Shoot Expertise: First Look: Canon Vixia HF S10

The Canon Vixia HF S10, which will be available in March, both captures and records full HD 1920x1080.

Canon, unique among camcorder manufacturers with its roots in optics instead of electronics, has always followed a singular path. It introduced 24p HDV native progressive recording in its XL H1, XH A1, and XH G1 models before 24p was included in the HDV standard (www.hdv-info.org). Then, in lieu of a deck to play back native 24p, it provided tiny, low-cost consumer HV20 and HV30 camcorders — which doubled, in effect, as affordable native 24p playback decks. (Sony's recent HVR-M35U HDV deck now plays back native 24p. For more on this, click here)

But what drew many pros, including cinematographers, to the little HV20 and HV30 camcorders (introduced in 2007 and 2008, respectively) was not merely their 24p capability, but their remarkable image quality. These petite HDV camcorders, which have collected a host of awards at tradeshows, demonstrated what a single 1/2.7in. CMOS sensor (larger than 1/3in.) combined with superb optics could achieve in a miniature camcorder.

Canon's new Vixia HF S10 will reset this bar — boosting it much, much higher. If you can believe it, the HF S10 is smaller, lighter, faster, and sharper. It both captures and records full HD — the complete raster of 1920×1080 pixels, instead of HDV's 1440×1080. And yet, cheekily, it remains a consumer product.

Before proceeding to details, I think it's useful to ask: Just how small can an HD camera get?

Physics provides three practical answers. First, the smaller the sensor, the smaller the lens, and the smaller the lens, the smaller the iris or aperture that controls exposure. As the tiny apertures in these tiny lenses approach the size of pinholes in pinhole cameras (think f/8, f/11), a characteristic of light called diffraction takes over, in which light waves touching the edges of any small-diameter aperture scatter and impair focus. HD sharpness becomes impossible. (If you're going to use a pinhole, why bother with a lens at all?)

Second, the smaller the sensor, whether CMOS or CCD, the smaller the photosensitive sites on that sensor, and the less light-sensitive each site becomes. The photosites grow so small, incoming photons can't find them.

And third, HD ups the ante on optics, demanding superior correction for any blurriness and color fringing. Sophisticated multi-element design is the solution, but for mechanical, optical, and manufacturing reasons, this requires glass elements of a certain size and diameter. Nothing that could ever remotely fit on a Pure Digital Technologies Flip camcorder or cell phone camera.

So despite the wave of miniaturization that has continued apace since the HV20 and HV30 arrived, a smallest-possible “envelope” for consumer HD camcorders has emerged by industry consensus, courtesy of low-bit-rate AVCHD (aka long-GOP MPEG-4 AVC/H.264) and flash-memory recording.

Think of this new template as an HV20 or HV30 stripped of both viewfinder and tape transport in the handgrip. Based on a minimal sensor size between 1/4in. and 1/3in., these latest consumer HD camcorders are little more than a lens section, sensor, VLSI circuit or two, flash-memory card slot, battery, and row of ingeniously hidden connectors, all poured into a cylindrical volume the size of a familiar 250mL can of Red Bull — a threshold determined by the diameter of the compact zoom itself.

Entirely file-based, they record solely to high-capacity SD (SDHC) cards. Their flip-out LCD screens serve as graphical interfaces for joystick or touchscreen camera controls. There is as yet no name for this bantam breed of viewfinder-less camcorders, but the tubular shape is growing ubiquitous, with similar-looking models available from all major consumer camcorder manufacturers.

In the professional realm, Panasonic staked the first claim, announcing at NAB 2007 the 1.1lb. AG-HSC1U, “the world's smallest professional 3CCD high-definition camcorder,” based on a prior consumer model. Its three 1/4in. 16:9 CCDs yielded 520,000 usable pixels and required horizontal and vertical pixel shifting to create 1080×1440. (The CCDs ran warm, necessitating a tiny cooling fan. See my review here.)

From a distance, it's hard to tell any of these dinky camcorders apart, which is why, as with fine watches, what's inside the envelope is what truly counts. This is where Canon's new HF S10 raises that bar to the sky. With the HF S10, Canon is essentially making the argument that the largest market for camcorders is consumer, so why not apply the latest in high technology to create a superior product without peer? (An argument Apple is not unfamiliar with.)

In a nutshell — a nutshell the same size as its immediate predecessor, last year's HF 11 model — the HF S10 boasts a new, larger 1/2.6in., 8-megapixel CMOS sensor; a new, larger-diameter zoom featuring greater use of aspheric elements; a new DIGIC DV III (Digital Imaging Core) image processor with 3X the processing speed of the HF 11's DIGIC DV II; a host of professional features such as colored peaking, adjustable zebras, an assignable button, SMPTE color bars, automatic gain control (audio), and a 1kHz, -12dB test tone; and to top it off, 900 TV lines of horizontal resolution, per Canon. (Remember when top-shelf Digital Betacams boasted 450 TV lines a decade ago?)

From the previous HF 11, the HF S10 inherits full HD 1920×1080 capture and recording at 24p, 30p, or 60i; a built-in 32GB of flash memory with an SDHC slot for an additional 32GB (Canon calls this arrangement “Dual Flash Memory”); a hybrid active/passive Instant Auto Focus system that refocuses in less than a half-second, even at night; and a hybrid SuperRange Optical Image Stabilizer combining vector and gyro detection to compensate for both unsteady handholding (.1Hz) and car jitters (20Hz) and everything in between. (Canon invented optical image stabilization.)

