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Camcorders tell us what we can achieve
If there is one problem with Canon, it would be the overwhelming number of products it launches every semester
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I
f there is one problem with Canon, it would be the overwhelming number of products it launches every semester.
Last February, for example, Datascrip hauled a sizeable group of reporters to Bali, where this Canon distributor introduced no less than nine new consumer-class camcorders, ranging from Rp 3 million to a heart-stopping Rp 27 million.
With so many new camcorders brought to market at once, it is no wonder consumers are at a loss when it comes to choosing one. So, usually it depends on when you need a camcorder and what your budget is. For instance, if you are getting ready to go on vacation with your family, then it is time for you to invest in a new camcorder.
Canon brands its consumer camcorders “Legria”, from the Spanish word alegria, which means “joy”. While the company also has professional—and studio-class camcorders that can easily exceed the Rp 100-million mark, do not look down at this latest crop of consumer camcorders. Most of them are full HD-capable. Some are equipped with tools to create movies.
Courtesy of Datascrip, I was able to play around with one of the models introduced in Bali, the Legria HF R26. It is the low-end members of the R Series. The slightly higher end is the R28. The difference between them lies in the internal memory size.
The HF R26 has 8 gigabytes of internal memory to keep videos and photos, while the R28 has 36 gigabytes.
It is interesting to see how camera memory has evolved over the years. Formerly, we had camcorders equipped with a hard disk to store the videos. Then we had ones with a CD writer attached to it. Today, however, the growingly popular configuration is one that uses the tiny flash memory.
In the Legria HF R26, there are two SD card slots. If you use the high capacity cards (SDHCs), you may have more memory than you can create with one battery charge.
A Canon Legria HF R26 camcorder: www.canon-asia.com
The Rp 6.2 million Legria HF R26 comes in a choice of black, red or silver, and I like the black one. The strap keeps my right hand snug while my index finger falls comfortably on the zoom and photo buttons. This model has a 3-inch, touch-sensitive LCD viewfinder, which gives around 230,000 pixels. I found the menus responsive, which is an improvement on the Legria HF M300.
The HF 26 has a 20x optical zoom capability plus 400x digital zoom. The focal length is from 3.0 to 60 millimeters. It also has a dynamic electronic image stabilization to help those with unsteady hands. Its audio features the two channel Dolby Digital (AC3 2 ch). There is no accessory shoe, unfortunately, so we cannot add a lamp or a flash to this camcorder. As the result, it performs best only in good lighting conditions.
To recharge the battery, Canon supplies an AC adaptor. There is no cradle in the box. If you buy this camcorder and plan to use it extensively, as usual you had better buy a spare battery. My experience showed that the battery lasted more than two hours per full charge. On the left, behind the viewfinder, we have the USB and HDMI port. You will need a Class-4 HDSC or faster memory cards to record HD videos or movies. Yes, this camcorder can produce the 16:9 HD at 1920 x 1080 or the standard 4:3 format. Not bad for a relatively affordable camcorder.
Relying only on the 8 gigabyte internal memory, we will have space to store around 40 minutes of the highest quality video, which is the MXP 24 MBps. The lower the video quality, the longer the video we can store internally. In the LP 5 Mbps mode, we can store up to 3 hours of video.
There are also five different ways to focus the lens. We can use the automatic focus (AF), or tell the camcorder to use Face Priority AF, Manual Focus or through the lens (TTL) autofocus. Or we can touch the area on the viewfinder where we want the camcorder to focus.
Some of the higher-end models in the new batch of Legrias have a feature called Story Creator. Basically, it is a tool that helps us combine video clips according to the right sequence with complete documentation. So, for example, if we are going on a trip to the beautiful West Sumatra, we can start with Preparation, followed by Departure, Arrival at Minangkabau Airport, the trip to Padang Panjang where Sate Mak Sukur must not be missed. Then the trip continues to Bukittinggi, check in at the hotel and a walk to Panorama.
Canon includes this feature in the Cinema Style group. We can use different filters such as Dream or Nostalgic. The camcorder will recommend the right length for each clip. This movie director feature is available on the Legria HF M41/400, HF G10 and XA 10.
Canon is certainly not the only player on the camcorder turf, but looking at the latest models we can get some idea of what a camcorder now enables us to accomplish. In the past, only truly professional cameramen could produce the same results.
