Digital Video - August 2008 - (Page 18)

BENCH TEST CANON HG10 CAMCORDER MEASURING UP A PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF CANON’S TAPELESS HG10. BY JOHN E. JOHNSON C anon’s HG10 is an HDD (Hard Disc Drive) high-definition camera with a 40GB drive, which, at its best recording quality, will store more than five hours of video. It uses Canon’s 1920x1080 CMOS sensor and can record 1080i60 as well as 1080p24. In 24p mode, you can also activate “Cine Mode,” to give the picture a filmic look. Consumer video cameras these days tend to be compact, and the HG10 is no exception. Testing it, I carried it around in my pants pocket or sweatshirt pocket a lot of the time and would just pull it out and start shooting. The HG10 has a drop sensor that is activated from the menu. It docks the hard drive reader arm if the camera is dropped so that the hard drive is less likely to be damaged. The battery attaches underneath the eyepiece. Hard drives take a lot of power, and I found that the battery dv august 2008 would last about an hour. If you plan to shoot a lot during the day, keep an extra battery in your camera case. Once the LCD display is folded out, you can see a USB 2.0 port (for connection to your PC to download your videos) and the slot where the SD memory card is inserted. There is also a small speaker opening at the bottom left of the camera body that is used during video playback. An HDMI port and component video port are located on the other side of the camera. The HXP mode is the highest quality, and it records at 15Mbps. That’s less than what was used for standard NTSC in camcorders way back when, but the compression for AVCHD is high, so it allows for HD at lower bitrates. When playing your videos back, unlike with tape, you can go right to the individual scenes, and you get a thumbnail image of the beginning of each scene to help you find what you want. It’s an easy way to make sure you got the things you wanted to record. ON THE BENCH In the lens falloff test, the wide angle proved to be very good, with only 0.1 f/stop falloff. In telephoto, falloff maxed out at 0.5 f/stop. Resolution, using the MTF50 criterion (MTF stands for Modulation Transfer Function), was 296 LW/PH (with the correct amount of sharpening, it would be 335). This is lower than we previously measured for the Canon HV20, which records a different type of compression algorithm onto tape rather than hard disk. The HV20 had an MTF50 resolution of 627 LW/PH. The MTF50 criterion is a definition of 50 percent contrast between juxtaposed white and black lines, so the number can be affected by increasing the contrast and edge enhancement in the video, but this does not necessarily improve the subjective www.dv.com 18 http://www.dv.com

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Digital Video - August 2008 Contents DV Update My Studio Close-Up Wristshot HV30 Camcorder Tiffen DFX Bench Test PCM-D50 & R-09HR Recorders Camera Cradle Instant Expert My Passport Elite High School Confidential The Ultimate DIY Raid DV101 Click to Play Production Diary

Digital Video - August 2008

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