomed at or if you plan on shooting in the wind a lot, you may want to consider getting the microphone attachment. It’s on MY list.

Speaking of add-ons, the two gripes I have are these: 1) there is no HDMI mini cable (these are cheap, cheap, cheap Canon, so there is no reason one shouldn’t be included) and more importantly, 2) an external battery charger is not included and they cost $50-75 online. This is a huge oversight, and a charger should be included either with the camera or with the additional battery that YOU WILL end up buying (just put it in the cart now).

If Canon had included the charger, I would have given five stars. The HF100 is truly excellent, and it may be the last camcorder you buy for many years (who really is going to need better than 1080i picture on home movies anytime soon. Anybody?) This is a great product. If you’re in the market for a camcorder, get this one.

It works nice
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
After reading so many reviews and articles, I chose this model. The video quality is good when the light is good (outside), the indoor performance is so so. If you are looking for one working nice indoors, try some other model. Otherwise, it is a nice selection. It is very light and won’t a burden if you travel. The quality of the display screen is not so good.(medium resolution) not very fine. you can see the small dots of pixels even. Overall, a good toy. FUN

great video and still pics, best value
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
this camcorder takes great video and still pictures in all light. it’s better than our $300 sony digital camera for still shots, especially in low light. really sturdy and well made. chose this over a sony handycam. it cost about $200 more but was well worth it. my wife and i had a baby on the way and wanted something high quality. there isn’t anything b/t $400-800 in the digital camcorder market. this is priced up there at $800 but we got it on amazon for around $550. so glad we spent the extra money. saw a video comp on the web of this and a handycam and there was a marked difference in quality.

awesome
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
this is the best HD camcorder at this size and price. I also had the Pan sd9 but like the low light performance better on this. Make sure you know the difference between CCD and CMOS.

Great
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I’ve been using my camcorder for about a week now and I’m very pleased. I wasn’t sure about getting this camcorder or getting one that supports xvycc or 5.1 sound.

The reason I chose to ignore xvycc is, in it’s currently implemented form, requires 10 bits per pixel instead of 8. That means for a given amount of video, you need to store 25% more data. Generally speaking, the higher the bit transfer rate, the better the picture quality. More bits/second means more information per second which means a better picture. So I felt there would have to be a trade off between more colors and picture quality. I would prefer a sharper picture over more colors.

5.1 sound sounded interesting, but I don’t think it would make much difference in home videos. if I were making real movies, then it would make sense.

In the end, I wanted as clear as possible picture quality and that’s why I chose this camera.

The picture is stunning. I was amazed at how clear some of the scenes were. It looked like I was watching hi-def tv. The sound quality was excellent too. When I film in low light conditions, the picture doesn’t look great, but looks pretty good. I don’t think it’s possible to have good quality low light filming on a consumer level camcorder. When I film in good lighting, like outdoors, the picture looks amazing.

I also love the way the video stores on memory cards. Outside of the lens cover, there are no moving parts. I have 2 ps3′s and to view the video, all I have to do is plug the card into a usb port using an adapter that came with my transcend card and select the usb device on the ps3 menu and it plays perfectly. The camcorder is as small as a camera. I store mine in an old camera case I used for a digital camera.

I also place my files on a windows vista pc and using windows media center I can stream the video straight to my ps3′s. It’s very easy. I just copy the files to my shared video folder on my pc, go to my ps3, select the file and it plays. I also have the option of burning the contents straight to a dvd and sticking that in the ps3 and playing it. These are regular DVD’s. Not blu-ray. You can store about 30 minutes per regular DVD or get a double layer DVD and store an hour.

The included pixela software isn’t great, but it can do basic editing and it’s good for reordering scenes or combining scenes. You don’t have to use the software at all if you have a ps3 or another blu-ray player that can play avchd and just want to play the video as is. I highly recommend getting a ps3 with this camera. It makes playing so much easier with lots of options. I just bought one from sony style and got a $150 credit by applying for a credit card, so it only cost about $250 plus tax. Plus you can watch blu-ray movies and play games.

A few optimizations and thoughts to enhance the user experience with this camera
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Hi Folks,

There are lots of great reviews describing the camera itself, so I will refrain from being redundant. I have had the camera for a while, so I want to share some comments.

1. VIDEO EDITING: The software that comes with the software is quite awful. I looked at the PINNACLE STUDIO 12 software, and was quite unimpressed, especially with stability. Then, I began using Corel VideoStudio X2 and was pleased with the results. The software is quite intuitive, inexpensive, and very stable. I like to save the files on my home theater PC and play them from there, so I saved my videos in HDV format, which is played by a number of video players.

2. NIGHT SHOOTING: Like most video cameras, you will lose a massive amount of detail with this camera when shooting at night. The built in video light is only adequate for subjects 2-3 feet away. It also makes the subject appear a ghostly white. Even worse, it casts a sharp shadow right next to the subject. I decided to purchase a video light. The canon official video light is 3 watts, and is expensive ($119 or more). Many reviewers have said that it has inadequate brightness. I decided to look at regular lights, and purchased the Sunpak RL-2O, and also the Sima ultra bright. The Sunpak is very very bright, casts sharp shadows, runs hot, has uneven light, and lasts only 12-13 minutes. It does not come with a shoe attachment for the bottom of the camera. The sima is quite bright, light and compact, and lasts almost an hour. It also has a built in diffuser, so it casts few shadows. You can also snap two or more sima lights together to create an array. I have decided to return the Sunpak, and order another Sima. One should be enough for most occasions, but 2 should be enough for every scenario.

On the down side, the Sima can create a greenish hue. I found that configuring custom white balance using a sheet of white paper, with the Sima light on, reduced the hue a lot. The camera appears to save this white balance setting for future use, so that’s very nice.

Another issue is that both lights use a standard shoe. This camera uses a mini shoe. I decided to glue the little shoe adapter that came with the sima to the top of the camera’s mini shoe using 3 tiny glue dots. It worked well, and I am pleased with the result.

Happy Shooting !!

HF100 an outstanding value
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
All solid state. Full HD. Outstanding video quality. Passable manual controls. Lack of AVCHD non-linear editing tools is major negative – but that will change with time. Great value for the money.

AVCHD is no problem for Sony Vegas 8.0 Pro and Dual 2Ghz
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
If you’ve been doing research, you know that most people say that AVCHD is a nightmare to edit and render. Not so! You need Sony Vegas 8.0 Pro and a fairly new computer. Editing and rendering is slower than with HDV, but it’s not a nightmare at all. Can’t afford Sony Vegas 8.0 Pro? At least download the trial version to see what you’re missing.

If you want to speed it up, shoot in XP+ instead of FXP–rendering takes 1/2 the time.

1) Shoot in 30p. Looks amazing and no deinterlacing required in post to be viewed on the web.

2) Do not use the software that came with the camera, Pixela Image Mixer. It wants to change the files to M2TS which, for some reason, turn out all garbled in Sony Vegas. Remove the card from the camera and put it in a card reader and transfer the MTS files directly to your computer.

3) Drag and drop an MTS file into Vegas

4) Edit

5) Render (if you shoot in 30p, then render in 30.000 frame rate (do not render in 29.970–it will give you a jittery video))

For Youtube rendering: There is a general consensus as to the settings that are best:

Search Youtube for:

“how to make your videos high quality using sony vegas”

very nifty little camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Its very small.

High quality wide screen movies.

It also takes great photos.

Technical aspects for indie filmmakers
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
We recently decided to sell our Canon GL2 and Firestore FS4 tapeless setup and purchase the Canon VIXIA HF100.

Selling points for me were the ability to capture in 1920×1080 at 24fps. This meant no more converting 60i to 24p through Twixtor or other software. In addition, the Cinemode is a nice feature because it cuts back on the electronic sharpening and handles the colors in such a way that you have more tonal latitude in post-production.

The selling points for my wife were the “Easy Button”, in which the camera handles exposure and other settings to ensure an adequate picture (and because home videos look better in 60i – 24p would be far too stroby in that case), and the small size of the camera: as other reviews have pointed out, it is the size of a soda can.

Of primary concern before finally deciding on the HF100 was whether or not we could effectively edit the .MTS / AVCHD files that the camera outputs. We discovered a very helpful thread at forum DOT Videohelp DOT com, under the topic “Mini Guide – AVCHD to Anything Using DGAVCdec”.

(http://forum.videohelp.com/topic346331.html)

I highly recommend… before purchasing any AVCHD converter software, try that solution because all of the required software mentioned in that thread is completely free (VirtualDub, AVISynth, some codecs, etc.)

I appreciate all of the other reviews here that have helped us make our decision, and hopefully this review helps answer the more technical/editing side of things that we found difficult to find info on.

P.S. The only potential downside to the camera itself is the lack of a manual focusing ring.

For those using 35mm Depth of Field adapters this is not an issue, since the camera would be set to manual focus to view the ground glass, and the focusing when shooting would be done on the 35mm lens.

In our case, we simply had to purchase a couple of ring adapters (58mm->52mm and 52mm->37mm ) to use our 35mm adapter with the HF100. It works splendidly!

Overall this is a great camera at an excellent price!

First Camcorder (HD or otherwise…
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Got it and immediately brought it on a vacation to South Florida. Upon coming home I plugged it into my iMac and effortlessly loaded clips onto iMovie. Also, connected it to my 1080 40″ LCD display — and played back in full HD resolution. Lightweight, great battery length and a very simple to use!

Canon Vixia HF100 – Best consumer HD on the market.
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The Canon Vixia HF100 is the best consumer HD camcorder on the market. The HF100 is preferred over the HF10. Why pay 100′s more for internal memory that you can get for $20? Also, what a pain to have to plug the camcorder into your machine to access the video. Instead, just pop the SDHC card out and into your card reader. The HF10 allows SDHC cards as well but the internal memory just isn’t needed for the extra price. Check all the reviews out there, almost all will agree, Canon is currently untouchable in the consumer HD market.

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-camcorders/canon-vixia-hf100/4505-6500_7-32786395.html

It is nearly perfect. Trust me, you will love it!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Ok you have read the negative reviews, right? If not stop here and go read them and come back.

Now let me tell you my experience with the Canon HF100 camcorder. First, some history. I am a gadget guy. I love new technology and work (for a living) with it. My previous camcorder was a 3 CCD Panasonic camcorder that used tape. Living in Florida, and vacationing in the Carribean – I had problems with tape. When I went outside, the humidity caused moisture to develop on the tape drum causing the camcorder to “eat” the tape. Not a good thing. It was bad enough that the lens would fog up!

Anyway, I waited until I could get an affordable HD camcorder with optical stabilization. The time is now. I didn’t want tape, but I wanted something more reliable than an internal hard drive. Picture this: you are on vacation (an expensive vacation) and you drop your camcorder while you are recording something, down a long rocky embankment. You rush down to discover your camcorder trashed. This is a bad thing. But you later discover that your vacation videos are now wasted because the internal hard drive was engaged (remember you were recording) and the hard drive is also trashed! What do you do now for vacation videos? You would have to re-do the vacation!!!

In my case, I would remove the SDHC card and buy another camcorder. I could even get one at a vacation stop and continue!

So here are my points:

– Video quality: 10

– SDHC instead of tape: 10

– SDHC instead of Hard Drive: 10

– Editing software: 8 (It’s out there, but just starting to hit the market – try Pinnacle Studio 11 or 12!)

The cost of SDHC cards are coming down fast. 16GB will get you 2 hours of 1080/30p video. If you get a hard drive backup unit with reader (about $150) you can reuse your SDHC cards every day. My portable hard drive card reader is a Digital Foci Photo Safe, model PSF-250.

My bottom line: get it. You won’t find better – except for Sony. And Sony had it’s own special memory sticks. And Sony’s comparable camcorder costs more. If you can tell the difference on a Blu-Ray DVD between a Canon HF100 video and a Sony video you are way too close to the 60 inch screen! I pick at the quality of the video from 2 feet away on a 42 inch screen. I like the Canon HF100. I cannot tell the difference from a professionally made HD DVD!

Dead within a week
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
I ordered the HF100, two 16GB cards, the extra-juice battery & the optional A/C quick charger. I would order the same package again. You will likely want the spare battery.

Going mostly solid-state is really nice. Being able to swap out SD cards & have hours of HD on such a small, versatile device is great. I’m sold on the flash memory camcorder concept, no question.

The HF100 takes great video, great audio, great pictures. It’s pretty easy to use (if you’re right-handed) and was a lot smaller than I expected.

There’s no viewfinder, you have to use the LCD display. This became a problem after the LCD screen died suddenly. The screen still had power, but no image.

I wanted to order a replacement, but couldn’t after the 1st one broke so quickly/easily.

You’ll want a tripod.

At least on a Mac, processing the video is pretty easy, but takes time and a ton of drive space at full resolution.

The included cables are very useful, can plug into any display with component or composite inputs.

I didn’t use the included software, computer recognized the data without any problems.

A decent vidcam
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I picked the HF 100 over the HF 10 largely based on other reviews here on Amazon. With the separate 16 Gbit smart card and card reader, the HF100 came in about $50 cheaper than the HF 10 with it’s built in card. I haven’t really had a chance to use the camera for shooting video, so far it’s just been straight photos. The camera’s kind of a pain to sync up with Windows for pulling the files down to my laptop, but after a lot of messing around I finally got Windows to notice when the camera’s plugged into the USB port. My main complaint is that the HF 100 tends to wash out photos taken in strong sunlight, when using the auto settings. I assume that I can fix that by going manual, but I haven’t gotten that far.

What I do like about it is the small size, lightweight feel, and the ability to carry it in my jacket pocket. Hopefully, I’ll have more chance to shoot video and really put it through its paces soon.

It works well.
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Overall very well. A few things can be improved:

1. Too easy to accidentally press the record button.

2. The round shape make it a little bit extra effort to hold it straight

Incompatible with non-Intel Macs
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I just spent four hours testing out my new camcorder only to discover that my non-intel Mac will not accept video from this product. Canon customer support was great and broke the news to me gently. Apple is the bad guy here. My first Amazon return ever.

CHECK OUT THE LOWEPRO LC1 CASE
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
The LC1 is really a lens case but fits the hf100 perfectly. If your looking for a case that has enough padding and not bulky, check out the LC1.

Made the Right Choice
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Did a LOT of research before purchasing this camera, as it was going to be used to film my beach wedding. Only had one chance to get it right.

The colors were beautiful, the camera performed admirably with no problems whatsoever. The menus can be difficult to understand at times, but the manual is actually helpful (that’s a first). Anyway, there is a wind shield function with this camera, but to be safe I ended up going with the microphone jack and, with a standard mic, sound was perfect.

The only reservation I have about the camera is the whole AVCHD thing, which you can see in all of the other reviews. I used the convertxtodvd software to enable me to show the video in a standard def DVD recorder. No problems.

Great camera, sparse format support
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This is a remarkable camera that weights practically nothing and takes very realistic HD video with extremely clear stereo sound. I bought a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable to plug it directly into our HD LCD TV and the quality rivals what you can see on Discovery HD. You will not be disappointed with the video quality. Still images too look fantastic. I set it to 30p frame rate since our TV and computers are progressive scan displays and the 60i seems a little shaky with software support. The stills at 2 MP may not have enough resolution for large prints, but they are incredible again on an HDTV as it displays them at a 1:1 ratio.

The only thing lacking is good software support for the AVCHD format. The crappy software that it comes with is Windows only and has limited editing. We are a Mac/Linux household so I’m still waiting for native AVCHD playback support on my MythTV box. The Mac can import from the camera using iMovie though it converts it to Apple’s format which is huge and can take hours. I’m sure the software world will catch up with the new AVCHD format cameras very soon though.

The only knock against the camera itself is the slowness when changing between video and picture modes. It can take 15 seconds before it is ready to take a photo or up to 5 seconds or so when switching back to video mode. I do not know why unless it is the fact that I have a 16GB card? Maybe Canon can provide a firmware update to speed it up.

really nice, better than you see
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is really a cool one, I bought it for my dad’s gift. He really likes it. Everyone should buy one!

I use this to record my wedding….
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
After much research b/t different brands, I got this camcorder so I can have a friend record my wedding in High Def.

I got these to go along with this camcorder:

TIFFEN 37mm UV Protector Filter

Transcend 16GB SDHC CARD

These arrived in a few days and I open the box. It came with a remote, charger which plugs in to the back of the camcorder (not a separate charger), and the video cables so you can watch on your tv. 2 cables, 1 for hd and one for rca.

I inserted the card, put on the lens filter for protection and starting testing the recording.

The recording in bright day light is beautiful. But, then I brought it into the house in darker areas, the picture comes out very pixelly/grainy. This is the only reason for the 4 star instead of 5.

Luckily, my wedding is outside during the day which this camcorder did a great job of capturing my wedding in HD. I looked at it and its wonderful crisp and the sounds is amazing.

On the new battery, I am able to get 61 mins per charge. This is with out any viewing in the middle. Just record. Hope this helps you plan out the amount of batteries you will need.

Now, if I have hire a videotographer , it would have cost me between 700 – 3000 dollars depending on the package. I got this on Amazon for 625 and I get to keep the camcorder at the end. Its a worthy purchase.

GL.

Very pleased
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I have a Sony DCR Vx2000 for about 4 years. It was so heavy that I haven’t used it for more than few hours.

This camcorder gives better video quality with good light and is very usable even in low light conditions.

I was able to burn an AVCHD disk using the supplied software. When I played it using my PS 3, the result was simply outstanding. The colors were accurate and the sharpness of video was great.

Not Mac friendly
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
This camera is not friendly with Mac computers. It does not work with IMovie 08 and does not come with any Mac software for video editing. It also has no Firewire port to use with a Mac. The camera itself is easy to operate does a good job as long as you do not need editing software. The USB port does work but Mac’s can not use the Canon file format.

Canon HF 100
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Canon VIXIA HF100 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

Great little video camera. Its easy to use & takes great video. It was a little difficult getting the software to work with my computer, but after a little trial & error I found some programs that allow me to make great home movies.

Not for 64 bit
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
Well, taking pictures with the cameria is fine, especially if you have the use of your right hand. It would be next to impossible to use left handed.

Watching the movies is another matter. There is absolutely no support or software provided by canon for Vista 64 bit. They suggested buying Adobe premier pro, but never mentioned that that cost more than the camera. I have yet to watch a video taken with this camera.

Update: from another site, download and run “Media Player Classic” and then change the filename extension to .MPG. Then windows media player may work then.

