Canon Minidv Camcorder
Canon HV20 Mini DV/HDV Camcorder
Executive summary about Canon HV20Mini DV/HDV Camcorder by Philip Ryan
canon digital camcorder
The good: The Canon HV20 high-definition camcorder has excellent video quality, nice features, HDMI output, and an accessory shoe.
The bad: Can’t change white balance while shooting; night mode doesn’t help poor low-light performance.
The bottom line: Canon’s HV20 camcorder is a great choice for HD-happy amateurs, but its low-light performance could have been better.
Specifications: Video input type: Camcorder; Optical sensor type: CMOS; Optical zoom: 10 x.
Price range: $1,299.95
Canon’s horizontal design solves certain problems, but also made for a larger camcorder. Part of the reason for its size is the HV20’s nice, big, 10x optical, f/1.8 to f/3 zoom lens, which includes the company’s Super-Range Optical Image Stabilization.
Behind the lens, Canon places a 3-megapixel, 1/2.7-inch CMOS sensor that captures 1,920 horizontal and 1,080 vertical pixels for either 1080i high-definition or wide-screen standard-definition video. For still images, the camera captures 2.76 megapixels (1,920×1,440) in 4:3 mode and 2.07 megapixels (1,920×1,080) in 16:9 mode. Atop the lens, Canon places its Advanced Accessory Shoe. Canon also offers the higher-capacity BP-2L14 and the lower-capacity NB-2LH batteries as accessories. An extra battery is always a good idea if you plan to bring the HV20 on vacation.
Canon locates most of the camcorder’s controls in convenient places. At the same time, other oft-accessed controls–program, shutter- and aperture-priority, cine, and scene modes, along with the white balance, image effects, and still-image mode–hide behind the function button. As usual, Canon puts four buttons below the camcorder’s 2.7-inch, wide-screen LCD.
Unfortunately, Canon doesn’t let you change white balance while shooting, so if you move from one type of lighting to another, you’re forced either to stop then restart shooting or to accept the resulting color cast. To address this, Canon includes cine mode, which can be combined with 24p mode if desired and tries to achieve a film-like look by changing the color and gamma performance.
Speaking of footage, we were very impressed with the video we shot with the HV20. Like the HV10, the HV20 did tend to lose some information in highlights, though it preserves noticeably more highlight detail than most non-HD camcorders, and shadow detail was impressive. Since it’s a single-chip design (as opposed to three-chip), low-light performance isn’t amazing. Canon’s night mode does little to fix this, instead dropping the shutter to such a slow speed that you end up with video that looks like lazy stop-action animation.
Despite our handful of gripes, the HV20 will likely be a big seller for Canon. The HV20’s stunning high-definition video and comfortable operation make it a great choice for nonprofessional, HD-happy videographers.
