Shoot Tools: Canon

Expected to be available in September. Price: $1,199 (Vixia HF11); $1,299 (Vixia HG21)

You might not rely on camcorders employing the recently introduced AVCHD compression standard for your day-to-day work — it turns up mostly in smaller-sized, consumer-oriented camcorders that use hard drives or solid-state recording. But their small size makes for a good second-unit choice. Meanwhile, the quality available from the codec is improving; camcorders such as Canon's Vixia HF11 and Vixia HG21 are coming to market capable of recording to the specs at full 24Mbps bit rate — a significant boost from the initial maximum of 17Mbps that delivers smoother-looking images. The HG21 also gets more storage — from a 40GB drive in the prior model to a 120GB drive in the new one. The HF11, meanwhile, has had its internal flash-memory capacity doubled from 16GB to 32GB.
www.usa.canon.com