Product Review: Canon HV20 Mini DV/HDV Camcorder

If you are in love with taking videos or a fan of traveling and want to keep your memories handy, then you are definitely in need of a camcorder! Now the big question is which camcorder to get? What's the best camera for your needs? What is your price range? Well, hopefully after you read this article, you will no either which camcorder is right for you or which one is way wrong for you.

Today we are going to talk about the Canon HV20 Mini DV/HDV Camcorder. I must admit that I'm very fond of this camcorder and a huge fan of Canon. I feel that all their products are great and worth the money.

Price range for the Canon HV20 Mini DV/HDV Camcorder: $709.97 - $1,099.00

Canon HV20 has a horizontal design that solves many problems compared to their earlier design, the HV10 which has a vertical design, but also causes the HV20 to have a much larger body . Despite its larger body, the HV20 can still fit into a coat or jacket pocket, depending on the pocket size; it may or may not be a tight squeeze. The HV20's has a very nice, big, 10x optical, f/1.8 to f/3 zoom lens, with a Super-Range Optical Image Stabilization.

The Canon HV20 has a 1/2.7-inch CMOS, 3-megapixel sensor which includes a 1,920 horizontal pixel view and a 1,080 vertical pixels view. This camcorder can capture a max of 2.76 megapixels (1,920x1440) still-digital pictures. Canon also made sure to offer a lower-capacity NB-2LH and higher-capacity BP-2L14 batteries for accessories.

Most of the HV20's controls are located in easy to get to places. But everything good has a bad. There are a couple switches on the HV20's right side body that allow you to go from MiniDV tape to MiniSD flash memory card media. These are a pain compared to the other controls. Canon placed its usual four buttons below the camcorder's 2.7-inch, wide-screen LCD. The buttons are used to start and stop recording, zoom in or out, double as playback controls, and access focus assist mode

Footage with the HV20 proved to be rather sharp with its colors. There is very little noise on the video, especially in good lighting, and the color quality and saturation is amazing. Even in low light conditions, the HV20 is still very impressive. Normally there is a lot of graininess to a video in low light, but there is very little grains appearing on the low light shoot of HV20. Very nice!

Still images aren't of the best, but they still print considerably nice 4x6 photos. The still image photos are very similar to still image photos taken with the Canon HV10. You can't really move much when you take a photo and the item you are trying to take a photo off can't be moving very much because you will get blurriness.

That's all for the Canon HV20 Camcorder series!