Canon’s latest gadget-envy camcorder is out and it’s called the Vixia HSF11. Combining stylish looks with high-quality video recordings, it manages exceptionally vivid moving images, but not without a few caveats.
How a camcorder so small can pack so much power is really surprising. But it does. With a 1/2.6-inch CMOS sensor, optical stabilization, digital image processing, 10X zoom and an excellent hardware set, everything we shot looked life-like and sharp, even under poor lighting. In fact, the only time we saw some niggling issues was when shooting far-off (maximum optical zoom) into the distance without a tripod. It even manages exceptional stills, in case you ever use a camcorder for shooting photos.
When it comes capture quality, we encountered no real problems with the HSF11. The controls, however, are a mixed bag. Sure, the knurled manual focus is clever, but a lot of functions that are easily accessible via physical buttons in other camcorders got shafted because of the size. Instead of reaching over and pressing, you’ll have to dig through menus to access them. The menu’s control knob was pretty snazzy, but, again, I’d rather press a button for most of those functionalities.
At a $1,400 price tag, the Canon Vixia HSF11 isn’t cheap. But it’s high-quality, it’s pretty and it almost fits into my front pocket. That sounds good enough for me.
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