 "Fail in three weeks, poor support!" | 2009-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: A14JWX0WAFW1Y |
| I have never wrote a review in my life and I really want to share my experience with everyone this time. I bought this camera for a 8 months business trip to Hong Kong. I have purchased 2 extra battery pack BP-809 for it so I have a total of 3 batteries. After 2 weeks, the camcorder start having problem recognizing the batteries, at first I can fix the problem by switching between the pack, 3 days ago it won't even take any of my batteries! I call Canon locally in Hong Kong and they said they will have to charge me just to LOOK at it, repair cost extra!!! I am very disappoint at Canon, I have been a customer forever, I have a 40D, 50D, 5DmkII and tons of Lens from you guys and the quality has been superb. The first digi cam I bought and I've got problem from it in less than a month and Canon won't even try to help. I am stuck here in Asia, I need this camera to do my job and if I ship it back to US it will cost me a lot of money and time... Beside, I really hate the idea of repairing and crack open an expensive camera in it's first month, I even called Canon USA back home and ask if they can help... After an hour wait time with an international phone call, the answer is very disappointing: unless I can ship the camera back, there is nothing they can do... I don't understand it, I have a service center less than a mile away, and yet they still trying to tell me I am stuck... How's that for customer service? |
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 "Very good" | 2009-10-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1AWW007H14NG4 |
I really like this camera.
Really compact and I could carry this in my jacket pocket. Picture quality is good though night time recording is not so good.
Still photographs are good and it gives me the control on exposure on shutter speed as well. |
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| "Awesome Camera" | 2009-09-22 |
| - Reviewed By User: ABT7KOGB9YXDH |
| Great camera, very intuitive menus, very easy to use, extremely light and small. Battery life is not as bad as described by some. Would definitely recommend this over the hf200 which doesn't have the internal memory. It is definitely worth the extra money if you research the price of high-quality, high-capacity SDHC cards. |
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| "Great camera overall. Be aware of requirements" | 2009-09-20 |
| - Reviewed By jrgc66 |
I'm not going to review the camrea, because it's a great product from canon and it is a nice upgrade from regular digital video. I just want to comment on few "issues" people have with the camera and you need to consider before buying it:
+ Quality in low light. Most cameras perform better in regular light. In low light, the video is grainy and not nice. You need a LIGHT if you are planning to use it mostly in low light. Canon has some but they are quite expensive.
+ Computer edit. You need a newer computer for playback. To edit it will be also faster in a new computer. You also need a special video editor to edit the HD files.
+ Slow transfer to computer. It's slow because of USB 2.0, but you can transfer it as you shoot the video, instead of doing it all at once. I believe they don't added firewire because it's not widely supported in most computers.
+ Battery life. Yes, it last around 1 hours, so? Get another one. Most product use lcd displays, replacing optical viewfinder. This makes them smaller and compact. Most camcorders will last the same.
+ HD Video + Blu Ray = Great videos. You should use HD with Blu Ray, not DVDs to get the most of it.
+ This is not a digital camera. Don't expect great pictures. The technology to combine video and photos is still not here.
I am amazed people complain about little things when it has nothing to do with the camera. Why do you spend this kind of money if you don't want to spend a few more in accessories? In order to use a product you need to meet some requirements AND GET EDUCATED. One of the reviewer gave it 2 stars because he can't even read the manual. |
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| "Finally I can transfer good quality video to the computer - FAST!" | 2009-09-15 |
| - Reviewed By User: A35E0ZX7SU5LQU |
This won't be a long review. I really don't do reviews. But I'll tell you what I like.
I can shoot a video. Go home and back it up to my computer in minutes. And erase the video on my camera. Nowadays hard drives are cheap. Get a terabyte drive for about [...]. or so. Who cares if it's the fastest on the planet. It's a place to store you high def videos.
I don't burn to Blue ray. It's too expensive still. So I convert my hi-def video to Mpeg2 and burn the result to DVD. The quality is outstanding! I have a [...]OPPO dvd player with built in "up-conversion" and the resulting videos I make "pop" off of my HDTV screen.
You've heard by now that yesterdays computers bog down handling hd camera files. That's true. If you don't have a dual-core processor and a decent computer you will get frustrated. But... one day you WILL have a better computer. And the same files that frustrate you today will be easy to use tomorrow... so don't dispare.
I have a vision too... that more and more people will buy the HD camcorders and store their precious moments to a hard drive. And someone will build an inexpensive interface that allows you to connect your terabyte drive directly to your HD TV and control it with your TV remote. No more conversions. Just watch your HD videos with the push of a button. They are working on it. Maybe a year or so away. You just watch.
I have posted a link to a youtube video made with my camera. This was done in subdued lighting in a church standing about thirty feet away. The anti-shake is turned on. The video is cruched down to be able to upload it to youtube. Still... for the setting, I think the quality is great!
[...]
Great little camera!!! Love it! |
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 "Canon VIXIA HF20, Nice Camera but hard to use" | 2009-09-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: A27CZZD63DMQU5 |
I have been using a Digital Camcorder for several years and thought it would be a good time to upgrade to HD Video with the Canon VIXIA HF20. I was wrong.
First, the bad. I first shot some video and the results were much worse than my standard digital video. After reading through the manual I found how to set the camera up to shoot HD video and only after selecting the best HD video recording mode was the quality better than my standard digital video. Then I tried to download the video to the PC. Reading the manual for this was frustrating. But, After some effort I did it. I found the USB interface next to the clearly labeled HDMI interface. I installed the PIXELA software, got all the cables connected, set the camera to video mode, turned on the camera and hit the "picture of camera with two arrows and a play symbol" button. Yes, I was then able to downloaded the video onto my 3 Gigahertz Dell computer and attempted to play the video. The video playback was unacceptable. It skipped several frames at a time and only played the top third of the scenes. I assume the problems are due to my computer being underpowered. I upgraded the hard drive to see if there was an improvement but this just resulted in the software no longer working with tech support unable to tell me why. I'll probably have to get a newer faster computer to see if the video playback and editing works. Of course, once I do edit the HD video, what do I do with it. There really isn't a cost effective standardized media to write HD video productions at this time. I'll leave the video on the hard drive until the Blue ray recorders and media become reasonably priced.
Now, the good. The 32 GB of memory provides for plenty of recording time, at least for me. After recording 11 days of vacation in High Dev I still have 1 hour 20 minutes of recording time left. Playing the video on a TV through the Component interface on the camera looks great. The camera is very compact and light and easy to handle. It takes good still photos that look very nice on the computer screen and TV.
Overall a nice little camera but as it is hard to learn to use and as the HD video really isn't viewable on a standard computer configuration, I'm only giving it two stars.
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