Excellent Camera!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is my 1st HD camcorder and it has yet to disappoint. After using the “movie” mode on our point-and-shoot Nikon, this is a breath of fresh HD air! My wife and I just had our first born and we wanted to catch everything our little man does! The HF100 is perfect…small, lightweight and easy to use. My wife is somewhat intimidated my technology(she does not touch my Canon 40D) but she has little issues with this camcorder.

I usually shoot 30P in Program mode with the image stabalizer on. Program mode will give your shot far better color contrast and 30P is much easier to convert for web uploading than 60i. 60i looks good on DVD but most videos I shoot end up in Vimeo for my family to watch, most of which live hours away.

Uploading is a breeze with the flash drive. I purchased a cheap flash drive reader off an auction site. For whatever reason you have to have the camera plugged in when uploading movies to your computer. That is a lot of cords. A memory card reader is cheap and a major life saver.

I have both a Mac and a PC so I have some experience with both platforms when viewing video. One major complaint is that AVCHD is somewhat difficult to view on a computer. You do have to convert it to another format to view your movies on a Mac and even to edit them. I use Toast 9 along with Quicktime Pro to convert my video to a format easily uploaded to Vimeo(H.264 – 1280X720 HD). The quality is astounding!

In its RAW format, AVCHD looks excellent. The bundled video software(Windows only…dang) does a great job with unconverted AVCHD playback and some editing. I wish they would make a Mac version of this software. I have even made a DVD with the software and it looks really great on my Plasma. For bare bones editing, and DVD creation…the bundled software does work, and works well. One thing I have noticed when converting AVCHD to a more friendly video editing format such as HDV with TMPGEnc 4.0 Express is some stuttering when panning video is being played. This does not happen when viewing in AVCHD format. My suggestion, unless you really have to, try not to convert the video unless necessary. SONY Vegas video software lets you edit in AVCHD, no conversion is necessary. If you are on a Mac…well as far as I know a program does not exist that allows editing in AVCHD…you have to convert the file to something else (video codecs are numerous).

Eventually AVCHD will be the format of choice as tapes will inevitably be phased out (some will argue this, but this is my personal belief). In my opinion you cannot go wrong with this camera. Hard drives fail, tape drives fall apart and RW-DVDs are a pain. Flash memory is the future.

One issue I have is the lack of a stand alone plug in for the battery. You have to plug the camera in to charge your camera’s battery unless you shell out around $60 for a separate plug in charger. In my opinion this should have been included with the camera.

Review from a professional videographer
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I’m a long time part-time professional photographer and videographer and former television news photographer with many years of experience using a variety of professional and prosumer equipment. I’ve also owned three camcorders for personal use, including the highly regared Sony TRV900, a very capable three-ccd model. So my standards are quite high.

I purchased the HF100 for a great price at Amazon knowing that this model was being superceeded by a new model. I bought it for my wife to use on vacation. But I’ve been so impressed with it, I’ve taken it over. It’s a great camera in a tiny package that can grow with the user’s ability and create very professional looking video. (Nothing about the HF200 seemed to be a huge improvement, at least looking at the just released specs.)

Pros

The video quality is excellent, very sharp with few compression artifacts, excellent saturated (but not over-saturated) color, and high dynamic range (the ability to capture both light and dark parts of the scene with detail). Personally, I feel the low light capture ability is good, especially with the ability to shoot at 24 progressive frame rate. It’s better than my previous three-chip camera. The lens quality is totally amazing: sharp and contrasty, even when shooting into bright light, with no visible chromatic aberration through almost the entire zoom range. This is incredible at this price and at this size.

Size and weight

For most situations, the camera is much more likely to be along with you than a larger one, and because of that, you’ll get many of life’s best moments because you didn’t leave it at home. There is some compromise to this, however. It takes more attention and skill to shoot with a steady hand, and there is less surface real estate for buttons and switches. So many of the less frequently operated functions are on menus and slightly more difficult to find. But, this isn’t much too give up.

Lots of manual control

Anyone can pick up this camcorder and shoot acceptable video by just hitting the “easy” button. But, as your ability progresses, this model can grow with you, allowing you to finely control or tweak almost everything: aperture, shutter speed, frame rate, color saturation and sharpness. It also offers a microphone input (something Sony doesn’t in this class) something that’s very important if you decide to add an external microphone for really professional audio.

Other thoughts

I thought I would miss a viewfinder, but so far, the really bright LCD screen has been adequate for shot composition even when bright sunlight is hitting the screen.

Battery life

Others have complained about it, but, I think it’s quite amazing to get an hour out of this tiny, tiny battery. I’ve purchased a larger 819 battery to have both an always charged spare and a battery with almost twice the capacity. Plan on getting a second 809 battery at the very least.

AVCHD and computer requirements

This format has finally come of age and has even greater potential. But, if you plan to edit on your computer (which of course you will) be prepared to buy a new computer if yours isn’t really new and powerful. I have a three year old workstation with dual Xeon 2.8 processors and it doesn’t cut it. Despite what the software companies say, I think I’ll need a quad core or i7 processor to be able to handle these files efficiently.

Some tips for more professional looking video (if you care)

Most amateur-looking videos look that way because the camera motion is so jiggly–always shaking and moving with lots to panning of stationary scenes. My advise: don’t zoom or pan while you’re shooting. Set up your shot, and only move the camera to stay with the subject. Use the zoom lens (or your feet) to properly compose the shot before you start shooting.

Get and use a decent tripod. I know, it’s a pain to carry around (especially since it weighs way more than the camera) but it will make a huge difference in the look of your videos. Next level up in quality is to get a fluid video head for smooth camera movements. Still want to improve? Get a Steadicam Merlin ($900).

For sound, several good on-camera microphones will improve the sound quality tremendously. I highly recommend the Rode VideoMic and Sennheisser MKE300 or 400. Both are directional do a good job of reducing near-camera noise. Even better sound can be obtained with an off camera stereo mic like the Audio Technica 822.

Wait a minute! Now I’ve got $2,000 worth of stuff attached to this little $600 camera. None of this is necessary to get great, nice looking (but obviously amateur) family videos. But if you want to make your own “serious” productions, this camera is so good that you can do it with a few accessories.

Summary

I think this camcorder will meet the needs of a variety of serious amateur and professional users. It’s an especially great value during this closeout period.

4.5 Stars: Great Video Quality, Slightly Quirky Menu System
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I also did quite a bit of research between various Sony and Canon HD models and kept coming back to this one, partially because it had very similar specs to some of the more expensive models, and partially because the indication seemed to be the quality was top-notch for HD video. Let me tell you I have not been disappointed. It IS true that the default battery loses its charge pretty quick in the higher quality modes, when stopping and starting your record sessions (I film landscape stock footage so I do a lot of 1-3 minute takes and that’s it). So first off, get yourself the higher capacity battery for this camera and an AC charger for sure. You’ll need it unless you only plan to use your camera sparingly.

I do not use the Canon software so I can’t comment there (I use Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, which does a really nice job of letting you look through the AVCHD files on your camera and quickly pick the ones you want to include and edit in your project), but the quality of the HD output from this little camera is truly amazing for such a small camera. No banding of any kind, good white balance performance (little off in spots but not a big deal – easily corrected in Premiere Pro), and the detail is outstanding. Color rendition is very good also, but again like a digital photo I tend to handle the colors in the applicable program rather than always leave them as-is.

Because I deal with a lot of wind, ultimately I will probably get the Sennheiser boom mic and a “dead cat” for the mic, but really, if you have your extra batteries, memory cards (they get filled up quick! 8GB recommended at least) and a tripod you can produce some professional quality video clips with this camera. And for hand-held fun it does a real nice job with the stabilization as well, and any minor gaffes there are easily handled in After Effects (which, is admittedly beyond the scope of the average user for this camera but worth knowing if you’re into that sort of software). The only minor downfall is the part of the menu system that lets you review your many clips and delete unwanted ones (for when the card is full or nearly full). This part was really confusing the first couple times I tried it but eventually you remember which options take you where and you are able to work pretty efficiently. The menu system that controls your white balance and other “shoot settings” are very easy to use (like a Canon still camera).

Definitely a “best buy” among the small, hand-held HD cameras that use AVCHD.

Excellent Camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Excellent Camera, I’ve had it for one month. I’ve gotten good results in low-light, bright-light, snow, you name it. The most obvious thing it could use is a wide angle lens because even at it’s widest angle it is still difficult to capture the scene in small rooms.

Video camcorder
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Great camcorder/camara. I went to Disney with my family and got some great high definition movie pictures along with some still pictures. It looks great on my HD TV.

Just what I was wanting…
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
First off, I love the size of the camera. Like it was mentioned, the comparison of a soda can is pretty good. It fits well in the hand, and the buttons are placed very well for easy access.

Also, I like how it does not have a hard drive built in (moving parts… if it falls, it could be a goner) and there’s no tape to work with. Just record onto an SD card. You might want to invest in a larger card. The 16GB card I bought holds over two hours of video footage in FXP mode.

The camera still does shake and vibrate a little bit when in your hand, but I would expect this from anyone holding a camcorder. Again, without something to compare it to, I couldn’t tell you if this is better or worse than others.

The resolution of FXP (HD) mode is wonderful. It looks great on an HD TV. The downer is, and perhaps this is true with all consumer HD camcorders, is that the picture quality is MUCH better in natural light outside than indoors. Good lighting indoors help a bunch, but you can notice the quality difference for sure.

Now for something that I can comment on a bit more: Editing. I use my Mac Pro, 3.0gHz quad core processor with 4GB RAM. Naturally, if you don’t have a powerhouse computer, editing will be tiresome, or just not possible at all. I know that when I’m converting the video from the SD card to the computer via iMovie 08, all four processors are used at around 97% until it’s completed. Unfortunately though, iMovie can’t use the native video files from the SD card so it is converted to .mov, which is around twice as large. You’ll need storage space on your computer. I have an extra 500GB drive just for large video that the camera will be making. iMovie 08 is a GREAT choice for this camcorder if you have the machine with good specs.

Overall, I’d recommend this more than the other like models out there, based on review and research.

Unbelievable Video Camera!!!!
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
WoW, is all I can say about this video camera. It is really easy to use and the fact that there is no tape or disk I need to put into it makes this a really compact piece of equipment. The video quality is just fantastic and so clear. My only drawback is as many have stated, the video editing software. There aren’t too many out there right now that can handle the high definition editing and still make it easy to do. Other than that plus the low battery life, this is a great video camera and I would highly recommend this product.

Awsome video quality on hd tv
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The video of my vacation is better quality than High Def tv programming. Better than blue ray disk. Simply amazing way to save your memories. Burn high def disk with dw cd burner for this camera and plays directly on sony ps3 or blue ray player. Disk also imports directly to new imac computer

Awesome Camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This camera is amazing. The video quality must be seen to be appreciated. I’ve been using it since May 2008 and would never go back to standard definition nor tapes. I recommend the following accessories: 16 GB SDHC card for over 2 hours of footage, B19 battery for over 3 hours of recording time, clear and polarized filter set, the external mic for the best audio possible (especially outdoors under any wind conditions), and a Mac + iMovie 08 for editing.

Simply the best
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I love this camera. I jumped in with a Cannon 8mm and then a S0ny DV DCR-HC21. So this camera isn’t even in the same ball park. SDHC is the way. I can record the same amount of video on a 16G card as a tape if I go SHD. Also If you buy 16G SCHC cards buy them on amazon for around $25 and the battery is around $25 on Amazon to. Just type in BP-809. And get the Pinnacle Studio 12 ultimate software if you don’t want to drop frames or have problems. like you guys that buy Sony software to download a Cannon camera. Come on. And Studio 12 is pretty cheap considering. you’ll be able to burn HDDVD in your DVD burner and play them back on a newer blue ray player. You want to do that cause BD are $25 a piece not a 50 pak. And if you get the Paul Holtz video tuition you’ll be miles ahead of any others in their software. Then you need at least a duel CPU or higher like quad core or even the newest i7 cause that’s the market now, why buy a duel at this point? And at least 3G RAM DD2 and a 9800 video card. And lots of hard drive. The new SATA II 3G Hard drives are the way to go. So you just can’t buy the camera. You also need all this stuff to install a Blue Ray burner to. As soon as I got this I did a test of my Sony Camcorder Vs a Nikon coolpix P4. I just thought the Sony camcorder had to be a better video. nope. Same video pixels as your SD cameras. So if you don’t get this camera you might as well throw that old Digital camcorder out and use your cameras SD cards. And the HG20 with 60G hard drive is only $80 more. But I’m telling you again SDHC is the only way to go.

HF100 Excellent and AVCHD works and plays with new iMac
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I purchased this camera about two weeks ago from Amazon. I also got the wide angle adapter and the Transcend 16gb card with reader. My intent is to capture video of family events.

I think the many reviews on this site have done a good job of describing the camera’s video quality, etc. In short it is a great little camera. I would like to comment what I have learned about working with AVCHD files so far.

First of all, IF YOU HAVE AN OLD COMPUTER, YOU SHOULD NOT PURCHASE A AVCHD CAMCORDER. At least that is my experience with my 4 yr old Dell. No amount of fiddling with the included software or shareware would yield a working preview of my clips.

However my new iMac works very well with AVCHD. It would also be fair to say that Mac AVCHD file handling has plenty of room for improvement, primarily in two areas.

First, you cannot directly edit AVCHD in iMovie or Final Cut Express 4; the files are first rendered by these apps into .mov files, a process which takes at least 1 minute for each 1 minute of video and results in a file 10X the size of the raw AVCHD. This is largely automated in both programs so its not a terrible inconvenience.

Second iMovie is not, practically speaking, compatible with FCE. For example, if you decide to download your video files into iMovie at the highest resolution (1920 x 1080), any such file used in FCE would need to be rendered a second time in FCE, because FCE is limited to 1440 x 1080 resolution (not a choice in iMovie). This second rendering also takes 1 minute for each minute of video.

With these limitations in mind I have developed the following workflow, taking advantage of iMovie’s low end capabilities while keeping my original (and small!) AVCHD files intact for FCE or archiving.

- Since FCE is in my workflow, I set the HF100 to XP+ mode (1440 x 1080). FXP mode in the HF100 is 1920×1080 and thus will require a second slow rendering to be used in FCE. And the truth is you don’t gain much, if any, image quality at this highest setting

- Placing the SDHC card into the card reader activates iPhoto and iMovie prompts to import the photo and video files. Since I separately archive the original AVCHD files, I import iMovie video at the oddly named “Large” setting which is actually a down-res 960×540 file. This smaller file still looks great, saves space, and since I just use iMovie for viewing clips, uploading to .mac, and making DVDs of clips, any loss of resolution here is irrelevant.

- Lastly I make a copy of the SDHC using Finder->Duplicate for archiving and for FCE to use later. Note that FCE can only import AVCHD video from the specific folder and file hierarchy that the camera made so make no changes or rename any of the original files or folders (but its ok to rename the outer folder).

It’s a great small camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I had the camera for almost 1 1/2 months, used it recently in Xmass. Hooked it yp to a HD TV, amazing picture, better than any cameral I owned in the past. t’s a very compact camera. If you take video in HD you need to get a couple of 16GB or more of SD.

Great Size And Video
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I had an older DV camera for a long time and saw a friends camera and how good it looked (a Sony HC7 I think) so I decided to shop for an updated camera that would do HD. I went back and forth through the Canons and Sonys and decided on this beased on the price and specifications. I also liked the idea of using caqrds instead of tape.

It is excellant. The video is clear and looks great, even in some lower light sections. The camera is small and portable and it is amazing how much you can get from the little camera. The video on a LCD Television jumps off the screen. I was not looking for anything fancy, so I do not know what extras people may find missing, but for a camera that takes very good video, this one is a good choice.

Nothing bad to say
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought this camera for two reasons, one becase I just wanted to get rid of the old one that used tapes and was big and bulky, the second is because I was going on a trip cross country to a Wedding. The Camera is very small, and very easily fit in my pocket when I wasn’t using it, which was fantastic. The quality of the camera itself and the video it records are stunning.

It is worth every penny I spent on it. The still camera setting was very usefull to, because I did not want to take both my HF100 and my Rebel, the camera on the HF100 took very good pictures.

Very pleased with this camera and will definately recommend it to people in the market.

Good Deal
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
If it only had a higher pixel level for pictures and a little better performance at night I could easily gave it 5 stars. I still have no regrets on purchasing this camcorder.

Nice product
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Yep, I checked it up first on couple of review websites and also on the Wikipedia!! Given the product’ cost and the values and qualities it provides – it’s excellent! Nice picture quality and excellent video quality!

A very good camera and corder to try!!

A great choice for HD
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I looked for over 3 months before purchasing a camcorder. I looked up cnet reviews and any other site that could offer information and finally ended up with the HF100. My final decision was based on the fact that the price is reaasonable for HD (only a couple hundred more than SD) and flash memory, I was interested in the HG10 also but settled on this one instead because of the fact that it offered flash vs. a hard drive. Depending on what you plan on using your camcorder for, what your budget is and what you require will determine what will work best for you. This is what I found so far from my HF100:

Pros:

The Canon HF100 HD camcorder is a good overall camcorder. The controls are easy to reach and the manual is readable and brief. The software to edit your video footage takes some getting used to and you have to have very high performance PC to work with the HD footage you record. I recommend a large capacity external hard drive also because the files recorded in HD get big fast.

Unless you have or plan on buying a blu ray disc player and burner, stick with a standard definition camcorder. Canon offers the HF15, I believe which is hundreds less than the HD version for those who are happy with dvd quality and don’t wish to upgrade in the future.

Cons:

It’s a little pricey but not bad, the battery life is only about 1 hour so you’ll definately want to purchase the larger capacity battery (bp819) and it will stick out a little further but it gives you about 2 hours of recording time. The editing software takes some getting used to, I’m still working with it on my 3 year old laptop and it is very slow…thinking about upgrading when blu-ray r/w come down a little.

Good luck with your search for a camcorder!

Great Camera, Crummy Software
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
A company I work for bought this camera to be able to use in our training division. The idea was to get a camera that could take some good still pictures, good video footage, be small and compact, and easy to use. We really liked the idea of no clunky video tapes since all the footage goes on a small SD card that you can pop in most any newer computer. For the record I would consider myself an fairly advanced user of digital media and editing software. No genius for sure, but I’ve spent many hours in front of a screen editing pictures and video and puting together many training videos. After using the camera for the past two months, many hundreds of pictures and several hours of video clips later, here is what I found.

The camera itself is awesome. The still pictures it takes are great quality and it’s about as simple to take pictures on as a regular digital still camera. The video operation is similar to other video cameras and the quality of the video is stunning. The quality and ease of use in capturing the media you want just can’t be beat. Anyone can operate this camera without any problems at all, regardless of your technical “know how”.

Now for the reason I rated this camera so low… Once you have that stunning video inside the camera, there is no simple, easy, user friendly way to get it back out onto something you can pop in your 2 year old DVD player and show the family. The software that Canon packages with the camera to install on your computer is absolute junk. It’s software that is comparable to what you’d find in a Dollar Store somewhere. The user interface is so poor that even advanced users will be pulling their hair out to get the thing to work what little features it has. No problem you say (like I did), you’ll just use one of the easy programs like Windows Movie Maker to make your video….Sorry, Movie Maker isn’t able to work with the format of video that the camera records. And that is the root of the problem. The AVCHD format that the camera uses has very, very, very few programs that will work with it and they all cost a hundred bucks or more to buy.

So, in conclusion, from an average guy that is pretty tech savy…stay away from this camera and any like it that use some special wiz-bang format to record with (specifically like AVCHD). The technology is good but the software to work with it still has a few years to go. Go with a good quality Mini-DV camera that you can actually use to make videos on with your home computer….and you’ll save pulling your hair out!

Problematic Camera
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I’ve been a Canon user for many years. I’ve owned three Canon DSLR models, and been very pleased with them.

So upon needing to buy a video camera, I did my research, wanting an HD model that was completely Flash-memory based. And I was pleased to find Canon’s HF100 was the best of the bunch.

I have not been disappointed in the image quality. But I’ve encountered two huge issues:

1) Soon after my 1-year warranty expired, the zoom switch on the camera started malfunctioning. If left alone, the camera will eventually start slowly zooming in without touching the switch. On one shoot where I left it recording on a tripod, it zoomed in and ruined the recording (of a once-in-a-lifetime baptism, nonetheless).

2) The software that ships with the camera is seventeen flavors of ugly. It is poorly-crafted, poorly-translated-from-Japanese crapware that is hideously difficult to use. BUT, because Canon records to a proprietary format, there’s no way to get data off the camera without using the software.

As for the zoom switch, I am currently negotiating with Canon to see if they will honor the warranty even though it has expired. However, I had to send my 40D DSLR back to the shop when the shutter failed soon after its 1-year warranty expired, and Canon wouldn’t budge on the repair costs. So this is two Canon products within a year that have failed on me. I take meticulous care of my equipment, and any hardware of this caliber should NOT fail as these have.

So, for what it’s worth, I’m your cautionary tale.

I may be done with Canon. It may be time to switch to Nikon.

Good price for what you get.
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I did a LOT of research before settling on this camera. That said, I had very high expectations…

Video Quality: I wasn’t quite as impressed as I thought I would be. I watched the demo video on Canon’s web site and I thought it looked amazing. Don’t get me wrong, its very nice compared to standard def camcorders but there are pros and cons to the video quality. Let me break it down:

For starters, I have only recorded using the highest quality setting (17mb/s) so I will only comment on that bit rate. That said, there IS some evident compression (mostly demonstrated by poorly delineated skin tones) that happens at all light levels. Not surprisingly, the greater the complexity of the subject, the better fidelity of the video. (e.g. someone with very wrinkly skin (more complex) will have greater detail than someone with very smooth and even toned skin. That person’s skin will be more compressed because the image processor assumes that it is a single simple color like a painted wall.)Its not a deal-breaker but it is a little unfortunate…

Outdoor/sunny video looks beautiful for the most part. Shadow delineation is spot on and contrasts are handled very well. Outdoor video is very crisp and detailed with fairly accurate color reproduction. You can easily use 60i or 30p in this setting. (I have not been impressed with 24p as it reminds me too much of cheap digital camera video clips. I realize its supposed to be more “film like” but it just seems more like 15fps than 24fps.)

Indoor/lower light situations are a little tougher to shoot. For one thing, there is a lot of ghosting at 30p and 24p. Even when using shutter priority mode, moving subjects appear to leave “trails”. This is greatly reduced by switching to 60i. Contrast is also very high so subjects faces can easily become lost in shadows if not properly illuminated.

The camera is put together VERY well and for the most part, I am very happy with its user interface. Buttons are well placed and the software interface is second nature to anyone who is familiar with Canon digital cameras. Its quick start feature is great for saving power and time. I am actually impressed with battery life as well. Most reviews that I read panned the battery life, but I think its just fine. Close to 50 min of non-stop recording. Much longer if you are just composing your shot and not actually recording yet. I’ll admit, the “set” button on the flip out LCD feels a little flimsy so I just push it gently.

Overall, I’m happy. I would definitely recommend this camera for home video use, but its not quite up to pro-sumer status.

*UPDATE*

When I wrote the initial review, I had not yet critiqued the still camera function. To be brief, it is wonderful. Rich colors, deep FOV, sharp images and plenty of presets make it a winning still cam. So what if it’s only a couple megapixels, the pics look good.

Excellent!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought three of these for use at work and have been thrilled with the performance. I was initially worried about low light quality because of other reviews–we’re using them to film in a manufacturing environment with all artificial lighting that’s sparse and as much as 100′ above the area being filmed. This creates a lot of dark areas, heavy shadows, and generally poor lighting conditions. The camera does an exceptional job and we’ve had no problems with capturing even fine details even in the darkest areas.

The image stabilization is ok – definitely a great improvement over cameras with no image stabilization or only electronic image stabilization. Still, we found that a tripod was necessary when filming for more than a few minutes at a time to get the best quality.

We recorded using the camera’s highest quality, then down converted to DVD quality for streaming over the company’s network (also converted to WMV format). The end result has been videos that are small enough to stream efficiently with quality that exceeds everyone’s expectations.

Excellent video and Image Stabalization
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Great camera. I bought this to replace a Sanyo HD1000 which had unusable IS. This camcorder is up to Canon standards of quality and durability. Nice and small size and weight. Easy to pull video off and burn AVCHD, Bluray, or standard DVD with Ulead Video Studio 11.5 Plus. Optics deliver excellent color and clarity. Audio is free of hummm or other camera noise. This camera has the option to configure using with a wrist strap for people with larger hands or the traditional “slip through” strap for smaller hands. This camera works with my Transcend 16GB SDHC.

Negative. Battery is flush with back of unit, but it is small. I have not tried to use it all day at a place like Disney World, but based on my day-to-day use, I don’t see it working “all-day” on vacation even though it is flashed based.

Don’t buy if you have an iMac G5 (power pc)
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
The camera is great. However, I can’t edit the footage. The camera and accompanying software is not compatible with an iMac G5 (power pc). Went to the apple store and they sold me iLife 08. Still doesn’t work. Very disappointed.

Small Quality Videocam
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Small camcorder yet nice video quality!!

I think money wise, this is a good buy than its big brother HF10. You can buy 16 GB SD card for $70. Right now the prices of SD cards are going down so fast.

HD videos are amazing
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I did research and compared several models and brands. I am glad with my purchase. The HD videos are amazing, much better that anything I have ever seen from a non-profesional camera. Pictures are great; I like the 16:9 photos you can take simultaneously while the camera is recording video. The zoom is impresive for videos or photos.

HD video playback form the camera to a HDMI TV is perfect but if you plan to play videos using a PC be prepared to have a graphic card like NVIDIA 128MB minimum, otherwise the movie looks broken. You might need a big HD or NAS to store videos as they are pretty big (for HD res), unless you have a HD recorder.

Best HD camcorder for the price
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is my first camcorder and I absolutely love it. It’s compact, easy to use and you can’t beat the price. Check out some of the videos people have made using the HF100 in youtube. I do have to point out that the software in this bundle isn’t worth the CD it’s burnt on. Get a good video editing software like Pinnacle or Vegas and you are all set. Have fun making great pro-quality videos!

Best rrom light performance ever seen
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I had been waiting for HF200 to get released to get the power of 24mbps recording and more pixels. However the reviews of HF200 in room light conditions have been poor. I have had bad experience with room light conditions with my Nikon D60, so I decided to go with the older model Canon HF100, even though the only thing I could get in that now was a refurbished unit. I decided to take a chance with the $500 refurb from tigerdirect as it came with a 30 day money back guarantee & 3 mo canon warrantee… Boy I am glad that I took this risk and got the HF100 over HF200 because HF100 is just pure AWESOME in recording in room light conditions. I have used it indoors at home at northlandz train museum and outdoors during dusk and each time the recording has been just great. I used 30p and 24p modes and there was not a spec of noise at all. The recordings look like daylight recording quality, they are that good.

This thing rocks under low light conditions at 24,30p even 60i is pretty good.

Buy it before they go totally out of stock, even the refurbs seem to be very good…

The only minor issue: battery life of only 70 minutes or so, but one can always buy a spare one.

I own a PS3 and this things works gr8 with it. I will never have to burn a single DVD again… I am not a big fan of editing video. I just record and save the files on my external hard disks and watch them directly on my PS3. Quick and easy with a flash card to HD transfer using USB card reader. Finally my ps3 has some gr8 use!!!

Get Adobe Premier Elements 7 or Pinnacle Studio Plus 12 to edit your Canon AVCHD files!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
While Adobe Premier Elements 7 is a big joke for the MP4 AVC/H.264 formats…it is a superstar with the AVCHD / .mts files this Canon HF10 generates.

Before I bought my own HF10 I was asked by a buddy to edit and burn some youth football footage from his newly acquired Canon HF10 with SDHC card. I was excited. Although I had no clue what an .mts file was Adobe PE 7 not only recognized it and imported it quickly…but I proceeded to edit both video and audio (together and separately)as well as burn to a regular DVD (not BluRay). My jaw just dropped and I said WOW!

I will add that while I am not a big fan of the GUI of Pinnacle Studio Plus 12 it also handles the AVCHD / .mts from the Canon HF10 just fine…and also handles those other MP4′s just fine too.

The really important part is that while I have a nice amount of ram (4GB) my computer is nothing special at all. I am running Vista Basic on a Celeron 1.60Ghz processor (Dell Inspiron 530 desktop) with the 4GB of ram.

Now that I have purchased my OWN Canon HF10 AVCHD camcorder Adobe PE7 is my go-to program for this type of footage. Again, it handles the AVCHD / .mts file format flawlessly. Check out my other reviews for some other programs I have tried like Corel VideoStudio X2 and Magix – Movie Edit pro 14. If you are going to be working only with AVCHD, specifically from any of the Canon HF series camcorders that put .mts on sdhc flash cards…then I believe Adobe Premier Elements 7 is the best option.

Warning: If you are going to rely on ONE software solution for multiple formats other than AVCHD, Adobe PE7 is not the way to go! I use several little camera/camcorders other than the HF10. They all use the MP4 AVC/H.264 format…while the previous version of PE handled them fine, Adobe PE 7 HATES the MP4 format! You can’t even add them to the time-line without it crashing! If you are looking for a single editing program to handle not only the AVCHD from the Canon HF10, HF11 or HF100 but other formats as well…specifically the MP4 AVC/H.264 format then I would go with Pinnacle Studio Plus 12. Like I said before, the interface and work flow is nothing like Adobe’s but it works fin with the multiple formats.

Does NOT work natively with iMovie on the Mac
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Contrary to other reviews that say this camera works with a Mac and the iMovie “automatically” imports the video from the camera, actually neither the Canon HF100 camera nor the SDHC card from it are recognized by iMovie ’09 running on my fairly recent 2008 MacBook with latest operating system(even though they ARE recognized by the computer). So, in my experience, you CANNOT just plug the camera in and have iMovie read or even convert the files from the Canon HF100 camera. I was told on the phone by Apple that iMovie will NOT recognize nor convert the .MTS files saved by the Canon HF100 so I find it misleading that Apple says iMovie “supports” the Canon HF100 and very hard to understand when some Mac users says it works well with a Mac. Most people writing reviews about using the Canon HF100 well on the Mac seem to be either are using Fincal Cut (FCE 4.0 which is $199) or have it installed (so the necessary codecs can also be used by iMovie, I suspect). I understand you can get another application to transcode the files to be read by iMovie, but iMovie ’09 will NOT automatically do the conversion without some special codec (prehaps from Final Cut) installed on the computer. Either that, or the satisfied Mac users have found some way to save in a different file format than .MTS from the camera, which I haven’t been able to do. I would VERY much like to know exactly how anybody got iMovie ’09 to “automtically” convert files from the .MTS format without Final Cut as it absolutley will not on my Mac and Apple says iMovie doesn’t support the .MTS files…

Canon Vixia HF100 – Solid performance – Value for money
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
You got to hand it to Canon to make a subcompact camera with all the bells and whistles of a much more expensive/bigger model. Even better – the performance of this camera is amongst the best I’ve seen.

Pros:

* Excellent HD recording performance in different resolution – You can change the mode based on space you have left.

* Fairly decent audio recording with decent ambient noise cancellation.

* Easy to use controls and modes(I never had to read the manual to figure out different operations..!)

Cons:

* Recording in SD cards is both a bane and a blessing – I recommend buying atleast a 16GB card with an external card reader – Transcend has a fairly decent one.

* Copying a 1GB movie(about 30 minutes in XP+ HD mode) takes a few minutes to convert into AVI or MPEG, after copying over the movie from the camera – I recommend backing up the movies often as SD cards are prone to failure

OVERALL: HIGHLY RECOMMEND! Search for a good price before buying it – Bought this camera after a lot of research – very pleased with performance

Almost perfect, except for full HD (FXP) mode
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Bought HF100 from Amazon based on the review. Also bought the Transcend 16GB SDHC Class 6 for HF100.

I don’t want to repeat all the good comments about HF100 which I agree with them all. I’m really upset by one big problem I discovered, not sure whether it’s because I have a bad copy of HF100 or else.

In short, HF100 works great when you do not pan-shoot, or only do very slow motion pan-shoot, otherwise in FXP mode at 30P frame rate, the video becomes very “jerky”, “jumpy” and make me feel motion-sick watching the video. The problem become less visible when you shoot in XP+ mode at 30P frame rate. This means although H100 is design to support Full HD, it’s really not capable of handling Full HD when at least doing pan shoot.

I’m thinking about return it to Amazon, but trying to get some feedbacks from other users before I do so.

Very Impressive picture quality
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The day after I got the camcorder, I went to a wedding. I recorded there under not good lighting condition. When I came back and play it on my Sony HD tv, I was amazed how good the video quality is. Last weekend, I recorded a political rally, it is better than my local news quality (they are not all converted to HD recording yet).

Love It
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
It is just what I wanted. Just wish the battery lasted a bit longer. 90 minutes is usually enough but not always.

WOW
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
What an amazing camera! My wife is pregnant right now and we got this camera to document our pregnancy and birth a so on. The second I saw the image quality I was blown away. We definitely have no regrets with our purchase, especially at that price. I was also really impressed with the audio quality. It operates super fast and quiet.

Smaller than you think, Excellent quality
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I’ve had the camera for a few days now, so that being said I love it. It’s much smaller than you think based on the pictures. Since I live in the northeast, it’s dark out by the time I get home from work this time of year. My test recordings were all indoors with regular lighting. quality was 100% better than my minidv camera. focus was almost instant and i didn’t have to use the led light. quality was very good. I couldn’t tell the difference in quality between the three highest HD modes. created a 10 minute acvhd disk (and dvd) from corel media studio x2 pro demo. Smart proxy is awesome, but you have to give the pc some time to create the proxy files to create. simply take the sd card out of camera and pop it in pc. Not sure why some people have issues with transfers. on AMD 4200+ I am satified with render time (minidv took so long to get video on p, it’s a wash). All in all I’m very happy with purchase and will buy corel x2 pro to make AVCHD disks.

Almost Perfect
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Small size, great quality of stills and video. The biggest issue I have is that when you want to import the footage into a Mac, it imports in real time – i.e. if you have 60 minutes of footage, it’ll take 60 minutes to get the footage off the SD card and onto your hard drive.

Great Product
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I purchased this right before we went to Hawaii and it’s been great ever since. It’s light, easy to use, and has long life. It’s just what’s needed for someone on the go.

Very Happy So Far…
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
My DV camcorder died some months back and I’ve been looking for a replacement. It seemed as though a non-tape based camcorder would be a good choice, so I’ve been following reviews of a variety of flash and hard-drive camcorders for several months.

I really didn’t think I needed an HD camera, but the reviews of the standard definition camcorders really weren’t very good. I had just about decided to go with the Canon FS100 (their standard def. flash based camcorder) but was concerned that many reviews said is was bad in low light.

I’m not a professional videographer, so I just want something that will give me great video with a minimum of effort. I use the camera indoors quite a bit shooting video of my kids, so the poor low light reviews concerned me.

Then I found the HF100.

The reviews were generally very good and since Canon were getting ready to drop a newer model, the price had been falling too. At the time the FS100 was ~$350-$400 and the HF100 was $200 more. Amazon had a great price — as good as every reputable merchant that sold the camera — so I bought it here.

The camera itself is compact, but not so small as to be hard to handle. It’s also pretty light weight (but not flimsy). There are no moving parts since it uses the SD card, and each shot is saved as a separate file.

So far, I’ve shot indoors and at the beach. Both came out great. I got decent looking video indoors with lighting that my old DV camera couldn’t cope with (and it was supposed to be above average at low light).

The HD looks fantastic even with default “easy mode” settings and general use of the camera is easy. Very point-and-shoot.

The default battery drains fairly quickly, but you can get after market batteries pretty cheaply if you shop around.

All in all I am very pleased with this camera. It was a good price, is easy to use and takes some pretty good looking video.

“Five Stars” for this purchase.
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The features I wanted at a great price. Product is sized right and well featured. Overnight delivery was perfect.

Awsome Camera!!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is by far the best camera/camcorder ever owned. Very easy to use being i’m not very computer literate. Takes great still shots with excellent zoom. I dont use my digital camera anymore since this is pretty small and easy to carry. Good Job Cannon.

