- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 44 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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49 out of 51 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Great camcorder - CNET Review a bit incorrect"
Pros: Great image quality, simple menu, wireless remote for playback, light weight
Cons: Controls awkward for users with big hands, mini-SD instead of standard SD card, HUGE files when saving to the computer
Summary: This is an excellent camcorder for the money. I first want to point out an inconsistency with CNET's review. They state you cannot change the white balance and thus need to turn the camera on/off in different lightning. This is INCORRECT. The camera WILL adjust in different lightning situations. I filmed my dad walking in the door as the sun was coming up, then shot my mom in the kitchen and the balances adjusted perfectly.
The video is a bit grainy while shooting in doors especially in low light. However shooting outdoors in the sun is spectacular. The colors are bright and vibrant and HD!
This camcorder works perfectly with my Intel Mac and the footage is excellent quality. If you plan on saving your raw footage on your computer you better invest in mass storage. About 20 minutes of my raw HD footage was 17.13 GB. Yes, you read that right, GIGABYTES. I've compressed most of my footage to distribute to family, but intend on saving the tapes since the file sizes are so big.
Overall I am very pleased with this camcorder. If you are an HD freak like me then this camera is well worth the $1100. I didn't give this camera a 10 simply because of the low-light performance. Other than that I'm extremely happy.
- 4 replies to this review
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When you record to the disk, can you record over that if you don't like the shot or does the video stay there and you can do anything with it?
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Please be more specific on what you did to compress HD for family members.
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I don't have this camera yet, but have you shot low-light in 24p mode? The review at camcorderinfo seemed very impressed with the low-light capabilities in 24p.
As for the white balance, being a $1000 consumer HD camcorder, I don't think being able to change white balance on fly -manually- is tremendously important. If you're running in an automatic WB mode, obviously it'll change (and again the camcorderinfo reviewer seemed impressed with the accuracy of the HV20's camcorder). If you desperately need manual control over white balance while filming, then a $1000 HD camcorder isn't for you. It takes only a couple seconds to stop filming, WB on a grey card, and start filming again. -
was that you couldn't adjust it manually while shooting?
Canon HV20:
