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Canon Vixia HF S100

Canon Vixia HF S100 is a flash-based high definition digital camcorder with a very big new sensor to assure excellent image quality.

Overview:
Canon Vixia HF S100 has 8.59 megapixel sensor, still photo feature, new custom control dial and a large lens. Moreover, the camcorder is very comfortable and offers very good image quality in most circumstances. When you add to is that the Canon Vixia HF S100 is equipped with 32 Gb flash memory it seems that the new Canon camcorder is almost perfect.

Canon Vixia HF S100 pros:
+ Big new lens and sensor
+ Outstanding sharpness
+ Excellent color accuracy
+ 8 megapixel still photos
+ Plenty of manual controls
+ Great audio features
+ 20x optical zoom

Canon Vixia HF S100 cons:
- Too much noise (compared with competition)
- Low light performance could be better
- Illogical menus
- Average battery life


The design:
Canon Vixia HF S100 measures 70 x 69 x 136mm and weighs 450 grams (without lens and battery pack). The front of the camcorder is dominated by the Canon HD video lens. Below the lens you can see only the AF assist lamp. The right side of the Canon Vixia HF S100 houses the microphone, three ports hidden under the door behind the hand strap – component out, USB and HDMI-out. The left side houses the display chamber and within it the SDHC memory card slot, battery release switch, joystick and plenty of other controls and buttons. The back of Canon Vixia HF S100 houses the mode dial (at the top, where the viewfinder would normally be), the battery pack, DC power port and record on/off button. At the top of the camera is the pop up flash for still photos, Canon proprietary hot shoe and the zoom toggle, whereas at the bottom you will find only the tripod mount.

canon-vixia-hf-s100

Performance:
Canon Vixia HF S100 has quite average battery performance for a flash based camcorder as it can record slightly less than 100 minutes. More importantly, the Canon Vixia HF S100 does not disappoint with its image quality. The colors are rendered well and in good lighting conditions the camcorder shows little noise. In fact the Canon Vixia HF S100 performs quite comparably to its two most direct competitors Panasonic HDC-TM300 and Sony HDR-XR520V in good light.
The motion registered with Canon Vixia HF S100 is also very good and as the Canon camcorder records in different frame rates you have control over everything. Additionally, the camcorder has very good sharpness, and quite good low light sensitivity. However, the color is rendered a bit worse in low light than in good light. In low light the camcorder has little noise, yet still a bit more than Panasonic HDC-TM300 and Sony HDR-XR520V.
As most modern camcorders the Canon Vixia HF S100 records videos in AVCHD codec in a few different quality options where the highest is 24 Mbps.
The camcorder comes with 20x optical zoom and up to 20x digital zoom.

Still photos:
Canon Vixia HF S100 is almost as good still photo performer as video recorder. The camcorder can take photos in up to 3264 x 2456 resolution and thanks to the abundance of features and settings you can achieve really great results here. Not only can you take photos while recording, but you can also take photos in continuous mode until the camcorder runs out of memory. With well positioned, auto pop-up flash taking photos in lower light should also not be a problem.
The pictures taken with the Canon Vixia HF S100 are sharp, with relatively little noise and good colors.

canon-vixia-hf-s100-back

Menus / ease of use:
Canon Vixia HF S100 can record videos in the ‚Easy’ mode which would be great for beginners as then the Canon camcorder blocks the access to all menus. So the only thing you need to worry about is pressing the record button. However, when not in the easy mode you have to search for some settings in different menus. Although all menus are clear and straightforward it takes some time to get used to that.
All in all the Canon Vixia HF S100 is a god performer for a reasonable price.
Selected Canon Vixia HF S100 features and specifications:
Standard Definition or High Definition

  • High Definition

Television System

  • NTSC

Video Recording system

  • MPEG4v-AVC / H.264

Image Sensor

  • 1/2.6-inch CMOS, RGB Prmary Color Filter

Total Pixels

  • Approx. 8.59 Megapixels

Effective Pixels

  • Video: Approx. 6.01 Megapixels
  • (3264 x 1840) / Still Image: 16:9: Approx. 6.01 Megapixels
  • (3264 x 1840), 4:3 Approx. 8.02 Megapixels (3264 x 2456)

Maximum recording time

  • 32GB SDHC Memory Card (not supplied)
  • LP (5 Mbps) 12 hours 15 minutes
  • SP (7 Mbps) 9 hours 35 minutes
  • XP+ (12 Mbps) 5 hours 45 minutes
  • FXP (17 Mbps) 4 hours 10 minutes – Allows 1920 x 1080 Full HD Recording
  • MXP (24 Mbps) 2 hours 55 minutes – Allows 1920 x 1080 Full HD Recording

Lens

  • Zoom Ratio 10x Optical / 200x Digital
  • Focal Length f=6.4- 64mm (35mm equivalent: 43.5 – 435mm)
  • Zoom Speed Variable / 3 Fixed Zoom Speeds
  • Max. F/Stop f/1.8-3.0

Focusing System

  • Instant AF, Face Priority AF, TTL (through the lens)

Manual Exposure

  • Yes

Programmed AE

  • AUTO, P, Av, Tv, Portrait, Sports, Night, Snow, Beach,Sunset, Spotlight, Fireworks

Max Shutter Speed

  • Movie: 1/2000, Still image: 1/500

Minimum Focusing Distance

  • 10mm (wide) / 1m (tele)

White Balance

  • Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Manual

Frame Rate

  • 60i, 24p Progressive (records at 60i), 30p Progressive (records at 60i)

Minimum Illumination

  • 0.3 lx (Night mode)

Image Stabilization

  • SuperRange Optical (lens shift)

Filter Diameter

  • 58mm

LCD Screen

  • 2.7-inch Multi-Angle Vivid widescreen color LCD (Approx. 211,000 dots)

Flash

  • Built-in

Recording Media

  • SDHC Memory Card

USB Terminal

  • USB 2.0 Hi-Speed

Video Terminal

  • component (output), composite (output)

Audio

  • Dolby Digital 2 channels (AC-3 2 ch)
  • Accessory Shoe
  • mini Advanced
  • Supplied Video Editing Software
  • Pixela ImageMixer 3SE
  • HDMI Terminal
  • HDMI Mini Connector (output), CEC and x.v. Color
  • Microphone Terminal
  • 3.5 mm stereo mini-jack
  • AV Mini Terminal/Headphone Terminal
  • 3.5 mm 4 pole mini-jack (video/audio output only)

Other recently reviewed camcorders:

Sony HDR-XR520V, Panasonic HDC-HS300, Panasonic HDC-SD20.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 7:05 am and is filed under Camcorders, Canon camcorders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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