There's also an active histogram; focus assist to enlarge the image during manual focusing; a Quick Start function that places the camcorder in momentary standby when the LCD is closed; lossless Dolby Digital AC-3 audio (part of the AVCHD standard) with manual audio-level control, a mic jack, and a headphone jack; uncompressed HDMI output; and the same intelligent lithium-ion batteries as the HF 11.

Lastly, the HF S10 inherits the Vixia HF 11's AVCHD recording bit rates of 24Mbps (full HD, highest quality), 17Mbps, 12Mbps, 7Mbps, and 5Mbps (subsampled, lowest quality). At 24Mbps, 32GB of built-in internal flash can record an impressive 2:55 (hours:minutes), or a combined total of nearly 6 hours when an external 32GB SDHC card is added. In a pinch, the combined 64GB can also capture 24 hours at 5Mbps — far from best quality, but nonetheless an impressive recording time as well.

Note that Canon's AVCHD recording can't span the built-in memory and external SDHC. In other words, when the internal 32GB fills up, recording stops and must be restarted using the external memory card. Canon recommends any Class 4 SDHC card or higher (SDHC goes up to Class 6).

Incidentally, Canon's consumer HF 11 pushed AVCHD to its 24Mbps ceiling (AVC/H.264 High Profile Level 4.1) at about the same time as Panasonic's professional AVCCAM AG-HMC150. Sony's new HXR-MC1 remote-head camera/recorder, by comparison, averages 16Mbps in its highest-bit-rate mode (AVC/H.264 Main Profile Level 4.0). (See my review of the HXR-MC1 in the next issue.)

What most separates the HF S10 from the prior art of the HF 11, and indeed the competition itself, are its 8-megapixel CMOS, next-generation DIGIC DV III image processor, and newly designed 10X zoom.

The 8-megapixel CMOS is a product of low-noise sensors developed for Canon's EOS SLRs, designed by Canon and made at Canon's semiconductor plant in Ayase, Japan, just west of Tokyo. It features state-of-the-art dual micro-lens architecture (like that of Sony's F23) for enhanced sensitivity and dual-noise canceling at both column and output amplification.

In case you're wondering, only the still-photo function takes advantage of all eight megapixels. (The HF 11, by comparison, mustered a total of 3.3 megapixels.) Full HD, which is 1920×1080 or 2.07 megapixels, is extracted from a cropped 6-megapixel (3264×1840) section of the larger CMOS by the fast DIGIC DV III processor. The massive advantages to resolution, sensitivity, and signal-to-noise of such over-sampling can not be overstated — 900 TV lines of horizontal resolution is not chopped liver.

The HF S10 offers a Dual Shot video and photo recording mode in which, while shooting HD, a one-button push also takes a 6-megapixel (3264×1840) still photo. Another slick trick is a 1.7X Digital Tele-converter mode — which, when enabled by menu, takes the full 6-megapixel grid of 3264×1840 pixels and zooms down to the center portion of the CMOS, an area of 1920×1080 pixels, for a 1.7X enlargement. Even though this is accomplished digitally, not optically, there's no discernable image degradation because the end result is still a full native count of 1920×1080 pixels. Combined with the 10X optical zoom of the lens, this digital feature extends the effective zoom range to 17X.

The blazing speed of the DIGIC DV III image processor that makes possible the Digital Tele-converter also enables a remarkable new face-recognition technique. Face Detection involves using the joystick at the edge of the LCD to place a small box around a person's face in the LCD image while shooting. The HF S10's Instant Auto Focus tracks the face and keeps it in focus as the face moves within the frame. If there are multiple faces, the operator selects which one to place the box around, and Face Detection does the rest.

A parallel feature called Face Index Search exists for playback: While viewing pages of thumbnails in the LCD, the operator selects a single face — again, using the joystick to place a box around it — and the HF S10 then assembles for viewing all the clips that contain that face.

As mentioned above, the HF S10's 10X zoom is also in a class by itself, with aspheric glass elements — Canon molds them to a tolerance of 30 nanometers, no polishing required — along with fluorite elements that combine to eliminate color fringing. Neither is common in consumer camcorders. To eliminate softening due to diffraction, the HF S10 employs a unique hybrid aperture, part adjustable opening and part graduated neutral density filter slid over the physical aperture by a tiny actuator motor. In the process of stopping down, the “grad” takes over from the physical aperture, relieving it of the need to further contract to pinhole dimensions to achieve an f/8 or f/11.

To house these advances, the HF S10's lens has grown slightly larger, with a 58mm filter diameter compared to 37mm for the HF 11's 12X zoom. Narrow angle-of-view plagues these small camcorders — wide angle is never wide enough — and Canon addresses this with a 0.7X WD-H58 wide-angle adapter for the HF S10, with an expected street price of $400.

There's much more to say about the Vixia HF S10 and its sister camcorder, the HF S100, which lacks built-in flash memory but is otherwise identical. Canon, for one, is anxious to see whether its novel Video Snapshot feature, which automatically limits shots to 4 seconds each, will be a hit with consumers who otherwise lack any concept of appropriate shot length. It's a simple but clever idea, possibly brilliant.

That's a good way to characterize the HF S10 itself, which produces images far better than it has any right to. Although the HF S10 isn't the only HD camcorder Canon will introduce in 2009, I think it will turn out to be the most intriguing by a mile.

The Vixia HF S10 will be available in March with a list price of $1,299 (same as HF 11).

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