HF100 Review HF100 VS HF11 and AVCHD vs HDV All what you need to know about HD Camcorders
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
With this review I will tell you everything you need to know to pick best camcorder for you

First of all about the HF100

Sound,Size,Video,Value are all perfect to be honest the video is crystal Clear and the sound is unbeatable even without an external mic

There is no viewfinder but the LCD is extermely bright,Battery 1Hour~, and its very light/small camcorder i simply put it inside my jeans

You need to know that HF100 do not record in SD (Standard Definition) or 720p “it only records 1080 videos”

So if you want the options to record in SD or 720p then you might reconsider another Camcorder

So lets start first of all Yes I wrote HF11 in the title its not a Typo Canon just announced TODAY (22 July 2008) that they will release HF11 very soon “September” (Only in Japan for now as I write this review) Which use 24MB/S instead of the 17MB/S max that the Current HF100 use (That’s around 30% video BITRATE Boost over HF100/HF10)

So before I starts Some might say The hell with HF100 I will just wait for HF11 which have 24MB/S AVCHD

Well you need to understand First what does the 24MB/S means

1-There is a million Camcorder that use HDV tapes with 25MB/s recording yet HV30 wins hand down without any other camcorder getting close to its quality/price because HV30 lens, sensor, etc are way better than other camcorders in the market, Same goes here HF100 and HF11 both have the EXACT SAME lens, sensor, optical zoom, pixels 1920x1080i (or p) and even the body design!!!! So don’t expect serious changes in video quality at all (Lens, sensor, etc matter the most than the codec of the video) what was changed in HF11 is that Canon added 32GB memory and new processor to record the new 24MB/S AVCHD (which of course require faster processor to play/record in the camcorder) (I am not saying 24MB/s is useless however I AM saying that HF11 wont be the camcorder to use the true power of the 24mb/s avchd

2-You CAN NOT copy these files to a DVD and share them with family/friends because All DVDS have “18MB/S LIMIT” and sharing 4-5GB files over the internet is something people try to avoid, yes you can edit the video and lower the BITRATE to 18mb/s however this will take a lot of time (AVCHD isn’t walk in the park when it comes to editing) and the quality wont be as good as the HF100 17MB/S because HF100 video is unedited

Almost any BLU ray player can play normal AVCHD DVDS! (The PLAYSTATION 3 plays them too) and since BLU ray burners are very expensive (300-600$) and Each disc is around 10$ you don’t want to deal with BLU rays for now (Unless you don’t mind giving free 10$ discs to friends/family) DVDS cost like nothing these days for 10$ you can buy 100 DVD

3- 24MB/S = you need Bigger hard drives to backup/save your data

17MB/S 2hours and 5min for 16GB

24MB/S 1hour and 25Min for 16GB

4-Bigger files = Require better PC for playback/editing (But not huge jump like HDV to AVCHD editing/playback requirement)

5-HF11 is priced for 1300$ (HF100 is half the price) why waste more money for Same Exact camcorder even if you buy the HF11 trust me next year a new Camcorder will be released which will use the true power of the 24MB/S AVCHD but as of now HF11 lens and sensor is very limiting and wont use AVCHD 24MB/S real power Canon is just using the 24MB/S for Marketing~ save your money and get HF100 if you want memory based camcorder

Now AVCHD vs. HDV (HV30 VS HF100)

HV30 = Best Tape HD camcorder

HF100 = Best HD Camcorder that use Memory to record videos

HF100 pros over HV30

1-Its smaller

2-Record in full HD 1920×1080 (HV30 max recording is 1440×1080)

3-You just copy the files to your PC however with the HV30 you need to plug the camcorder to the pc and LIVE capture (HF100 is way faster and better tech also you can use your pc and browse the net while you wait for HF100 video file to be sent to your pc , but with HV30 using your pc while you live capture from the tape can cause slowdowns and frame drops in your video )

4-You can take your memory of the camera and insert it on any PC/PS3/blu ray player and watch your videos (With HV30 you need to plug the camera… because it use tapes)

5-With HF100 you do not need external microphone for acceptable audio sound which make it very portable since its already smaller than the HV30 however the HV30 without External microphone is completely not acceptable at all you can hear the tape noise and trust me its very LOUD

6-HF100 use AVCHD H264 Codec “To Me” it have better colors it depends on your taste some people do not like the cool blue effect that AVCHD videos use

7-With tapes you have 1hour limit for recoding then you have to switch your tape but with HF100 you can keep recording for hours (Depends on your battery + memory size)

8-With memory based camcorders you can shoot in 1sec!! But with HV30 you cant record fast you need to wait for tape to get active first

9-You can record with any settings/frame rate you want with memory based camcorders but with HV30 recording multi settings/frame rate in the SAME TAPE can cause problems when you capture the video on your pc

10-you can backup your AVCHD files and make them “playable video discs” to any DVD or (BLU ray in the future “now if you are rich”) without any EDITING at all!! But with HV30 you are required to Edit/capture , with AVCHD its just drag and drop then burn voila !

11-You can record over hundred and thousands of videos in the same memory without any problems and its free but with HV30 “tapes” first it costs money to buy tapes and secondly you cant repeat recording in the same tape after 3-4 times you will see lot of video quality drops the more you record over same tape also keep in mind that with HF100 all what you need is your camcorder and you are ready to go, but with HV30 you need lot of tapes with you if you going in trips and tapes are big which will kill the idea of having a portable camcorder

Now lets talk about HV30 pros over HF100

1- It have a Viewfinder which a lot of people prefer over the LCD

2- It can record in SD (standard definition) and 720p (HF100 can only do 1080)

3-It use HDV format which is way easier to play or edit in pretty much any pc nowdays

4-HDV format have worldwide support programs wise because its very old almost any video editing program can edit HDV, not the same for AVCHD which is new (Sony vegas 8 pro edit AVCHD just perfect but its very limiting to have few programs that really work with AVCHD unlike HDV any program is fine with it kinda, i guess by the end of the year everything will be solved remember AVCHD is new format”

So after reading all this you should know that waiting for HF11 isn’t really good idea and which camcorder is better for you HV30 or HF100

And that’s about it I hope it was helpful to you

==========================================================================

Update “AUGEST 14″ Camcorderinfo.com just confirmed what i was saying from the start about the HF11 you can read there review at there website (heres what they said about HF11)

“Out of the lab, we put the HF11 and HF10 side-by-side in some difficult shooting situations

and examined the playback footage with an extremely critical eye. After much deliberation,

we came to the conclusion that most people can’t tell the difference between the two.

You’d have to spend an insane amount of time and energy–as we did–to see a variance.” -Camcorderinfo.com

HF11=1299$ HF100=649$ (Half the price of HF11 save your money people ;p)

Broke on second day
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Mine broke on the second day of light use. The image in the LCD viewer and the recordings are now completely black (and yes the lens cover is opening). Otherwise, it looked promising. Also note, the proper spare battery is the BP-809S not the BP-809B as the title on amazon would have you believe. I’ll update on how my replacement unit fares.

Rather dissapointing
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
I bought this recorder, not from Amazon. I frankly do not see the difference between my “not so high definition” camera and this one. I do not think the noise reduction technology is works. It is a marketing gimmick. The picture is noisy under low light condition. Focussing is hard and goes out of focus. Over all performace is not what it is cranked up to be.

Good for PCs not so for Mac OSX users
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
PROS

Great Picture

Many manual controls (Exposure control, white balance, etc..)

Light weight

Decent battery life

Great view finder

Mic Input

Records on SD

CONS

On board mic sucks, captures every sound

The on board light is worthless. The range is super short, and it washes

Apple OSX computers can’t read the files natively.

Which means you have to transcode all the video in manually. This is an extremely time consuming task that takes more time to capture then it would if you were just capture from a tape. This bothers me to no end. If I new that it would take THAT long to import footage I would of stayed with a tape based system as its alot cheaper and it takes less time to import.

This isn’t a problem with Canon, its a problem with Apple not fully supporting the AVCHD codec, but regardless its a huge pain as Apple sells the freaking camera on their site.

So if your a PC user BUY THIS CAMERA, if your a MAC user, hold off till Apple fixes their wrongs or look elsewhere.

Good video but
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I used this camcorder on several occasions. It’s small and lightweight which is a good thing and bad thing. It’s bad because it’s a lot harder to get a stable picture without shake. Fortunately, for what I record, I place the camcorder on a tripod and let it go.The video is excellent, but… editing and converting are not as easy as tape. Good software at this point is limited and can be expensive. You’ll need a fast processor, video card, memory and hard drive space. Time is a factor and the files are BIG so unless you have a big external hard drive it is not easy to store the original files. Some people don’t care once they convert it to DVD but I still like to keep the original files. DVDs are not forever. That’s why if I had my druthers, I’d go with tape. The tape acts as a great back-up and is very reliable. Never had a problem. I did have a problem with my SDHC card where I lost some information.The video quality though is outstanding and it is a nice little camcorder. Get a couple of 16 GB Transcend SDHC cards with card reader and an extra extended life battery. Only one on the market right now is from Canon. Make sure it is the extended life battery. The batter does stick out some from the body but I have no problems with that or weight since I was using a tripod. Don’t care about the way it looks.All in all a nice camcorder

Perspective of a Camcorder Novice
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
After reading the reviews on this site and others and seeing the awesome videos on YouTube I decided to buy this camcorder. I give it 5 stars because I believe it lives up to everything that has been said about it. However, if you are a camcorder newbie, such as I am, be aware of the following: You will not be shooting “Star Wars” caliber movies simply because of the camera. All my footage looks like I am in the middle of an earthquake (I do have very shakey hands). I finally went out and bought a $30 tripod from Wal-mart. It definitely helps. The on-screen menu structure is alien to me. There is going to be a high learning curve in understanding all the modes this camera has and what they do. I bought the Transcend 16GB card with the card reader and it was a breeze transfering the files to my computer. However, it then took me nearly 4 hours to get my computer to play the MTS files. Nothing I had would play them and I could not get the free stuff that is suppose to play these to work. I finally downloaded the trial version of Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 and it worked flawlessly. I was able to view them, do some very simple editing and burn them to a DVD (I don’t have Blu-Ray and neither do any of my family and friends, so I have to convert these). I definitely will be buying this software to use with my HF100. All-in-all I think I made a good decison in selecting this camcorder. Just remember, if you are a novice you will most likely be putting some time and effort into shooting good videos.

beautifull
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is realy a fantastic camera, I never saw video so detailed clear and colorfull, even the Photo function has better results than my Minolta 5 Mpx, because this camera is very sensitive in dark places.

I connected my camera with the LG50PC55 plasma TV and it was breathtaking.

HF100 vs HV20: observations on video quality trade-offs and editing/distribution
Rating:4 out of 5 stars

I have a one year old HV20 and a 2 month old HF100. First and foremost, I care about video quality, but convenience is also important.

Each year, we go to the Fraser Valley in Colorado – an area surrounded by pine-forest covered peaks. Last year, we took a ton of footage with the HV20. Did the same this year with the HF-100. Three fundamental things about the video quality strike me in comparing similair footage.

1 – the HV20, given any movement at all, still has a slightly better ability to resolve fine detail. In bright indoor shots and in in reasonably but not overly detailed outdoor shots, not sure I can tell the difference. However, the moment I have a backdrop with lots of pine trees on distant hills, there is a very noticable difference. The HV20 simply seems to resolve a lot more of the distant pine detail. The HV20 did (and does) create a “wow” factor with those kind of shots. The HF100 does not. The 100 is not bad, but I lose the ability to marvel at the distant detail. Of course, thousands of pines mean millions of needles. That’s a lot of detail. And my camera is never completely still in real life – even if only slowly zooming or panning (or if there is some movement in the subject/s). This is not a small quality difference. (I should note I have a 65″ 1080p projector – smaller screens may not reveal such a big difference).

2 – Movement is more fluid with the HV20. With the HF100, I noticed that I found even reasonably slow pans bothersome – there was blur and greater “blockiness” to the scenery. The HV20, on the other hand, seems both more fluid and to present more of a solid image as I pan – really allowing my eyes to track the scenery during a pan.

3 – Medium to low light shots are dramatically better on the HF100. With the HV20, I tried to do all kinds of things to compensate any time it was evening in doors (even with a few hundred lux of light) or nearing twilight outdoors. The colors seemed overly reddish on the full auto settings, the image got noisy, etc. I used cineamode to try and offset both to some reasonable effect. By comparison, I have found I never need to take the HF100 out of the “Easy mode” and the quality is far better than what I got with all my fiddling on the HV20. (I should note I do all my filming in 60i – so bear that in mind). This is no small quality difference. It’s huge.

In the end, for video quality, I’m faced with having to let go of the occasional “wow” factor in higly detailed (and real world – with movement) shots for the much greater quality consistancy under varying lighting conditions. That’s not an easy trade-off, but probably tips the scales for me to the HF-100.

If you are a hobbyist or such who can always assure ample lighting – the HV20 probably still reigns for best quality.

EDITING AND CONVENIENCE – another matter entirely. If you want to do a lot of post work, there’s still no comparing the tools available. I do not do a lot of post work. I was pleasantly suprised by the packaged (Pixela) software. It’s not great, but for scene deletions, trims and rearrangements, it works while doing smart-rendering, which is a big deal for time and quality. So that suggests the HF100 for me.

For distribution, the jury is still out, but it looks like AVCHD will win out. There is some suggestion that Hi-Rez MPEG2 (HDV) can be natively encoded to Blu-Ray disks. I haven’t tried that. But I can say that that the AVCHD disks created on DVD from the HF100 play very well on the Play station 3 and several other Blu-ray players I’ve tried them on. All my connections are via HDMI – and there is no perceptible quality loss to me vs. hooking up the camcorder straight. That’s promising.

INTERESTING NOTE

I took my Colorado HV20 footage and encoded to AVCHD (17Mb/s). I used Pinnacle Studio 11 – probably not the best encoder. But the important point is that, even though TWICE compressed with the re-encoding, the resulting footage was, in general, better than the AVCHD from the HF-100 for the highly detailed nature scenes described in point 1. That’s really surprising and is good news for the standard. It suggests any quality trade-offs I’m seeing today may be more a function of processor limitations (doing it all in real time) vs. the protocol(s).

I’m still struggling, but in the end, I think the more consistant quality with low light and the distribution convenience probably will make me shift to the HF-100 and AVCHD.

For what it’s worth.

Not for an average consumer due to lack of editing options
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Clearly the people who gave this camcorder 5 stars are either techies who are good at , super users who want to pay a few hundred dollars for editing software, or have a lot of money

This camcorder is ahead of its time. I’m resentful that both for my Mac and my PC I have to buy new software or learn all about transcoding, freeware, and all sorts of other “hacks” to get this to work.

I wish I’d known what a huge pain and expense this would be before the 30 day return policy was up.

A Great Little Camcorder
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I am not a techie-type nor am I a professional when it comes to videography. I prefer just to turn on the camera and let it figure out all the settings and just have it shoot what I’m pointing at. At the end of that session, I want to take my footage and enjoy it. That’s all. And this camera fits the task perfectly, shooting excellent-quality video as well as still photos. When you’re done, you pop the SD card in your PC and download and enjoy. It comes with software to organize your footage, but I’d much rather burn it to a DVD, so you may want to purchase your own favorite app. Other than that, this camera is slick right out of the box — no complications and no hype. There’s even an Easy Button! What could be simpler than that? I own several Canon still cameras and their videocamera is just another in a great line of products! I am not disappointed and you won’t be either.

Listen
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I’ve done more research on mass-marketed high-definition camcorders than any person with a job really should. After weeks of combing and considering the pros and cons of AVCHD vs. HDV, HDD vs. tape vs. flash, I decided on the HV30, since I was persuaded by arguments about and examples of video quality, especially in low-light. Got the HV30 and, indeed, the picture quality is stunning. The sound, though, was a great disappointment. Since I’m fond of capturing quiet moments – the subtle sounds of, say, my four-month-old daughter sleeping – the high-pitch whine of the tape motor present in my recordings with the HV30 proved to be a deal killer. (I’m well aware of wide range of solutions to this problem, from external microphones to post-production techniques, but I’d ideally like to avoid carrying around additional equipment and I only have so much time to spend on this hobby – I’ll leave in-depth editing to those more dedicated, working towards different ends, and/or without family commitments.)

I should have stuck to my gut instincts and bought the HF100 the first time around. After sending the HV30 back (thanks to Amazon’s excellent return policy), I purchased the HF100 and am simply delighted. Video *and* audio are pretty darn good if not excellent. Maybe someone can split hairs and demonstrate the “artifacts” present between video recordings of this AVCHD camcorder vs. an HDV one, but I simply can’t see a difference when played at normal speed. The difference in sound recordings between this flash-based camcorder and comparable motorized machines is, to my ear, both obvious and dramatic. So if you’re sensitive to white noise or if you’re interested in minimizing/eliminating sounds from the recorder, think hard about the kind of camcorder you buy and what you’re willing to tolerate or accommodate in terms of additional equipment or post-production.

A final note/aside on my own take on the HF10 vs. the HF100: I appreciate the allure of the black-body HF10 in terms of aesthetics, but I actually find the dual flash memory feature to be a turn-off. I’d personally rather just manage a single, removable media card. Seems like a minor inconvenience to deal with both internal memory and removable cards when recording hours of footage before transferring/backing-up to a PC (while traveling, perhaps?). I’d preferably swap and label cards. But this, of course, is a matter of individual preference and habit; I include my thoughts here in case anyone hadn’t given this aspect some consideration.

The video camera you have been waiting for!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
HF100 is the best choice for home HD. Buy a 16GB class 6 card. I bought the Canon burner that goes with the camera and love it. Take the disk from the burner and put it in the Sony Blueray player and watch great homemade HD. Spending extra for the HF10 with built in memory did not make since to me but what ever turns you on. Camera starts up very fast and ready to shoot in seconds. Went to a fire works display and recorded them and was very pleased with results.

Half price of S10!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I really, really wanted a Canon HF S10. Planned to buy one and was waiting for the price to drop before we went on a cruise but after a slight discount from MSRP, the price started creeping up. Apparently everyone wanted one. At the same time, the price on the HF100 plunged. I picked mine up from B&H for $549. I am delighted with it and very happy about having an extra $600 in my pocket. BTW, flash memory has a limited lifespan and for only $50 I picked up a pair of 16gb cards. It is really convienent to fill one up, swap and dump the other to my computer than having to hassle with hooking the camcorder up to my computer.

I Love the HF100
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
All I can say is excellent HD Video. I record everything in fxp (highest quality mode) In bright sunlight i just hit the easy button. In low light indoors i turn off the easy button (if you don’t you will get snow)and record in cinema 30p mode.The more light the better the indoor footage looks. All of the above give excellent video that is amazing.

I play the footage back on my PlayStation. I just pop the card in and i have beautiful hi def playback. It even ask me if i want to copy to the hard drive.

I store my video and pics as data on standard DVDs. One Data DVD holds 1/2 hour of high def footage in the FXP mode. When you pop the DVDs in the PlayStation it opens the movie files and plays them in high def.

I plan to buy editing software and a blu-ray burner in the future. One blue ray can hold 5 hours of footage. Don’t fear AVCHD. it is here to stay. Software will become readily available.

The hf100 also takes good pictures. The flash has great range and gives the pics that hi def look. But don’t kid yourself a $150 Kodak pocket camera will blow it away.

