Canon VIXIA HF10 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 16 GB Internal Flash Memory and 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

I had HF10 for almost half a year, and I must say I know most of the pros and cons of this camera. I've studied it back and forth and tried to figure out what this camera truly offers.

Pros: Lots of manual controls (shutter speed, aperture, exposure, frame rate (24p, 30p, 60i)) Mic out port, Easy to use interface, Good zooming control. Plenty of space for AVCHD format.

Cons:
Now, Cons I'm listing might be more specific than Pros, but it's only because I have expected a lot from this camera.
1. Inconvenient manual focus control.
A small jog lever on the left of the screen is the manual focus controller. Newer models have a small wheel attached to the front of the camera nowadays, but this control is very inaccurate and pointless.
2. Sharpness of picture. I was very surprised to see how the picture looked very bad when I played back on my computer. Lots of ghosting, blurred edges, and Not-so-vibrant color. the LCD on the camera makes everythinng look so nice and beautiful, however the actual result on the computer monitor is quite the contradictory.
3. Ghosting, ghosting, ghosting.
When I would pause at any moment during a filmed video, a heavy ghosting occurs. This can be solved by de-interlacing, however the process is very complex and a typical user would not know what to do unless they really understand the logic of encoding... Plus AVCHD is a compressed file format, so when it's uncompressed, the file size is humongous (18 sec clip was 45mb in AVCHD, uncompressed was near 500Mb.)
4. Weirdness hidden behind the frame rate.
Now, when you film regardless of which option you choose on the camera (24p, 30p, 60i) when it shows up on the computer, it will always show as 29.97fps. This is due to the AVCHD format's nature that it records under the frame rate you choose, but overwrites as 29.97fps. A "pulldown" needs to be done in order to truly extract what you've filmed... Quite pain in the butt, I must admit.

This is all I could think of so far. If you have any questions about the camcorder, feel free to reply and I will try to answer.

I'm happy with this camcorder. Gives impressive video quality. It's also good for still photography if your digital camera battery dies. I did it sometime & I can say picture quality is too impressive. It does not have good wind filter. Its not too bulky but also not too compact. Lastly, downloading still pictures to computer is tough as we don't do it regularly and the manual does provide steps in detail. Its frustrating. Overall a good camcorder.

So far I really enjoy this little camcorder and its features. Its picture quality is very good and it has a lot to offer. The only thing is that I do not yet have a blue ray player so the pictures that I view are only DVD quality. The one negative issue is the bundled software that goes with it. The Imagemixer 3 has some flaws especially when trying to create a movie with effects. If you include a title on your Imagemixer 3 project, the system will not save the project. I wish Canon would find better software. Also be aware that when you put your movies on DVD make sure it is a DVD-R disc and NOT a DVD+R disc. It doesn't work in that format. It took me about 2 hours to figure that out but when I called Canon, they helped me a lot. Canon's tech support was very helpful. All in all, this is a nice little camcorder

This camera is reasonably easy to operate and makes great video but do not buy this camera unless you are really computer and software savvy. The "pixela" software that comes with the camera is horrible! It is far from intuitive to figure out how to use it and the directions suck. I haven't been able to figure out any other product that works for getting the video clips onto my computer. I'm so frustrated with this thing that it is now mostly a very expensive paperweight.

This is a great camera for the price, no doubt. Recording at 1080p HD all the time is wonderful if you have the software to edit it. It's got great features on the camera, and it's no bigger than a regular soda can. Very lightweight. I haven't dropped it yet, so I don't know how well it holds up from drops.

A few quirks though. Manual Focus isn't the most powerful, so if you are wanting to buy a camera because of manual focus, you *may* want to look around. Getting to use the manual exposure is easy after you know how to enable it... navigate through the joystick menu, then hold the joystick in the UP position for a second or two, then it enables. I couldn't find anything in the manual, so I figured I'd let you know.

Other than that, it's a flawless camera.