Canon HF100

The degree of hands-on freedom is one of the Canon HF100’s strongest selling points. Shutter priority, aperture priority, white balance, image & digital effects, focus, bitrate and audio/mic levels are just some of the adjustable functions at your fingertips. If you’re serious about video but can’t afford a prosumer model, then you really can’t look past this camcorder.

One caveat is the lack of a manual control dial both, Instead, you’re stuck with a display-mounted joystick. This is less than ideal, particularly when it comes to manual focus. To be fair though, this is a problem synonymous with nearly every camcorder on the market. On the plus side, the menu layout is very well organised – especially given its complexity – and fairly easy to navigate via the miniature joystick.

We were somewhat less enthused by the HF100’s appearance. While its competitors continue to outclass one another with sleek and shiny status symbols, Canon seems to knock its models together with the proverbial ugly stick. Neither an ultra portable camcorder nor professionally bulky, it’s not the most impressive looking unit on the block; especially with its drab grey finish.

In fact, if camcorders were all members of a boy band, the HF100 would be the token ugly one. Fortunately, just like an ugly boy band member, it’s probably the best performer of the lot.

In terms of video quality, the HF100 gave one of the best performances we’ve seen from a camcorder in this price range. In optimum lighting, our test footage exhibited stunning true-to-life colours and razor-sharp detail.

The 3.3-megapixel, 1/3.2″ CMOS sensor did a reasonable job of combating noise levels, although it naturally works best in bright environments (a front-mounted light can be activated for nocturnal shooting). With that being said, the camera’s low-light performance remained very impressive; especially in 25PF mode. We were also impressed with the Cine mode, which provides less saturated, film-like tones.

The Canon HF100 also doesn’t skimp on audio quality. In addition to its front-mounted microphone, it sports a pair of microphone and headphone jacks, as well as an accessory shoe compatible with Canon’s range of external microphones. As mentioned, the audio level can be manually adjusted via the camera’s miniature directional stick. All up, its audio performance is top-notch.

Despite being limited to 2.76-megapixels, the still image mode on this camcorder was well above average. The snaps will certainly prove suitable for social networking sites like Facebook, and may even provide decent prints.