Canon HF-100 – needs software
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
The Good: The picture quality is terrific and big improvement over my last camcorder. The camcorder is easy to use.

The Bad: Few of the major video editing programs recognize mts files so you are stuck using Pixela.

The Ugly: Pixela, so limiting, no mixing of formats, not user friendly.

The Question: If it uses a SD card why can’y you just put the card into the computer and let the computer read the files?

Glitch Every 20 Seconds
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I got mine this Monday. I noticed that all the videos I recorded have glitches about every 20 seconds. The glitches are shown at the same times, no matter I play the video on the Camcorder or on a PC. So I am sure it is created during recording, not by the players. Whenever I zoom, there will be glitches too.

I have tried many scenarios (still scene, Transend SDHC/Class 6/8G, SanDisk SD/512M, FXP, LP, …), and there are consistently glitches every 20 seconds or so.

Maybe my expectation is too high? Watching the playback is like watching scratched DVD, not much fun to look at.

Update: the unit mentioned above turned out to have hardware problem. The new replacement unit works great. No more glitches or frozen frames.

Good solid HD camcorder with a few significant flaws.
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Would have given a 3.5 stars if Amazon allowed me to! Overall, this is a solid performer but the few flaws that it has are significant enough to bring its rating down a few points.

On the ‘Pros’ side:

1. Great video quality. Even when set at resolutions lower than the maximum possible, video quality remains excellent with no visible artifacts.

2. Easy controls. Most menu options are easily available and reachable with only a few clicks. Customizable menu option available.

3. Hassle free downloads / burn to DVD. Included software is minimal in functionality but serves the purpose if you just want to download, burn to dvds etc. [You will need a powerful PC to author HD DVD video if you are interested in editing etc].

4. Easy to add more storage (SD!). SD is getting cheaper by the day and is becoming the standard for all digital media. Cant get any better!

5. Extremely short ‘turn-on/ready to shoot’ time. You will not miss some of those rare video opportunities due to the lack of speed to turn on!

Cons:

1. No optical view finder (big flaw particularly given flaw number 2 below)

2. Poor battery life (with included battery) – lasts only ~1hour of video only. No way to conserve battery by turning off LCD and using optical view finder (see 1 above!). [Replacement 'longer life' battery (819) not available in 'silver' color to match Camcorder - only available in black!]

3. Very limited wide angle capabilities – starts out at 45mm (35mm camera equivalent). Very difficult to use in small rooms. [Wide-angle converter accessory is expensive - more than a third of the price of the camcorder itself!]

Just bought a used HF100
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
As my title says, I bought a used HF100 from a private seller.

He included in the deal:

* Canon WD-H37 II Wide Conversion Lens

* HF100 Remote control

* All the required cables + an HDMI cable for the HF100

* 3 extra Canon OEM batteries

* 16GB SD card

* Canon CG-800 Lithium Ion Battery Charger (not the charger with the cord)

* Hoodman HD-300 Video Camcorder Hood

Not a bad deal at all for a few bucks over $400!! And the HF100 performs like a champ. The previous owner took real good care of it. No blemishes at all on the HF100.

I’ve only had it a few days and I’ve shot some test vids. Converted the mts files using TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress. Results are very good, but takes a while for the conversion to complete.

I may have given the HF100 5 stars, but I’ve only had it a few days. I will reevaluate my rating when I have more experience using it. The only cons that I have now are less than desired battery life and the time it takes to convert the mts files… but I knew about the conversion requirements prior to purchasing. So no big deal. If you want true HD from a camcorder, you need to figure in the time required for the conversion process prior to purchasing a Canon HD camcorder. Be sure your PC’s guts can handle that conversion process without hiccups. And for true HD to be viewed on your home video setup, be sure to have a BlueRay burner and player, and of course a TV that can view HiDef.

—————————————————————————————-

After using this camcorder for almost a month, I’ve increased my original rating from 4-stars to 5-stars. I really like this camcorder. I’ve done indoor and outdoor videos and I’ve learned how to use this camcorder in the various lighting environments and get great results.

Great camcorder, limited software
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
The first advice is to buy from Amazon. Don’t waste your time with NY and NJ online stores with no addresses and prices significantly less than Amazon.

The HF-100 package is an example of a product rushed to the marketplace before having it tested by simple-minded consumers like me.

The camcorder is a beautiful feat of engineering. The size, shape and arrangement of controls is fine. I take video of chorale concert performances 100 to 200 feet away indoors and outdoors and the video and sound are outstanding. Don’t buy any microphones until you have tried the built in one. I have hand held it and the motion control doesn’t appear to work well enough so I’m going to try a monopod.

The weakness in the HF-100 package is the software inability to burn DVD’s from the files in the computer.

I have spoken with Pixela support several times and have been assured my duo core Dell has all the necessary contents to burn DVD’s but it won’t. Read all the reviews regarding software issues and if they are negative believe them.

Once the files are loaded into your computer and you erase the SD card you can’t do anything but watch them on your computer. The MTS and M2TS files are too new for any software to handle them.

Try the software but don’t waste your time struggling as I did. If you can’t burn DVD’s fom your computer then burn them from your camcorder.

You can buy the companion Canon HD DVD burner and burn HD DVD’s by hooking the camcorder directly to the burner. I didn’t do this since I have read that there are some problems with DVD players reading these DVD’s especially if you and your friends and relatives have don’t have HD DVD players. Or you can do what I did and buy a standard DVD burner like the Sony RDR-GX360 and hook the HF-100 directly to it with the included STV-250N 3 plug cable and burn DVD’s that can be read by all DVD players.

This is simple.

The sound and video is great, not HD, but be sure to make extra copies if you plan to erase and reuse your SD card. It may be a while before some software comes out to make HD and standard DVD burning simple from your computer.

AVCHD isn’t ready for primetime yet
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
I purchased this camera as a replacement for my JVC GR-DVM70. I loved the idea of recording to solid state memory, and creating videos in high definition since I have two high definition tv sets.

What I have learned is, the video format AVCHD is just not supported yet. I purchased a game console to view the videos and that works well, but since I am the only one who has the game console I am the only person who can view my movies. .

The software that comes with the camera is bare bones. It will not allow you to convert AVCHD to standard DVD except directly from the camera. The problem is, the video on the camera is not edited hence if you choose to do this, the dvd will have all the junk that you taped that you don’t want to see. The software has edit capability, but it is not intuitive. And I edited a 30 minute movie to remove some footage, and it took 3 hours for the software to save the small edited file! Supposedly you can save the file back to the camera and then save the file from the camera to dvd. I tried this, but canceled the operation because of the time constraint. It takes 5 to 6 hours to do this for a 30 minute video.

The camera does not have an auto fade, the specs are wrong. It has semi-auto fade. While video taping, you need to press the joy stick to tell the camera to fade out when the pause button is pressed. Pressing the joystick while recording makes the camera shake and ruins the video. Another pet peeve is that the date and time can not be retained on the final video. And the stabilizer isn’t very good once you zoom out to about 10X and beyond. And it has no view finder, for those bright sunny days. Also it insists on being plugged into the wall outlet when you hook it up to your PC.

The movies that this camera takes which I play on the ps3 in HD look no better than the video that my 8 year old JVC took. Go figure. No motor noise on the movies from the HF100 however.

The nice things about the camera are it’s size, it is very portable and it records directly to solid state SDHC. It does a decent job of recording in low light. The still images it takes are decent.

I will take the gamble and continue to make my AVCHD movies and store them. Hopefully editors and blue ray players will be developed and be affordable so that I can share my movies one day.

Excellent camera, with a few quirks
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I have had this camera for a bit over 6 months now, and have to say it is a very impressive piece of technology. Small, lightweight, yet still feature-rich and a strong performer in full-HD. I take videos of my dogs, car, sporting events, weddings, everything and am always impressed with the video when I play it back on my HDTV. It’s a great camera that you can carry in your pocket and take near-semi-pro level video (in good light). In medium to low light, I feel that its performance is as good or better than the competition.

Overall my favorite features are:

1) Plethora of video settings. You can select decreased resolution for the less important stuff, you can select 3 framerates to adjust the feel, you can change the white balance, the aperture, shutter speed, etc. etc… Overall, I like the “Cinema” setting for indoor settings the best, and outdoors “P” mode on “Vivid” really makes the colors pop.

2) The zoom is strong, and has a well-matched image stabilization system to match. The image stabilization is not as strong as on some other cameras, but I feel it is a good compromise between shaky video and sloppy panning. I feel the 12X zoom is enough for most situations, but a 2x tele attachment is available for the so-inclined (although I would recommend a tripod to go with it). Video and focus is sharp at all zoom levels, showing off the quality Canon optics. As with all cameras don’t bother trying the digital zoom. EVER.

3)I love the size of the camera. It’s definitely small enough to carry in your pocket or stuff in some extra space in your backpack, and the video it takes makes you wonder if a larger more professional-level camera is behind the video.

4) The styling and ergonomics of the camera are comfortable, and well thought out. It’s hard to wedge a lot of buttons on a small camera, so most of the camera’s features are available through internal menus, which I’m fine with. It’s a sleek looking camera, and one people can be jealous of.

5) I like the available accessories for the camera, making it possible to customize the camera to your needs rather than buy a camera that fits all needs. Need more zoom? You can by a 2X telephoto attachment. More wide angle? There’s a wide angle lens too. More battery life? There are many capacity options available. Want more microphone sesitivity? There’s an advanced one you can mount to the hotshoe. More light? There’s a hotshoe light available too. As an added plus, there are also a lot of aftermarket 37mm filters available. Overall, you have some flexibility in customizing the camera to your shooting style.

That being said, it has certain limitations that you have to be aware of when shooting:

1) Battery life is not great with the included battery. Expect around 1 hour and 20 minutes of recording before it’s time to change. To combat this, I bought a Canon BP-827 Battery (2670 mAh) which is three times the storage of the included Canon BP-809 battery (870 mAh). The larger battery does stick out the back and somewhat ruin the look of the camera, but the extra capacity is worth the pain. With the two batteries, I get a total of around 5 hours of recording time, which matches the memory I have (40Gb of SD cards are good for about 5 hours at maximum resolution/quality settings). The memory cards I use are Sandisk Ultra II 16GB, they work great.

2) The autofocus can be slow and inaccurate, especially in medium to low light. I may be asking too much, but I feel like the autofocus takes a long time to decide to work. I have found that in medium to low-light situations it is best to turn the I.AF mode off, since it only really works in bright light. In medium to low light, the camera will try to use the I.AF sensor for a couple seconds before resorting to “cruder” methods, leaving you with fuzzy video until the AF catches up. Even then, I often find the camera will automatically focus on the incorrect subject unless you subject is direcly in the middle of the screen, a minus for “artistic” framing.

3) I wish this camera had a wider-angle lens. For anyone doing lots of indoor shooting, I would recommend the Canon WD-H37 II Wide Converter Lens for HD camcorders. While its a bit pricey, you will be able to get much more of the room in every shot, making the video feel more “expansive” in its coverage.

Totally satisfied with the HF100!!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I was a little skeptical at first. This camera seems too good to be true while reading all of the specifications listed. But I really have to say that it lived up to all of my expectations. In a well lit area the picture is absolutely stunning–a sharp and true-to-life image. In darker rooms the picture doesn’t get grainy at all from my experience. Obviously a darker room isn’t going to be quite as stunning as a brighter one but I’m still impressed. The mic picks up wind but not to a distracting point. Burning to DVDs/Blu-rays is actually pretty easy as well. I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio and it imports the video and is easily edited. My computer isn’t the most amazing, so the video may take a second or two to buffer before I can preview it but I’ve been cutting videos and burning them easily since I bought the camera just a couple months ago. The battery that comes with the camera doesn’t last all that long (probably an hour+). I would buy the extended battery for something like $85.00 but it’s only made in black and the HF100 is silver. Kind of funky if you ask me. I may just buy a second smaller battery. The memory cards used are SUPER cheap to buy making this the camera to get!!

In summary (i.e. the only part everybody will probably read):

PROS:

- Sharp HD picture.

- Small camera size.

- Easy to edit and transfer video.

- SDHC cards are CHEAP to buy.

CONS:

- Supplied battery has a short life.

- Mic picks up some wind noises.

- You really should purchase a different editing program.

Happy family times
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I’ve had this camcorder for almost a year. I’m completely satisfied. It follows the standard path of being so easy to operate that a child can run it. It’s small so we take it with us when we go and use it when in the past, we would leave the older and larger camcorder at home. The video quality is fantastic and recording directly to a SD card is, IMHO, the best method yet devised for recording home videos.

Now’s the time to let that budding filmmaker loose…
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Are you a film student? An aspiring filmmaker/videographer/etc? Did you ever want to pick up an HD camera but couldn’t because of prices that were just out of reach? The kind of prices that make you want to hack a limb off, wrap it up and hope they’d take it and give you a break without having to resort to giving up a leg as well?

This is the camera for you. Nor will it cost you an arm and/or a leg.

While this camera isn’t as feature rich as something 10x the price might be, it has just about everything you’re going to need: 1080i HD picture shot in 24p (or 30p if you so choose).

The picture you get from this is astounding, especially when shooting in Cine Mode, which gives the end result exactly what you think it would, video footage that looks surprisingly filmlike. We’re not quite there on indistinguishable film/video comparisons but the footage you get from this camera is close enough for the average joe and even someone leaning towards being a videophile but not quite. The image stabilizer works very well and so does the auto focus. The zoom is a 12x optical and can be set up to zoom in and out at varying speed levels which I found very useful. The camera also has a photo mode that shoots stills at up to 1920 x 1080 resolution. In fact, this camera reminds me a lot of Canon’s dedicated still cameras in the way the menus are set up, with an easy to use interface and menu options all accessible through the cameras fold out LCD panel. It’s very simple to operate at this level but if you’re not tech savvy at all, there’s an “easy” mode button that turns the camera into a point and shoot affair with one touch. The camera itself is a tiny thing, roughly the size of a 12oz can of soda. Very light, very discreet and perfect for travel.

Minor nitpicks would include the manual focus, which is basically useless. There’s no ring so its done through the joystick on the LCD interface and its sadly a limited affair. The battery you get with the camera doesnt last too long, giving you about an hour, give or take a few. You can prepare to plunk a couple down on an extra battery and possibly the DM-100 directional mic if your needs call for much better audio than what the camera provides, which is about standard for these types of cameras. There’s no storage media to start off with in the box either so you’ll have to make sure you pick up the proper format flash card.

Still, I would recommend this camera with high marks across the board. It delivers an astounding picture, great functionality and ease of use that rivals just about any other prosumer HD-cam you can find at a similar price. Those nitpicks that I mentioned above are what you’re likely to find on just about any camera you choose so they shouldn’t make or break your choice on whether or not to pick this camera up.

If you’re looking to create something that has just enough gloss to it and maybe upload some stuff to YouTube (which I’ve already done) or just about anything else, I’d recommend this with no reservations. I’m very happy with this purchase and I would strongly recommend this to anyone with creative aspirations as this camera fits the bill in more ways than one and should be useful in bringing your ideas to life.

Loving it…
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I don’t have any experience with any other camcorders so I can’t give a real expert review but let me tell you this little baby is a lot of fun to use and gives great results. I mainly use it to record and share my musical performances with my family, and it’s great to be able to show them my life in high def video.

The menus are very intuitive if you’re experienced using Canon still cameras.

The internal microphone is total garbage; you need the DM-100 microphone to get good sound (and once you use that, the sound is great).

On a Mac, iMovie will – very slowly – pull your movies off the camera card and convert them to space-hogging AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec). If you need to convert straight from MTS files, the only program I found that can do that is called iSkysoft iMedia Converter – a very ugly program but it works very well (but you have to rename the files first to M2TS, then send them to iSkysoft). iSkysoft can convert the files to MP4 which is good for several reasons – one, you save a LOT of space, and two, if you don’t want to add titles or otherwise edit the clip, you can trim it very quickly in MPEG Streamclip (a free program) and then send it on its merry way to YouTube, Vimeo, CD-R, iDVD, or whatever.

VoltaicHD is the other program that converts MTS but it doesn’t work on my computer.

I found a web site one time that gave the proper Quicktime export instructions for a successful YouTube HD upload… look for that if you need it.

If you want to see some video samples, I have a lot of HF100, HD videos posted on YouTube under the name bluesdance (mostly of concerts).

If you buy this, don’t forget a 16GB SD card. Or maybe by the time you read this, 32GB cards will go down in price…

YH

clever, simple but some flaws
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
well, this was my first real camcorder

this camera is packed with great features, is very light and compact, has great zoom and the image quality (still or video) is fantastic.

the thing that really got me was the format that it records in. —.mts—

this was a real pain in the wedding vegetables, as no editing software that i have is compatible. i ended up buying a program online for about 40 bucks.

i also have a free one too, which works just fine and is made by koyote soft.

another thing is, it doesnt come with a case, but thats ok. this camera is also tough. ive dropped it several times, once from about 15 feet high and it survived without a scratch. the price on amazon here is rather steep, and i ended up buying one in my local electronics store for about 150bucks less, and a 2 year warranty

great camera, definately reccomended.

Great camera for my skill level!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
For my needs and skill level (mom on the go!) this is the perfect camera! I wanted an all-in-one unit (video and stills) so I wouldn’t have to purchase a digital camera separately. I am very pleased with the quality of both the video and stills. It’s lightweight, compact, simple and straightforward. I did a lot of research before purchasing, and feel this camera offers the most bang for the buck with great quality pictures. Good for a families who want something small and functional. But don’t buy retail! I saved around $150 searching on Amazon.

Not so amazing
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
I had expected a lot from this camera after seeing so many good reviews about the same, but that didn’t really happen. Every picture i have taken with this camera has some kind of blueish-ness in it and the switch that moves from still picture to movie mode didn’t work very well either. Also while reviewing the pictures/videos it took a long time to fetch them from the flash memory card. So, in short i’m not really happy with this one.

Great HD camera for the price
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I did a fair amount of research, and this camera has the best quality and features for the price.

It’s small, easy to use, and has no moving parts. Wonderful little camera. The only bad things i can say about it is the quality of the still photos is good but not awesome, and the sound quality is also not professional. If you’re looking for something that’s broadcast quality, you’ll need to spend more and go prosumer; otherwise you can’t beat this one.

Transferring the video and still photos to an intel Mac with OSX Leopard is easy:

- for Still photos, take the card out and use an external USB reader. The card mounts and you can preview and drag the ones you want to your computer (or use iPhoto).

