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Canon HV20 One-Chip HDV High Definition Video Camera
A Secrets Digital Video Camera Review
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Written by John E. Johnson, Jr.   
Friday, 11 January 2008
Article Table of Contents
Page 1
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On the Bench

For the Canon HV20, the telephoto lens test (second photo below) showed more falloff than the wide angle lens (first photo below). However, the maximum falloff was still only 0.7 f/stops.



The ChromaDuMonde looked very good, again indicating excellent automatic white balance.


The HV20 had an MTF50 resolution of 627 LW/PH, which is really excellent for such an inexpensive HD camera.

resolution results

resolution results

Chromatic aberration was 0.602 pixels.

resolution results

In the gray levels test, the HV20 follows the first order, which means it does not attenuate the whites to avoid blowout. Noise maxed out in the blue channel at 0.95 in the bright whites, and then decreased into the shadows. That was evident in the video material, which had nice clean shadow regions.

gray scale

gray scale results

The ColorChecker suggests a better than average color reproduction accuracy. The top left corner of each color patch is what that color is supposed to look like, and the bottom right corner is how the Canon HV20 reproduced that color.

color checker results

Conclusions

The Canon HV20, for 2007, has the best performance-to-cost ratio of any HD camera we have tested. Canon corporation has been making cameras and lenses for many decades. Their digital SLRs are consistently rated at the top, and it looks like their HD video cameras will continue that tradition.
Comments (9)add comment
HG10?
written by ender21 , January 14, 2008

Great review JJ. I own the HV20 and have enjoyed a lot of nice images from it.

However, if I had it to do over again, I would have waited another month before buying and instead bought the HG10 instead. With its built-in hard drive allowing for greater capacity and AVCHD, full resolution 1920x1080 video, with all other things being equal wouldn't it be a better choice over the tape-based, 1440x1080 solutions on the HV20?


Interlaced? what about 1080p24?
written by Kieran , January 18, 2008

You say that the video is interlaced, but on the first page you say that with the 1080p24 functionality an indie film crew would be all set... so how does the 1080p24 output work, if the native video is interlaced? Is the camera itself doing some 3:2 inverse telecine?

Re: Interlaced? what about 1080p24?
written by ender21 , January 18, 2008

That's correct. It's a faux 24p wherein it introduces 3:2, then presumably said indie crew will have the software/hardware package capable of extracting the 24fps from the 3:2 in post-production.

Great review, thanks.
written by gl , January 23, 2008

Great review, thanks.

...
written by JEJ , January 25, 2008

AVCHD is a highly compressed format, so you can get a lot of video on the hard drive. I will request the HH10 next, now that the HV20 is completed, and we will compare them.

excellent review
written by ramesh , July 06, 2008

you are giving detailly about hv20 and hv10. thank you very much for great review. but i have a request you should concentrate on upcoming and latest camcorders in the market. like other camcorder sites.
any way thank you very much for this review


hv20
written by sreenivas , July 18, 2008

exlent low cast hdv cam with tape backup is very standard format for us.hdd can fails some times .but there record on tape so we are very happy to take this camera....thank u cannon camera family....

hai
written by ramesh , August 01, 2008

thankyou for great review
you are not writing about sony camcorders and comparisions also with other camcorders in the market especially in hdv


Good review, but why reviewing the HV20 in 2008?
written by Michael J. , August 12, 2008

The HV30 came out half a year ago, the HV20 is history now. Why reviewing an old model?

When posting test results you should have specified what mode was it, presumably HDV (60i) full auto.



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