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Digital Cameras Canon HV20 One-Chip HDV High Definition Video Camera
Digital Cameras Canon HV20 One-Chip HDV High Definition Video Camera
Digital Cameras
| Canon HV20 One-Chip HDV High Definition Video Camera |
| Written by John E. Johnson, Jr. | |||||
| Friday, 11 January 2008 02:22 | |||||
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On the Bench   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.   Chromatic aberration was 0.602 pixels.  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.   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.  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 (12)
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 19, 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.
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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.
it's about progressive!!!
written by progressivist , February 01, 2009 The advice of holding the camera very still in order to avoid jaggies on vertical structures is really silly. The whole point of the HV20 is the progressive mode. There's not much of a point in using it in its 60i mode except for when you want to do a slo-mo scene in post. You can no longer buy any interlaced displays (CRT), so why bother with interlaced video - that's so 1940s... Oh, and yes, you should have reviewed the HV30 instead. On the other hand a bit of history isn't that bad either.
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written by JEJ , February 03, 2009 The HV30 was not available when I got the HV20 for review. Shooting in 1080p does have its disadvanatages in that the image is not nearly as smooth as it is with 1080i. That's because with 1080i you have 60 different images when there is motion in the scene, while with 1080p30 you only have 30 and your eyes can detect this. After having tested both types, I prefer 1080i60 over 1080p30.
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written by me , November 17, 2009 you've 60 different images and they are interlaced why would 60 halves be better than 30 whole images? it's also not a faux 24p btw the 24p is packed in there untouched you only need a program that can properly read the flags and takes only the 24p recorded video discarding the added frames packed in to make it 30/60 and more compatible on video out etc. the real advantage to the p modes is the longer exposure time giving much better black level performance and from what i've seen in other reviews better color accuracy. if it's good enough for film i'd assume it's good enough for entry level home hdv. Write comment
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