- for Video, you need iMovie to capture, but it’s easy. The video files will expand to 10x their filesize, so you’ll definitely need an external HD.

I have a 16GB SDHC card and even at maximum resolution i can get a couple hours of video and/or 10,000 photos.

Great Camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I did a lot of research on 1080p video cameras. I wanted a “record to Flash memory” camera. I travel extensively filming Karate tournaments so it has to be rugged. I also wanted the ability to plug in a remote microphone. To the best of my knowledge, Canon is the only one I could find with the external mic jack. One really cool bonus feature is the automatic lens cap. I’ve only used it a couple of times, but the quality is great. Seems like brighter light is better (duh!). One issue I ran across is the video editing. The huge files make editing a bit more challenging unless you have a very powerful PC. This is not a camera issue, but one you may run into if you want to make DVDs, etc. Don’t buy the Canon batteries. For $35 you can buy an aftermarket LiOn 4 hour battery and charger. Works great.

Software is NOT user friendly!
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
I bought this camera to capture video clips to be used in online learning programs. My prior experience with a camcorder was in Hi8 format or with my Kodak digital camera that also takes video (VERY easy to use and publish)! This camera takes beautiful video, but the bundled software from PIXELA is the WORST software I have EVER encountered in my LIFE!!! It is bad enough to make me steer clear of any product that uses PIXELA software ever again.

It never occured to me to consider the software, but I certainly will before I make another purchase like this. This camera stores video on the Flash drive in a .M2TS format (or MTS), which is NOT a common format for your typical editing software, which is why the PIXELA software comes bundled with the camera. The software in not intuitive and provides very poor instruction on how to use it. It allows you to “capture” stills from your video, but then does not allow you to export them or do a “Save As” to save them in the location or format you would like. UGGGH!! I HATE this program!!!

Beware – Vegas Platinum and AVCHD
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I’m sure some of you will be annoyed with me for writing this; however, several reviewers have written how they are happy they are with using Vegas Platinum 8 to “handle” the AVCHD. I’m not writing this to distract from Canon’s HF100; however, the lack of clarity by previous reviewers will likely result in more people buying Vegas with the assumption that it edits and Creates AVCHD projects. It Doesn’t.

This IS a big deal now that other software packages DO allow you to Create edited AVCHD projects that can be placed on a standard 4.7 or 8.5 GB DVD, which gets BluRay formatted by the software (such as Vegas Pro or Pinnacle Studio 11) and can they be played in most BluRay players; or you can transfer that image to a flash memory card or a PS3′s hard drive for playback in a PS3. Vegas Pro (which is quite expensive) can do this and so can Pinnacle Studio 11; but Vegas Platinum cannot.

Beware! Vegas Platinum 8, which costs a hundred dollars, does not Create AVCHD projects. At best it will create an HDV project from your AVCHD files; or it will create an edited Non-High Definition DVD.

Sony didn’t ever explicitly state Vegas Platinum 8 does not create AVCHD projects; yet they say It Edits AVCHD for project creation. I am VERY upset with Sony over this.

If you buy a HD camcorder; what’s the whole point if you output to Non-High Definition?! Save your money and don’t buy a High Def camcorder or if you do buy a AVCHD camcorder then DON’T buy Vegas Platinum!

Great camcorder, poor battery life, terrible software!
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I made a deep research. My goal from the beginning was Flash and especially SD camcorder. I think this is the future of this product – at least in the next 3-4 years.

I found HF100 the best in its class and answering perfect my needs – quality of picture; quality of sound, good variable speed zoom and all this – in an almost pocket size, easy to cary product. Despite the original bag was part of the deal, I found a small, “photo camera” bag. Now I’m carring the camera on my belt, having hands free during my trips. Amazing!

In addition to other pros:

- High picture quality;

- very good sound;

- very good zoom;

- easy and intuitive operation;

- small, compact size;

I like very much the function “power save mode” which lets you having your camera ready in half a second. You will not miss the moment, waiting the camera to start and load the tape…

I’m using A-Data 16G SDHC card for 2 hours of best quality HD pictures. It’s fast and on quite attractive price. Then, it takes about 1G/minute to transfer the records to PC – via third party card reader. Fast and easy…

If there was option to give this camera 6 stars, I’ll give it. But…

Poor battery life. If switching HF100 often on – power safe and playing with zoom, it takes less than 20 minutes of real recording per battery. Very often in one trip day both batteries I own are going empty. Then, it takes 2 hours and 15 minutes to fully charge one battery.

It will be great, if the power supply will be charger too. This way one can charge two batteries at a time or charge one battery, while using the camcorder with the other – without carrying extra stuff.

Now – the worst thing – the video editing software. I know it’s not Canon product – it’s Pixela, but it comes with the camera and definitelly decrease the perfect impression of this really great product.

The software comes without help.

It takes a huge eforts to register it. It seems the registration is the ONLY important thing for Pixela. They have special site only to help you to register the product. There are a lot of promises in this site, but once properly registered (at the end!), you find no any help. Having in mind the software is not intuitive at all, it’s practically unusual.

The bad software lead me to give only 3 stars to this great camera.

A little on the pricey side
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Great camera but: this camera takes just wonderful video but: it seems that in order to view the pictures on tv you must first buy a dvd recorder hw100 for $177.00 and then in order to play this dvd you must purchase the blu-ray dvd player $299.00. i guess it was worth it but: i guess i would have bought these items anyway but: the camera just made me do it. if you are ready for high def? this camera is the way to go….

Almost perfect
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This is my first HD camcoder and first Canon brand after working with SD Panasonic. I am very happy with this camcorder, it is very easy to operate, the footage is excellent quality, it is small and easy to handle. I took 1 star off because of few things I think could be improved

1. It takes long time to switch between capturing photo and video. It often takes 15-20 seconds, which sometimes leads to lost opportunities.

2. The bundled battery lasts only about an hour and the supplied charger doesn’t allow to charge it outside of camcorder.

3. I wish the captured photograhs had higher resolution, but even this way, I am very happy with them.

4. I wish there is a software for Linux to import and play (not necessarily edit) the footage. As of now the only way to import is to directly copy the .mts files and I haven’t found a way how to play them on Linux (I used SageTV and HD 100 media extender to play them on TV with excellent results)

Fantastic Camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
If you have an HD-TV this camera is the way to go. it is much cheaper than the newer models and the picture quality is great! I am not a technically savvy person and found this camera very easy to use. Save money! Buy this one over the newer models.

This Camera is WELL worth it. Simply Amazing
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is my third video camera, the previous ones both being sonys, one an older hi8 and a newer sony miniDV camcorder. I have sold both of them and purchased this new canon HF100 and love it. We took it on a family vacation to the beach and it took superb video. I have a mac and love editing and creating movies with IMOVIE. I haven’t found anything about this camera that I dislike. The video and even sound quality is crystal clear.

You will not be disappointed. Don’t get the more expensive one with built in memory, you can get yourself a 16 gig SD card, I got the transcend one with reader and i can take up to 2 hours of video in the highest and the battery lasts a while too. I didn’t want a battery sticking out of the back. We rarely video tape anything more than just an hour or so anyways. I may get a second SD card just to have it incase we fill the one up and cant access the computer to upload them.

This camera is a great buy for the money! 600 bucks and free shipping!

AWFUL software, no support
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
Although the machine is well made, I cannot believe how bad the Pixela ImageMixer 3 software is that is included. I have now spent about 8 hours trying to export a video I made to my external DVD drive and all I keep getting is an obscure error message. There is no help built into the program, no online help and no help on the Canon site. I have registered for the software (which it says you must do for support) but there is still no support phone number or email. Canon should be embarrassed to have such bad software with their camcorder, it makes it unusable and a nightmare.

Amazing Video
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I cannot believe how well this thing shoots video. I work in the television industry and we just partially changed over to HD. The video from this camera shoots just as well as our $50k + camera in good lighting. In low lighting it doesn’t compare. I don’t think there is a consumer camcorder that does excellent in low light though. I have only edited one small clip using Sony Vegas Movie Studio. It is very time consuming and the quality turned out better than I expected in and HD WMV file. I am very pleased with my purchase. My previous camera was another Canon, I believe it was the ZR-200. In comparision with raw video, the HD quality is much better and the storage on my external hard drive is almost exactly the same. Can’t beat that

Great camcorder for the price; IMHO Sony CX12 better overall
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I have a Sony standard definition miniDV camcorder, and also bought the HF100 and the Sony CX12, both flash camcorders.

I found the Canon to be the better value: good to great video and audio quality in good lighting conditions, better user interface, and standard SD cards will save you money and hassle vs. the Sony CX12.

If you’re not sensitive to a few hundred extra bucks (for the CX12 and overpriced Sony Memory Sticks), you get the following additional features: much better low-light performance (by low-light I mean indoor night-time videos of kids with under ordinary incandescent lighting (without lots of halogens)). Build quality is a little higher (LCD joints stiffer, battery/inputs door covers more firmly attached). Slightly better audio (I noticed you could sometimes hear “clicks” from the Canon’s zoom button). Sony DVD HD DVD burner is more flexible than Canon’s, for example, you can shoot video in HD, and burn a standard DVD for people w/o HDTVs and Blu-ray. I understand to do this on the Canon burner, you need to record in standard definition to begin with.

It has an Easy Button
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This cameral literally has an Easy Button – how great is that? The built in display is amazing in clarity and color. We absolutely love ours. So easy to use and looks great! I was so impressed with how small it was when it arrived.

Review Canon Vixia HF100 Flash Memory Recorder
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I’ve owned this camera for 3 months. I deliberately waited to review so that I had ample time to use the camera and not jump in with initial reactions.

Advantages:

- flash memory. In my opinion this is the best capture media. It’s lightweight, re-usable, and easy to transfer to PC with card reader. The memory capacities are huge. I replaced a MiniDV camera with this and what a pleasure it is to not have to fiddle with tapes that jam, are slow to download to PC, slow to move from scene-to-scene, etc. I’m also glad I didn’t get a camera with HDD. Those are susceptible to head crashes, noise of the spinning disk, etc. Sure you can get cameras with huge disk capacity, which at first blush seems like a huge advantage, but if you don’t flush the contents to your PC religiously, you are exposed to loss of data should your camera go belly up. I’m not a big fan of the writable DVDs either. Overtime you’ll spend more on DVDs than you will for a handful of flash memory cards which will always be re-usable.

- ease of use. I find the menus to be intuitive.

- My favorite feature is the custom white balance feature. It’s very easy to use and it’s great to get the white balance correct at time of the shoot. You can do this with software during your PC workflow, but I find it much easier to do during the shoot.

- great picture quality. Playback on my Samsung LNT4665F 46″ is stunning!

- I use Corel VideoStudio X2 Pro V12 to edit the AVCHD and have been getting terrific results. Just like everyone else has remarked, you will need to a powerful PC to handle the AVCHD format files produced by this camera. Using the SmartProxy feature of X2 Pro makes editing AVCHD files easy.

- small form factor.

Disadvantages:

- cannot charge battery without being plugged into camera.

- camera gets pretty hot when recording.

I see the prices are continuing to fall on this camera. Do yourself a favor and take advantage of the price drops and get this camera.

Good but Software is Lacking , Battery life is very less..Basic editing missing..
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Overall good camcorder. Color reproduction is probably better in Sony.

Pros:

1. Small size.

2. No lag time between recordings.

3. Sound is good.

Cons:

1. Battery life is 45-50 minutes

2. You have to spend money on SD card.

3. Charger is very big and bulky. Considering the fact that camcorder is so small, you can’t fit the charger in a small bag. Canon could have provided a compact charge.

4. No editing in camcorder. I was looking for a basic editing, divide and connect two clips and that is missing. Software provided is also useless in this regard. When you create a DVD, it takes a long time (3-4) hours for a full DVD and between 2 clips there is a lag. When I contacted the software vendor, they said that is a known issue and there is nothing that can be done. Very disappointing.

Bottom line, you have to spend $100 or more on editing software that can handle HD.

Paid for new..GOT used
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Paid for a new Camcorder and received a used one with labels and warnings already removed.

Compact, Outstanding Output, Works With Mac (Final Cut Express)
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I bought this camcorder a little less than a month ago and have been very happy with it so far. I’ve used it mainly indoors (in bright light and low light), shooting video of my children.

Here are some thoughts:

- I decided to buy this camcorder over the HF10 (which has 16GB internal memory and is black) since I didn’t want to mess around with having to select which memory I wanted to choose for storage and playback (also, the difference in price for the HF10 isn’t justified by the difference in features, in my mind).

- camcorder is very light and very compact … the girth is comparable to a soda can. I opted to remove the hand strap and simply use the wrist strap … this makes it feel even more compact. (I may also get a neck strap when I’m traveling to make it even more obvious that I’m a tourist – ha!)

- I suggest buying a long-life battery, additional charger, and extra SDHC cards. The included battery lasts about an hour. No SDHC cards are included, so you might as well order some along with the camcorder. Get the largest size you can afford, especially if you’re not diligent about removing content from your camera.

- I’ve tested with Final Cut Express … content is easily imported and manipulated. The video files are HUGE, so I opted to get an external 2TB drive to store video (I really need to back that up, don’t I?)

- video quality in indoor, well-lit conditions is superb … lower light conditions produces slightly grainy results, but still amazing.

- the on-board menu is easy to navigate. I’m sort of a “set it and forget it” kind of guy and I don’t plan on messing around with the menu too much, except to change time zone information when traveling. Believe it or not, the camcorder even has an “Easy” button … it tries to figure out the best settings for your particular shooting conditions.

Overall, I would recommend this product due to it’s price, compactness, operability with my existing software, ease-of-use and above and beyond all else, the outstanding 1080p HD video quality. Be aware that you’ll need to buy SDHC cards on your own and you may also wish to consider buying: extra batteries, extra charger, and additional external hard drives to store the massive amounts of data you will be generating (for me, to the tune of ~1GB/min of video. To be clear: I get 2 hours of recording time to a 16GB SDHC card … the 1GB/min I am referring to is the resulting file when I hook up the camera and uncompress using Final Cut Express).

Great camcorder, poor software
Rating:4 out of 5 stars

5 stars for hardware, 1 for software

I had this camcorder and a canon HV20. The HF100 a much better camcorder in several ways that are important to me. 1) Tapeless – that means I can transfer to computer a lot faster and earlier. 2) Responsive – little time lag between press of record button and actual recording, compared to HV20. 3) Same great image quality – i can’t tell much difference in quality between HF100 and HV20, even though HF100 had higher recorded resolution, and the HV20 had a larger sensor. 4) compactness. Similar to the HV20, the HF100 had not much of a wide-angle to speak of, but the wide converter lens (which i do not have) is lighter and cheaper.

The HV20 does have better battery life. The HF100 had about 1.5 hour. I never had to worry about battery in the HV20. The H.264 video recorded by HF100 plays fine on a core 2 duo 2.4 GHz, but cannot keep up on a dual core 2.0 GHz AMD box — you need relatively fast computers. Not canon’s fault though.

The bundled software is unstable to a point of being unusable (on two separate XP boxes I tried). After many attempts (amid reboots, etc) I finally managed to convert one video clip to a resolution for web use, but the image quality is shameful. I tried several software that claimed to support AVCHD without success, and eventually worked out a conversion workflow that involves storing downscaled uncompressed video, which is rather painful.

Great daylight video but mediocre low light performance
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I bought the Vixia HF100 for the fantastic all-in price of $750 at Amazon/J&R. I chose this Canon over comparable flash-based Panasonic and Sony cameras because it had better reviews, and I liked the external microphone option because I record a lot of concerts. After 2 days of experimentation, my conclusions:

PROS: Small, light, quiet. Also, it wasn’t clear from the reviews, but you can actually adjust the volume of the built-in mikes, and not just external mikes. Audio level control is a big plus for recording loud rock concerts without distortion. There are also windscreen and mike attenuation options, but I haven’t had any loud outdoor concerts to test these as yet. Sound was very clear. Daylight and bright light video was crystal clear. I didn’t notice any “purple fringing” or any distortion when viewed on my 50″ plasma. Unlike another reviewer, I had no problems snapping multiple photos while recording video — I’m using a class 6 SDHC Transcend card, so it may be function of using a higher speed SDHC card. For 2/3 megapixel snapshots, the photos look decent, better than one would expect if you took a screencapture of the video, but not really good enough to make enlarged prints. The autofocus works as advertised, superfast.

CONS: Doesn’t include mini-HDMI cable, only component and RCA. Most important, I was not pleased with the video shot in indoor lamp light (around 200 watts incandescent lighting for a 20′x15′room). There was a lot of noise, which suprised me because most reviewers gave this camera above average low-light performance. The low-light video looked a little better when you changed the default settings — decreasing the sharpening or using cine mode. Also, I’m a video amateur so I can’t explain why, but the low light video quality was less noisy in 30p mode versus 60i mode (I thought this setting would only affect fast motion scenes). Ergonomically, I wish it had some rubber on the grip for comfort, and that some of the functions which require the joystick could be accessed using the same hand holding the camera.

I haven’t played around with the bundled software so I can’t comment; but I was perfectly willing to shell out the extra cash for Pinnacle or Sony Vegas software to handle the AVCHD format.

For me, the poor low light performance is a dealbreaker, so I’m sending this puppy back. I don’t see the point of having a high-def camera which produces a lot of noise/grain on the video. I’ll wait for the next gen AVCHD camcorders, and will make do with a standard def HDD camcorder for less than half the price for now.

4 stars because everything else besides low-light video was great, the price isn’t too outrageous for new technology, and the audio input flexibility is welcome.

UPDATE 5/2/08: After mulling over this overnight, I’ve decided to keep this camcorder as the pluses outweigh the minuses for me. If you’re considering buying this model, I would STRONGLY suggest you go to a bricks-and-mortar retailer and test drive this camcorder yourself, not in the well-lit camera display but in a darker section of the store, like the home theater section. You will be able to see the noise even on the small 2.7″ LCD, and you can judge for yourself whether you find it acceptable.

UPDATE 6/25: When I bought this camera, I was concerned about the ability to edit the AVCHD format due to horror stories on the net. Well, I’ve found i was needlessly concerned. Although I’m a huge fan of opensource/freeware software like VirtualDub, I decided to spring for the Ulead VideoStudio 11.5 software as it was relatively inexpensive. I installed it on a laptop (dual core 2.4ghz, 4gb, 128mb video, 7200 rpm hdd, vista home prem) and have had no problem editing 20 minute videos while on vacation. First, make sure you have a cardreader that reads SDHC format (not all do), so you can just pop the card from the camera into your cardreader. That way you’ll not have any issues with plugging the camera into an electric outlet to capture the video or traveling with the usb cable. AVCHD video files have a directory structure which is visible on the card; I’ve been told that some video editors require a diskimage of the SD card to preserve the directory tree, and have a tedious import/capture procedure. Ulead captured my videos quickly and I was able to return the card to use in the camera in minutes. I’ll write a full review of Ulead in a few days, as the software has it’s quirks. But so far, editing the AVCHD format is a nonissue.

Excellent AVCHD Camcorder
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Having deliberated over different HD camcorders and HD camcorder formats, I decided upon and purchased the Canon HF100 a couple of weeks ago, and, with one exception, am absolutely delighted with the video performance of this camcorder. It small, lightweight and very easy to use (particularly in “Easy” mode). Shot taken outdoors in bright light are absolutely stunning, and look fantastic on a HD television. Watching home video is like watching the discovery channel; it is simply that good. The exception would be low light performance, which I found very disappointing. In a well lit room, it is barely acceptable, but in a dimly lit room, there is a considerable amount of noise and motion artifacts. I haven’t had it long enough to determine whether there are settings that might improve the low light performance, but it is not much better (and in some cases worse) than my standard definition camcorder in low light.

But for outdoor shots in bright light, it is amazing.

The SD card format is extremely easy to use, and I have not even had to use the mini-HDMI cable I bought. You can watch video instantly simply by taking the card out (I am using the Transcend SDHC 16 GB card and card reader sold on Amazon for $40 as a package, and it works great), and inserting the card in my PS3, which instantly reads and plays the AVCHD video. I have also used the included software in my 3 year old computer to transfer video and burn standard DVDs for playback in Blu-ray players (including the PS3), which is also very easy and works great. The image quality is the same as playing back directly from the card. I don’t have much experience with video editing software, nor the time to spend editing lots of video, but the included software gets the job done and is very easy to use.

All in all, a great product and highly recommended. I wish that the low light performance was better, but from what I have read, most consumer level HD camcorders have the same problem (including the Sony).

INCREDIBLE!!!!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This camcorder is amazing. Don’t let all the back and forth among the reviews scare you away. I spent many hours researching this camera, reading incredible numbers of reviews. I finally ordered and received it 2 days before my son’s last football game of the season. I opened the camcorder, went outside and started recording to try it out. Very easy to use!!! A day later I recorded my daughter’s basketball game. WOW!!!! Then I recorded my son’s final football game. It was raining during the football game but you would never be able to tell it. The qualilty of the recording is wonderful. This camera is absolutely AMAZING. Don’t hesitate to purchase this(unless you don’t have a HD TV). I do recommend buying the extra extended life battery, sd card and HDMI mini/standard cord when you purchase the camera. I have read part of the manual and it is very simple to understand and takes you step by step through different processes. BRAVO Canon!!!!!!!

Great Entry into HD Video
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is my first Flash Drive Camcorder. Prior to this my experience with Camcorders goes back to the early 80s when I first used a Sony BetaMovie, then onto VHS. Previously I still used a Sony Handycam Hi 8 camera for the past 10 years. Incredibly reliable….

Now onto the Canon: I immediately read the other reviews. First let me point out that if you are serious about this camera, make immediate plans to purchase the larger battery and at least a 16 gig SDHC card. For editing, do not use the U-LEAD software. It absolutely can’t handle the high definition files that this camera can put out even if you have upwards of a Core QUAD processor as I did. Go instead for the Sony Vegas Pro 8. Save the Grief.

The Camera is outstanding. The only issue I thought of initially was that it did not have a view Finder and uses an LCD viewer exclusively. I tested this in the hot sun on my back, and I had no issues. Video stabilization was good. It is a necessity for such a small camera or you risk having videos that look more like earthquakes. Also important to get a very good tripod. This camera takes exceptional full HD video. Nature shots will require this as well as using this for a good pan shot. It’s difficult to hold this camera steady so a Tripod helps. I was surprised at the lack of latency reading and writing to the SDHC card and I am assuming there is a small buffer zone that assists with this.

Most of my initial tests were in the “Cinama Mode” where it moderately degrades the video ever so lightly to give it a Film look. I thought that was outstanding. The color response on the default settings is a bit high, but it can be adjusted. The controls are intuitive. I really only looked through the book only for non basic settings. I also recommend Canon’s external directional microphone especially if you are interviewing someone among a crowd. The internal mic’s are great but very sensitive to a larger radius of sound. The only negative I have is that the battery doesn’t fit as snug as I would like and I hope this doesn’t introduce any noise. Photo quality is ok. Glad to have it, but more impressed with the video. Also, this camera does not have an infrared or nightshot type mode. (My Sony had this. It proved useful many times). Since the video in the HF-100 is far superior, I can forget that completly.

Exporting files is pretty painless. Use the Image Mixer software to transfer files to your PC. The additional software is useless. Just get a decent editor such as Sony Vegas Pro 8 (Discussed earlier).

I recommend this camera for those who are above the average person who wants to do serious video in HD but not want to spend a fortune. In the right hands, this camera can produce anything your collective conscience can think about.

For new computer owners only
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Great camcorder – I had the DC50 (DVD) which got destroyed via 2 seconds in water – so I upgraded to the HF100. 4 stars instead of 5 because of comparatively more shake, especially at zoom. Image stabilization does not seem to be as good as the DC50. But the KEY factor is that you need a newer computer. Although my laptop Compaq R4100 has a 2.1 Gz processor and 1.5 RAM, video playback was very choppy in Roxio Videowave 9. You could see tons of frames dropping. No way to edit the AVCHD file (unless you converted to MPEG-2 for DVD. I regrettably returned it as I am not ready to get a new $1000 PC. Advise not buy this unless you have a dual-core computer at minimum.

Amazing HD Camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
My husband did a great deal of research (including Amazon customer reviews) before we purchased the Canon Vixia HF100 cameraCanon VIXIA HF100 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom. We are delighted with the camera. We also purchased 8 GB and 16 GB SDHC (class 6) memory cards Transcend 8GB SDHC CARD (SD 2.0 SPD Class 6)and an extra battery. There are some things we did not understand before we purchased the camera that we now know — and I will share with you.

(1)In order to edit your HD movies, you MUST have a powerful computer (we tried it on our “pretty good” computer and it did not work). When replacing our old desktop computer, we used the requirements called out for expensive video editing software. We got a Dell Inspiron 530 with Core 2 Quad, 3GB Ram, 256 NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT video card, 500 GB hard drive (bigger would be better), 48XCDRW/DVD drive, 16XDVD+/-RW drive (maybe should have gotten dual drive and maybe Blu Ray?), SoundBlaster Audigy audio.

(2)The 16GB card holds about 2 hours of recording.

(3)You can make High Definition movies using your powerful computer, a REGULAR DVD burner on DVD-R discs, USING THE SOFTWARE THAT CAME WITH THE CAMERA. Most people who will use this camera have no need for the expensive video editing software that does fancy things. With the software that comes with the camera you can delete scenes, clip scenes, split scenes and add titles. Just follow the steps in the manual included on the software disc. There is a small learning curve. I had a little trouble with adding transitions, but don’t care. I have not tried adding extra audio.

(4)You can also burn regular (not HD) DVDs (about 30 minutes per DVD) and export movies in the format for a website or YouTube (instructions in manual).

(5)To view your High Definition movies, you must have a Blu Ray player THAT CAN VIEW AVCHD FORMAT. (Not all Blu Ray players support AVCHD.) We purchased the Panasonic BD30 Panasonic DMP-BD30K 1080p Blu-Ray Disc Player. It is a great player that pairs perfectly with this camera. You can put the SDHC memory cards directly into the player or burn your own, edited HD movies and play them in the player. This player will also play the ones you burn as regular DVDs.

(6)We burned 25 minutes of High Definition video (3.47 GB) onto a DVD. There was room left, so we believe a regular DVD will hold 1/2 hour of HD (4+ GB). (The Panasonic player can play dual layer discs, so a dual layer burner on your computer, and dual layer discs might get you a full hour.)

*Note: Regarding the Panasonic Player, you can make a CD of your JPEG photos from other cameras and play them. That is “CD”, not “DVD”. The important thing is to NOT include anything but JPEG (no movie clips), or the player will not read the disc.

love it
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Amazing picture quality. Easy for every day use. Flash memory only makes it much lighter and more compact. Good decision to go without HDD, especially given how cheap flash cards are these days (bought 2 16gb cards for $24 each). Will never go back to DV tapes. Love being able to visually look at each clip in memory and go directly to the segment I want – no more fast forward or rewind. Still learning all the other nice features. Searched around for a case. Found that best fit and value was a Lowepro case made for a 35mm camera lens. Snug fit, discreet, belt loop, inside velcro enclosed pocket for extra memory card. $20 at Bestbuy. Probably can find it cheaper elsewhere.

Amazon the place for electronics
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I read all of the of the reviews before I bought the camera, and most of everything I have read is true. Camcorderinfo, Consumer Reports, Amazon, all gives this camera good ratings and I can see why. I think that most people will do their own homework when it comes to choosing a camera, so I will not focus my review on the camera itself. I will say it is one of the most convenient cameras I have ever owned, and the flash based recording is great. The thing that I would like to mention is my buying experience with Amazon. I never thought of Amazon as a place to buy electronics, but was I ever wrong. The price cannot be beat especially with the free shipping and no tax, and the camera came within the dates stated on the invoice via UPS. I live in Hawaii and the cost of shipping can be very expensive. I always loved my buying experience with Amazon, and know I can order my electronics from them as well.

Thanks Amazon!

First real 1920×1080 camcoder
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Nice quality and color purity. No focus hunting.

This is a first real full HD, unlike fake anisotropic 1440×1080 for previous models.

24p and 30p are impractical ones, video is recorded in 60i anyway. I’d rather see fully progressive 30 fps video instead. Making field deinterlace (even-odd-even-odd) makes nice 60fps footage with half vertical resolution. I’m downscaling the horizontal res twice as well with lanczos sharp resizer. That gives 960×540 ultra sharp very live (60 fps) progressive video.

Battery life is a drawback, you’d better buy extra BP819 off eBay. Note, this battery doesn’t have a chip thus can’t show charge time left indicator.

Besides battery and “fake” 30p it is a perfect camera.

Excellent
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
One of the best HD camcorder with such a great price compared with the functions it offers. I really recommend this for all camcorder lovers.

A Very Nice Camera
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This is the first camcorder I have ever owned, so I am no camera expert. I purchased this camera because I wanted a high definition camera to film my new baby. I didn’t want him to grow up and look back at the video and wonder what kind of ancient technology it was filmed with. Plus, since it records to flash cards, the storage capability is basically endless and if you need more storage for a vacation or whatever, just go buy another card to take with you.

So far I have really enjoyed using the camera. It’s very user friendly even for a novice like myself. It’s not hard to take beautiful video with this camera. As with any camera, low-light scenarios greatly impact the video quality. However, there are settings that can be adjusted to help this, plus the camera has a built-in light for really dark situations. Also, the still camera takes awesome photos! There really is no need to carry an extra still camera with you.

The included software is nothing fantastic, but it gets the job done. It allows you to transfer the raw video files to your computer and edit them. You can also copy the files to a standard dvd for archiving purposes and they will play in a blue-ray player or PS3 in HD, or you can create an actual dvd from the files which will play in SD on a regular dvd player.

I recommend getting the larger battery if you plan to do any continuous recording over an hour without recharging.

Unworkable garbage!
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
This camera takes great movies. Getting them onto a disc is another story. It is a horror story too! First the Pixela program is incredibly slow, counter intuitive and limited in features. The effects are scarce compared to teh ones that can be found on Windows movie maker. Windows is incompatible with the HD level movies so you can buy the new camera (which also has limited features) to take non-HD movies and use the easier Windows program to edit them or hang onto the old camera and spend the money on something more practical.

The customer support at Pixela borders on the sub moronic. They dribble out advice in stingy portions that make it seem like they are playing the “Jan Brady Exact Words” game. They may point you in the direction of solving one problem but can give no warning of the deluge of other problems that that solution unleashes. For instance, to download anything longer than 35 minutes or so with HD you need a DL disc. This would not be a problem except for the fact that the escaped mensa members did not specify which type (external or internal) to get. Spare yourself the guesswork – it needs an internal drive. This is the type of information that seems vaguely important, but the cagey heroes of Pixela decided to wait until I ran into problems after buying an external burner. The manual is another story. It doesn’t open!

Very pleased
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The Vixia HX100 is my 5th camcorder, the first AVCHD, and the first that records directly to SDHC media. To date I have shot about 50 GB of video, all of it youth sports, most of it at 1440 x 1080 HD resolution, and about 100 still shots using the cam’s max resolution. The cam works flawlessly at even the highest video resolution using 16GB Transcend speed class 6 SDHC cards. I have filmed in bright Southern Cal sunlight and under baseball lights with good results. I use a 37mm haze filter, both to protect the lens and for outdoor shots. The supplied software works OK for downloading the memory, but I read the SDHC cards directly into my Sony Vaio laptop for faster transfer. The learning curve for the software is reasonably easy and the manual is good. I have played back the stored video directly into a 1080p Vizio TV using a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable and also recorded directly from the cam to a standard definition Toshiba DVD recorder using the cam’s component output.

Two minor negatives – the supplied BP-809 battery is only good for about an hour and the higher capacity BP-819 batteries aren’t currently available at any of about a dozen locations that I tried. I purchased a 2nd BP-809 and they do change out fairly quickly. The software starts to warn you with 5 minutes of battery remaining, and I took it down all the way to zero without losing any data. The other negative is that you have to leave the AC power supply connected if downloading via USB cable.

The lens at the widest zoom setting isn’t quite wide enough to film a standard baseball field from behind the backstop, and a 0.5 to 0.7 wide angle lens would be a very good accessory for shooting sports.

I have a 37mm to 28mm adapter, and the cam works well with the Nikon 3X telephoto lens from my Nikon 4300 still camera, although you have to have the telephoto on the cam set all the way out to get full field in the cam.

As an aside, I use Pinnacle Studio 12 Pro to build my movies, and it handles the AVCHD output files from the cam without a hitch. You’d better have a fast PC with at least 2GB (better 4GB) to work with HD, however.

The right camera for my video blog
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I needed an HD camera to create videos for my video blog on Costa Rica. As far as image quality goes I could not see an appreciable difference in the samples between Sony, Canon and JVC. Sticklers will find fault I’m sure but they all looked great to me. I should mention that image quality also involves the settings you use as well filters, lenses, etc.

I went to a local electronics store and started testing by just picking up different camcorders and getting into the functions and menus. The one I found the most intuitive and logically laid out was the Canon. I recommend you read the manual but it’s pretty easy to use out of the box. I would like to mention that you can adjust the zoom rate in the menu. The default mode is pretty sensitive and it will zoom in very quickly with a light touch. This is pretty jarring for the viewer so I changed the setting. Now it zooms in nice and slow no matter how much pressure I put on the control. I also recommend using the highest frame rate 60i to avoid getting jagged lines during movement.

I use Sony Vegas Platinum pro as my video editor. I simply take the memory card out of the camera, insert into the smart media slot in my laptop and presto! Instant access. I have had no problems whatsoever with compatability between Vegas and the Canon.

I also purchased the Canon wide angle lens. I really recommend this even for the casual user. You get so much more in the frame. I also bought some hoya filters. You should at least get a UV filter for the camera. This will protect the optical sensor of the camera which is a good idea if you are in a sunny place like I am.

The camera seems pretty sturdy. I am in Costa Rica taking videos for my interactive video blog and the camera is none the worse for my wear. I am very pleased with my choice. If you want to see the quality of the videos you can see them at http://www.costaricagenie.com. I am using a Hoya warm filter and in most cases the wide angle lens.

I also bought a rain cover for the camera. This is a must if you are in a tropical climate like I am. The camera is also compatible with a shoe for a tripod.

The audio quality is fine but you’ll get a lot of background noise. I recommend either doing an overdub later in your editor or using a microphone. You can plug in a microphone to a 1/8″ jack. You can set the sensitivity and gain of the microphone in the menu. I picked up an audio-technica mic with a connected cable for $20 bucks and it sounds awesome. It’s amazing how cheap all this technology has gotten. I travel around Costa Rica with this camcorder, headphones, laptop and microphone. I do all the editing and make all the music with my laptop. This would have all been impossible twenty years ago. We live in amazing times.

Video novice, initial experiences have been positive
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
After months of indecision (HD or SD; Flash, Hard Drive, or other storage media; brand) I finally settled on the Canon HF100 camcorder. I primarily intend to use it for family events as I did with past camcorders (full size VHS and a VHS-C); the kids in particular love replaying the old videos. My intent is to save the video clips in an electronic format to watch through the computer, some clips I’ll assemble as a movie and burn to DVD. Right now I’m storing the clips on my hard drive and backing up to an external hard drive, but I expect to switch to an on-line vendor at some point to mitigate the risk of losing my video clips and/or pictures.

I selected the flash drive model for a number of reasons: 1) light weight; 2) media is relatively inexpensive and reusable (I purchased one Transcend 16GB and two 8GB cards, one with the USB 2.0 reader for less than $75); 3) I didn’t see the need for internal memory or a hard drive (seemed like one more thing that could go wrong).

I went with the HD format, based on other customer reviews about the picture quality. Since the price wasn’t much higher than a SD camcorder it seemed like a better long term direction ($250-400 higher if you factor in the additional cost of the camcorder and software you’ll want/need). Note that I don’t have a HD television or Blu-Ray player yet. I was able to plug the camcorder into the TV through the standard jacks (Red, Yellow, White) and it played my video just fine.

For video editing and DVD burning I took the advice of other customers and downloaded the trial version of Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum Pro (never installed the softare that came with the camera). I have a Dell E510 (Windows XP, Intel dual core 2.8Ghz processors, 3GB RAM) and was easily able to figure out how to assemble a movie from my clips and burn a DVD that would play in my standard definition DVD player purchased in 2001. The picture quality and sound was as good as my older VHS-C videos (perhaps better, I was pleased with it!). I expect them to be much better when burning in an HD format and playing on an HD television down the road.

I still have a lot to learn, but I feel like this is the right direction for me.

Great video camera
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
After an intensive search and analysis of video recorders. I came out to the conclusion that this camera is simple the best option out there right now. Small, SD, HD resolution, decent battery life and the price at Amazon was great. I tried couple of other guys on the web, with lower prices, believe me it was a nightmare; the start with low price and then after you place an order they call you to tell that tha price is w/o battery and they want to charge a lot more, then you said you want the price you picked and then put you on back order for months. Believe me Amazon it by far the best option.

