[sleepwalk]

Salutations . I'm helping a mate to decide which camcorder to get. He's after a decent high def digital camera, budget around £600. Preferably it will have an sd card slot, good editing software, work well in low-light conditions, reasonable battery life, image stabiliser and a still image function. My benchmark is the Canon HF10 (£608 @ Aamazon). For this price, can the HF10 be beaten or not? Any and all recommendations are appreciated. Thank you.

[dave_bass5]

Originally Posted by sleepwalk

Salutations . I'm helping a mate to decide which camcorder to get. He's after a decent high def digital camera, budget around £600. Preferably it will have an sd card slot, good editing software, work well in low-light conditions, reasonable battery life, image stabiliser and a still image function. My benchmark is the Canon HF10 (£608 @ Aamazon). For this price, can the HF10 be beaten or not? Any and all recommendations are appreciated. Thank you.

Hi.
As a HF10 owner first let me say the HF10 is a very good choice and will do well for all the above although it doesn't come with "decent" editing software.
But i would say go for the cheaper HF100.
My reason for saying this other than cost is that while its nice to have 16GB built in i find i use SD cards only these days. To get the footage off the camera you have to hook it up to your computer AND the mains. You just cant do it on battery.
I find this very inconvenient at home so i just take the SD card out and put it in my PC.
Your friend might not mind doing this and im sure a lot of others dont either. Just pointing out my only disappointment with mine.
Other than that IQ is great, lowlight isnt bad (and a lot better than some), focusing is fast and accurate, OIS works well, a good selection of manual control if you want it and audio recording is good (and it has manual level control)

[sleepwalk]

Hi Dave, thanks for responding. About the software. I should have said software to transfer the film to a pc, and to convert it to other formats. It does come with this type of programme, right? What format does the camera record in (AVCHD I presume?), and what different formats can you convert it to using suppliede software? Thanks.

[jonnypb]

I agree with what Dave has said. I have the HF100 and really like it. The only thing I didn't realise is that you need quite a beefy PC and the correct codecs to play footage back on your PC and edit it as it records in AVCHD which saves the file as .mts. You can of course convert the file to different formats.

For playback of the AVCHD files on my PC I've found CoreAVC and Media Player Home Cinema to be a god send

[dave_bass5]

Originally Posted by sleepwalk

Hi Dave, thanks for responding. About the software. I should have said software to transfer the film to a pc, and to convert it to other formats. It does come with this type of programme, right? What format does the camera record in (AVCHD I presume?), and what different formats can you convert it to using suppliede software? Thanks.

To transfer the files (.mts) you can just drag and drop them to the PC.
The software that comes with the camera can import the files and automatically put them in dated folders. At the same time it renames them to .m2ts. Im not 100% sure why it does this but i think it might be to bring the file extension in line with Sony's and this MIGHT make them more compatible. The files dont get changed, just the extension.
I cant really tell you much more about the software as i dont use it. Im pretty sure you can make a DVD or BD from it and it does offer a limited amount of editing functions.
The only reason i ever used it was to join clips together without re encoding and this it does well.

As jonnypb says, CoreAVC and MPC seem to give the smoothest playback.

[schander]

Originally Posted by sleepwalk

Salutations . I'm helping a mate to decide which camcorder to get. He's after a decent high def digital camera, budget around £600. Preferably it will have an sd card slot, good editing software, work well in low-light conditions, reasonable battery life, image stabiliser and a still image function. My benchmark is the Canon HF10 (£608 @ Aamazon). For this price, can the HF10 be beaten or not? Any and all recommendations are appreciated. Thank you.

Hi,
If your really quick then you might be able to pickup the ex-display model of the HF100 from Currys for £370 , which is what i did at the weekend.
Great camera.


Regards
Satpal

[sleepwalk]

I've looked around for the HF100, but the best price I can find is £590 @ Bristol Cameras. Since the HF100 doesn't have built-in memory, you would have to buy an SDHC card which would make it more expensive to begin with than the best price for the HF10. Any idea where I can find a better deal for the HF100?

[sleepwalk]

Originally Posted by schander

Hi,
If your really quick then you might be able to pickup the ex-display model of the HF100 from Currys for £370 , which is what i did at the weekend.
Great camera.


Regards
Satpal

Hi Satpal. Which Currys store are you referring to?

[schander]

Originally Posted by sleepwalk

Hi Satpal. Which Currys store are you referring to?

Hi,
All of them. Just go in and ask if they have a HF100 and they will look it up for you. If they don't have one get them to search the local area.
I personally got it from the Wolverhampton, city centre branch, they had one in the Bedford branch but haven't checked since last week.

I think there just getting rid of all the stock.

Satpal

[FauxPas]

I bought myself an HV20 about 6 months ago from eBay, via a Canon Refurb company that are pretty good.

Here is a link to what they have at the moment:
eBay Seller: canon uk1: Camcorders items on eBay.co.uk

Hope that helps a bit.

FP.