Canon Camcorders Hv30
What am I missing out on if I choose the Sanyo Xacti 720p over the Canon Vixia HV30?
Canon:
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=177&modelid=16206#ModelTechSpecsAct
Sanyo:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=NavBar&A=getItemDetail&Q=&sku=601831&is=REG&si=rev#anchorToReadReviews
I gather that the Canon is clearly better because it’s $900, vs $300 for the Sanyo, and that the Canon captures 2.96 mp over Sanyo’s 1.1. But other than that, why is the Canon better? The thing is I definitely can’t spend over about $300, but I want to know what to look for. I’m just trying to learn a little about camcorders.
HV30 has a bigger lens and bigger imaging chip. Its low light behavior is WAY better than the Xacti.
HV30 has manual audio control.
HV30 has an audio input jack for using external mics.
HV30 has a headphone jack for monitoring what is being recorded.
HV30 uses miniDV tape – that is an automatic archive of the video if you don’t re-use the tapes – Archiving the video from any hard disc drive or flash memory camcorder is an extra step and can be expensive (digital tape is cheap).
Megapixel count is irrelevant and used for digital still resolution only. Video is measured in horizontal lines of resolution.
The DV/DV widescreen/HDV video formats stored to miniDV tape used by the HV30 are the least compressed digital video formats available to consumer camcorders. Video compression = discarded video data = reduced video quality…
This all said, if ALL the video you capture is under perfect (good) lighting conditions and ALL the audio you capture is in the “normal” range, then either will be fine. But that is not how we all live… And that is why pro-grade camcorders get expensive… the lenses are larger than the HV30′s, the imaging chips are larger than the HV30′s the manual controls are on the outside of the camcorder and easy to get to… and most of them use the same DV/DV widescreen/HDV video formats written to miniDV tape.
My Canon HV30 High Definition Video Camcorder
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