Jim asked me, what’s a good camcorder for someone who isn’t a serious pro but who wants good pictures. It can’t be too big. There is really just one afictionado choice right now, the “Canon HF-10”:http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Canon-Vixia-HF10-Camcorder-Review-34711.htm and “Pricegrabber”:http://cameras.pricegrabber.com/camcorders/m/62668226/ has it for $830 or so right now.
The reviews have been very good, it is high definition, uses 16GB of onboard flash (that’s an hour of HD video) and can take SDHC cards. It is small and is very good in low light and has good picture quality. It uses the AVCHD codec which let’s it get very good compression. The main drawback is that it doesn’t have a viewfinder which pro’s like. Also, with current cards (32GB SDHC), it has storage for about 3 hours of HD vs. the bigger Sony SR-12 that has a 120GB hard drive. OTOH, flash cards won’t crash like hard drives.
“Camcorderinfo.com”:http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Canon-Vixia-HF10-Camcorder-Review-34711.htm has a good comprehensive review. And you can now get 32GB SDHC cards for not much. “Pricegrabber”:http://computers.pricegrabber.com/flash-memory/p/152/st=filter/popup2%5B%5D=15:207/popup1%5B%5D=215:105 shows the Adata 16GB Turbo at $80 for instance. So you can get a set of these. These are so called class 6 SDHC so it writes at 6MBps which is plenty fast.
