Which of the Canon Vixia camcorders has the best low light performance?

June 22, 2009 10:27 PM

I have a Canon XH A1 camcorder. It's very nice and has an excellent low light mode. However, it's just too big to carry around casually. I'm interested in getting one of the tiny Canon Vixia HD camcorders. However, most camcorders shoot terrible video anyplace that doesn't have excellent light. Which of the Canon Vixia camcorders has the best low light performance. And, how good is it compared to the Canon XH A1 low light performance? The most expensive Vixia appears to be the HF S10.
posted by HappyEngineer to shopping (1 comment total)

I have a Canon Vixia HF100 but unfortunately have nothing to compare it to, as it's my first, and so far haven't used it in a low light situation. However when I was researching my purchase, I started with this list of more camcorder-specific sites, where you may have an easier time getting model-specific specific technical info like this.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=161
http://dvinfo.net/
http://www.videouniversity.com/
http://www.videomaker.com/scripts/index.cfm
http://reviews.cnet.com/Camcorders

Just in assembling this, I noticed one person's post on avsforum talking about some info on camcorderinfo.com that noted that a particular Panasonic camera beat the hf s10 in low light at one frame rate, while the s10 caught up at another frame rate. So be sure to dig that one level deeper and figure out which frame rate you might be using most, weighting your low light considerations accordingly. When I was researching mine, people were going on and on about which mode worked best in different scenarios and what the quirks and performance were for my model in each mode.

Also I saw this, in one of those threads, which sounds right up your alley: "Also note that it looks like the Canon's low light sensitivity took a slight turn for the worse in 2009. The HF10 / HF11 from 2008 needed only 10 lux to do 50 IRE at 60i, while the HF S10 / HF S100 from 2009 need 16 lux to do 50 IRE (according to camcorderino.com)" Follow up on that of course, but it sounds like the right kind of discussion.

Also, on Vimeo.com you can search on "HF S10 low light" and find a number of tests. Actually just search for the model number and you'll get the full range of tests. Whether any pit your current and future camera vs. one another on low light, I don't know.
posted by Askr at 8:42 AM on June 23