Surprisingly good
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
For a relatively inexpensive camera, this has a great image quality. Plenty of inputs and easy to use. Super easy to hook up to the computer. My only beef is that the 24p mode is really 29.97 with 3:2 pulldown, but it still looks good.

Great Quality, works awesome with Mac
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Camera is exceeded all my expectations. I wanted a small camera i can take everywhere that had “real” HD quality and this camera was perfect.

What really makes this camera great is how easy it is to transfer videos. i’m using a MacBook running final cut express. In final cut express, there is a feature called Log and Capture and it detects the card reader Transcend 16GB SDHC CARD (SD 2.0 SPD CLASS 6) with Compact Card Reader. It list all the clips for you and all you have to do is add it to your queue. I’ll never go back to tapes again. The one that kept me from editing my videos was having to sort through all the tapes.

Editing on a MacBook(2.16 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB ram):for final cut express you’ll need to record on lowest setting for your macbook to handle the editing, but it’s still sharp and higher resolution than Standard Definition. On iMovie, it works even better. iMovie handles HD files great, i just don’t use it because you can’t edit on multiple tracks, but iMovie is perfect for quick home movie edits.

For the price, i prefer this better than canon vixia HF10 because you save $200 dollars and you can get a 16gb card and reader for less than $60. make sure you get the a SD card that is Class 6 so it can handle the HD.

Cons:

- Battery is short.. about an hour. Just get an extra battery and your good.

- Auto Stabilizer is so-so especially on zoom.. Just use a tripod or rest against a wall or table to stabilize yourself.

- on camera light is sucks as usual

The camera is great, regardless of the ridiculously cheap price.

Don’t let the cheap price throw you off.

A great camera for just about anyone
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I think this camera is great and would most certainly recommend it for anyone. The only one problem I found with it is that it is not as “shake proof” as I was hoping it would be. However the picture quality is excellent, and has more features then any other I have seen. Its easy to switch between setting things yourself and allowing the camera to do it for you which is wonderful for the inexperienced user. Worth the investment for capturing memories for a life time. Keep in mind though, this does not come with a memory card, but they are rather inexpensive.

Great Camcorder!!!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
LOVE IT!!! This is such a neat product! I am a stay at home mom who uses the camera to capture all the fun things that baby does during the day. This camera is so small, and so easy to use! I can fit it easily in my purse, or diaper bag. It stores all the videos separate, so you can watch each one individually, at one click of the button. We love that it takes the SD cards, for easy video storage and transfer to the PC. It’s easy to delete a scene if it’s not what you want. We love this camera!!! It’s the best Christmas present that we could have bought ourselves this year! You will love it too!

Great camera, some limitations
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The Canon Vixia HF100 is a great camera. I have not purchased a camcorder in 10 years and the jump in technology is magic. I am using the quality setting that can record 3 hrs per 16GB card and 30 frames progressive and the result is amazing. The zoom and image stabilization is also very good. I recommend this product and you should seriously consider it, however here are some gotchas:

1. the battery last only about 1hr

2. changing the mode to picture takes 20-30 seconds as the camera reads the card

3. if you are walking around a town or need to take pictures over a longer period of times you will tend to leave the camera on with the lid closed, this will give you a couple of hours of operation, depending on usage

4. the video is highly compressed and while the quality is good for me it takes lots of disk space and CPU to process. Also you may need to invest in new video editing software.

I do not think that the issues above are specific to Canon’s AVCHD camera. I hope they will improve on the start time in picture mode, until then I will carry around an separate digital camera.

Enjoy

“Joe 6-pack” Review
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Love it.

I had an HDD right before this, but was not happy with the quality.

This camera even exceeds my expectations.

I love the SD format as you can store your video indefinately.

Great weight, great function.

The only con I can think of is there is no good way to store the video.

(other than leaving it on the card)

If you try to burn it down to a DVD it converts to normal DVD. Still good, but not HD. You have to either get a Blue-Ray burner (too expensive) or use the camera for watching back.

Not a big deal, but it seems that the storage technology has not caught up with the camera……so for now, I simply buy new SD cards.

16GB for $30 is cheap enough. (2 1/2 hrs of recording)

BOTTOM LINE: BUY IT, YOU WONT REGRET IT.

Excellent camcorder!
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I read a lot of good reviews on this camera and the others say it all! I’m very glad I bought this camera. I was debating about whether to get one with a hard drive or not, and I’m glad I made this choice because it is lighter and I don’t have to worry as much about dropping it (not that I’m going to try to). The price was good, and the HD quality is awesome!

The only thing I don’t like is the still camera on it because it takes forever to reload between pictures, and they come out a little yellow. You can’t expect a great still camera on a camcorder anyway.

Good Value, really compact, easy transfer to computer
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I bought both this and the more expensive HF100 cameras. The HF100 requires a really good computer to make an HD DVD. The FS100 can work in both standard and wide modes (although at standard resolution)and is fine except for all but the most demanding viewers with a screen over 50 inches. With the SD sticks, it is easy to transfer to my computer and I don’t have to worry about bad tapes or drive problems as in the past.

Use a tripod or monopod or really hold it steady as there is little support when you hold it away from your body as you must with no eyepiece.

Very satisfying
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I’m a Mac owner, and most of all I wanted an HD camcorder that was going to be a breeze to work with. After reading all the other reviews on Amazon, and a few elsewhere… AND doing research on Apple sites about compatibility issues, I made the decision to pick this baby up.

For all you Mac users out there… here’s how it works:

You shoot the footage/photos and record onto the SDHC flash memory card.

Place the memory card into the USB reader.

Immediately, if there are any still photos on the card, iPhoto will open and ask you to import.

As soon as iMovie ’09 (my version) is opened, it will bring up the import window and ask you to import the footage from the “camera” (card). You can select clips individually by checking boxes, and you can also preview the clips in their entirety before importing.

Importing the clips into iMovie takes some time. Go make a sandwich or something… and eat it. Be patient.

Now that iMovie has updated with YouTube HD uploading, you can upload directly there with a few clicks.

That’s pretty much all I wanted from this camera… that, and of course, that the footage look beautiful, which it is. The camera is pretty easy to use, and has enough toys and options to satisfy even picky users.

Bottom line: it’s excellent quality video, easy to use… and if you’re a Mac user, importing, editing and exporting footage while maintaining HD quality is now quite simple as well.

So yeah, it’s a great buy.

Great Camcorder- Very Easy to use
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
After reading many reviews on various camcorders in the $500-$700, I was directed to the HF100 as the best ‘bang for the buck’. I purchased the camcorder for basic family videos and the picture quality is outstanding. I have 2 HD TV’s and and playback on them is superb. The unit is very small and easy to use. I highly recommend this camcorder!

Great camcorder and a easy way to edit the video
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The video quality is great – vivid color and impressive sharpness, no matter in High Definition or Standard Defition mode. It’s a few steps above my previous Canon ZR800 miniDV camcorder.

My computer is quite old with Athlon 1.99GHz and 1G RAM. Nero 7 Ultra could play the AVCHD file, but of cause only in slow motion and with stutter in audio. I am pleased with the factor I can convert AVCHD file to DVD in Nero 7 with my old computer, although it takes 30 minutes for 3 minutes of record to complete. The DVD still looks much better than the one taken by Canon ZR800.

Wow wow wow
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
First of all I should have done this review with my camera if it had not been in use by an international broadcaster.

This camera is really one that amazes me every time.

It is easy to use for the beginner but also a semi pro can do nice things with it. A befriended director of an international broadcaster has used it already a few times and is still using it for recordings. Where the serious cameras too big (like in a giant Ferris wheel and on the roller coaster this camera does it all. Also in low light conditions it does what it needs to do.

Copying from card to Powerbook i use a card reader that came with one of the Sandisk cards I bought with it. It is a lot easier than connecting camera to computer and power socket.

Once you have set up your editing software it is really easy to do.

One thing: I recommend to get an additional battery to avoid disappointments whilst recording because of a flat battery. You can go for the Canon battery but there are also cheaper options available.

Oh yes, I of course bought a small camera bag as well to have it secure whilst on the road.

solid if slow
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
The video is good with no mechanical camera noise. The pictures are decent and the optical zoom is good. The display is of excellent quality and viewable from wide angles. My only complaint is the speed in which it powers up or reads a new memory card is much longer than advertised.

Given what I know now, I would buy it again.

Excellent HD camcorder for the price
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
this canon HD camcorder rules! build quality, video and audio quality as well as feature list are all excellent. a camcorder like this would have cost $20,000 10 years ago (if tech. possible).

here a few observations:

i found the second highest resolution setting to be more than adequate (1400×1000 or so) for most projects. the 24fps mode may be of value to some, i found the footage shot in this mode to lose some clarity and presence (which may be the intention)

i have macs in my house. no problems importing footage into imovie, final cut express. i understand that in the windows world the avchd format is not quite supported that well yet, but the product comes with 2 cdrom with software that i assume do the job. just understand that you cannot hook up the camcorder to a computer via the included usb cable and just download video files for immediate playback. the sofware on the computer extracts the footage in the desired resolution from the acdhd files!

low light resolution is not great but not bad either. all consumer camcorders struggle with this and even news reporters with their really expensive gear work with extra lighting.

i personally find the coke can shaped camcorders a bit more awkward to hold and operate than the pistol shaped ones.

love the fact that there are no tapes to insert or rewind, no non standard mini dvds to buy, etc. even the cheap 4gb sd card gives me plenty of recording time.

please help
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
i am very interested in buying the hf100 but have a couple of questions that i’m hoping someone can assist me with. first, how easy or difficult is it to share the video via email or post on the net. this is very important to me as my primary purpose for buying the camera is to regularly share video of my kids with family who live far away.

second, does anyone have an idea when the price will drop? i know that new video cameras have been introduced by canon that are expected to be sold in the coming months.

Great Camera – Right Price
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I got the Vixia HF100 about two weeks ago and I have been quite happy with the quality and output. A great lot has been written about the technical capabilities etc that I will skip to the stuff that I like about this camera.

First, its compact and quite solid to hold. I dont like the fact that it does not have a optical view finder and that I have to open the LCD everytime to record but I think I can live with that in exchange for the HD quality.

I was a bit concerned that there are no free ware to edit the HD format files. turns out that the M2ts files play well in Media Player in Vista. Picasa 3 can play the video and export movies but it has lot of interlacing artifacts appearing in the video. The easiest option is to use the bundled software that comes on a CD. It was easy enough to create a play list and burn the files either into a regular DVD or an AVCHD-DVD. The latter is a High Definition DVD that can be played in Blu-Ray players. The AVCHD disk I created in my PC played without any hassles on a Sony Blue Ray Player . The entire disk creation was snappy and it did not take much time. However I cannot vouch what willhappen if I actually edit the M2ts files as I havent tried them.

In the beginning I only had a 2GB MicroSD card lying around and it worked okay with a SDHC adapter. it was supposed to give me just about 15 min of HD recording at full quality. I need not have worried as I never hit the 15 min limit in between file transfers to my PC. Later on I plonked on a Sandisk Extreme III SDHC cards and they are supposed to give me 1 Hr of full HD recording. Havent hit the limits on that yet. Recording on flash cards is a novel experience. I am so used to tapes (VHS, Digital8, MiniDV) that the thought of not handling them and instead useing these postage stamp sized cards is pretty neat.

The other thing I like about the Camera is that it has a bundle of ports – Component, Mini HDMI, AV out etc that should be sufficient. I havent had the chance to try any of these as I mostly watch the clips either on my PC or via the AVCHD disks on the Blu Ray.

Battery lasts for just over an hour and till now thats fairly sufficient.

Update: I tried editing the MTS files in the bundled editor and it was fairly decent. i did not have any major issues. editing 15 min of video and burning the AVCHD disk took me about 20 min or so. Fairly happy with the experience.

I keep reading in reviews that you need a powerful machine to do the edits. For info – I use a laptop with a 2.2GHz Dual Core Processor / 4GB RAM / 5400RPM HDD. Not exactly top of the line but a decent common configuration that almost all laptops nowadays come with.

Canon Vixia HF100
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
After considerable research, I settled on this camera as a birthday present for my husband. He is delighted with it’s features, size, and convenience of operation. Delivery was great through Amazon.com

Why I bought the HF100 instead of an HV30.
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Before I bought an HF100, I first bought an HV30 due to reports of it having better video quality. But I ended up returning that camera the moment I heard the audio play – the tape noise was LOUD and distracting. Totally unacceptable.

I knew Canon made the highest quality HD cameras, though, so I went with the HF100 as a replacement based on good reviews and the fact that it had no moving parts that create noise (like the tape drive on the HV30 or the hard disk drive on some other models.)

Having now shot several things (a baby shower, a friend’s farewell party) I can tell you with confidence that I absolutely made the right decision. I think the video quality is just as good as the HV30. I was worried it wouldn’t be, but it absolutely is. (Low light footage is expectedly a bit grainy just as it was with the HV30 – and always is with small handheld models – and daylight footage is near perfect.) And the audio quality is as good as I’ve ever heard from a consumer camcorder. No unwanted noise.

And then there are the bonuses:

- This camera is noticeably smaller and lighter than the HV30. Very very nice.

- The AVCHD format is 100% functional with a current Mac (I tested footage shot with this camera on a MacBook and the lastest version of iMovie). The process is seamless, in fact. Absolutely handier than importing from tape.

- I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to backup the footage for long-term safe keeping. What would I do without mini DV tapes? Well, problem solved (for Mac users). You can simply create a little disk image copy of your camera footage (using Disk Utility, which comes with all Macs) and drag that image over to a blank DVD. Burn the DVD and voila – perfect backup. I even tested the process of loading footage into iMovie from the backup DVD and it absolutely worked. iMovie thinks the backup disk image is a camera and will let you import from it no problem.

- If you happen to have a PS3, you can pop your HF100′s memory cards right into the system and the PS3 will play your footage in full HD immediately. Talk about handy! Yes!

That’s about it for me. Oh, I also HIGHLY recommend getting the Transcend 16GB card that amazon recommends near the top of the page. Not only does it work great, but the card reader it comes with is awesome. It enables me to pop the card directly into the PS3′s USB slots (as I mentioned above) and also works for popping the card directly into my Mac’s USB slots (so I don’t have to fiddle with hooking up the actual camera to import footage.) Gotta love it!

Great pictures for all occasions
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
High definition put a new level in home video quality after I’ve been using standard definition for the past 8 years with my Sony camcorder. What I do appreciate is the absence of moving tape mechanism and spinning disc. This would reduce noise and hopefully, improve on reliability. My last camcorder failed due to the tape mechanism. However, speaking of reliability, the battery that came with the camera failed in less than one month of usage – it just refused to be charged.

Great BUY for Mac
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Great buy works really well with my mac, some folks have had problems with it working on thier mac but guess what its avchd other processors cant handle it lol. I use imovie to download and it works like a charm. I was really surprised with the ease of use and editing, another homerun! I don’t know what in the world freddy is talking about, if you knew anything about avchd then you know you need an intel mac. No surprise to us mac users, just the slow ones.

Pretty good camcorder
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Had mine over a year now. Relatively easy to use; this was my first camcorder, and having both the “easy” automatic feature, plus manual controls for adjusting lighting types, etc is nice.

Only complaints I have: lousy software included with it. Not easy to use, low on features. Editing in particular is so painful I’ve given up on it.

Battery dies too fast; even the upgraded battery doesn’t last all that long. Keep several spares or get a cigarette lighter adapter or seperate AC plug-in charger (the installed battery can be charged only if in the camera, which is a problem if you’re using it at the time).

Another minor quirk is that when you download the videos to a computer, it gives them filenames that are useless and too long. It also puts the videos in folders based upon date of filming, not date of download. Sometimes this is useful if you don’t remember the date of filming, other times it’s just a hassle to change it, especially on many videos.

Still, all in all, I’m very happy with the camcorder.

happy with it
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Review after ten month use: 4 Stars

———————————–

The battery time is too short. A fully charged battery can support about one hour recording which is far from enough. Had to buy a new battery bp-819 which is too expensive (about $120). Fortunately I found a site which sells canon battery for $80 but is still expensive.

Review after four month use: 4.5 Stars

————————————–

Update on 12/30/2009: After I use it for 4 months, I would like to decrease the rating to 4. So far I still like it but I cannot say it’s perfect. Thinks I don’t like: 1) Battery lasts about one hour. Have to buy another backup battery. 2) 12X zoom is not enough. Cannot grab video/images which are far away.

Review after one month use: 5 Stars

———————————–

* Video is wonderful.

* Audio is great.

* Low light indoor video quality is very good.

* Still picture is very good. I no longer need to carry my Olympus DC.

* Easy to transfer files to computer

* Even in a sunny day, LCD display has no problem.

Great and small HD camcorder
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is a great HD camcorder for its size and price. The camcorder is great on daylight but just good on night/dark places. A consideration when buying this camcorder is a powerful pc because the pc requirements for editing and viewing AVCHD format is high. Also, there are only limited softwares available for AVCHD editing and the others are quite expensive. But if you’re not into editing, you can view it into your regular tv via cables provided or to your HDTV but you need to buy a separate mini HDMI to HDMI cable.

Overall, I’m very satisfied with my purchase, with the price and not to mention the free 2nd day delivery and 4GB SDHC memory card by Amazon. I love it!

Canon HF100 camcorder
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Canon VIXIA HF100 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom I am very pleased with this camcorder and expect to be using it very much with 5 young grandchildren. I especially like using flash memory with no moving parts. Excellent response to my order.

Very impressive
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
Great camera. The pictures are amazing, although a lot of motion causes video to be jerky, but apparently that’s an artifact of CMOS technology.

I had a problem with mine: the zoom switch was faulty, causing the camera to zoom in. It wouldn’t hold any focus. I sent it in to Canon and they fixed it beautifully. Very good customer service experience!

Recommended.

Flash memory is the way to go
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This camera is amazing, small size, full Hi-Def 1080i, no worry about tape or disk, excellent image stabilizing, good zoom,

Would be nice to have a viewfinder so can save battery with LCD off.

Getting wind noise from mic, will check how to avoid.

Happy with purchase.

What a crap???
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
This machine creates M2TS files, and there almost no way to edit the files. Something 8 GB files take a whole night on the newest HP TouchSmart with 4GB RAM. And eventually cause the machine to crash!

Also USB connection can not be stopped and therefore you have no way to “safely remove” the device!

I can not believe the software is so crappy that it is almost useless! All you can do is to create a bunch of clips and there is no way to join files together make it one file. I am totally disappointed by this crap!