Canon HV30 review

Once you get over the fact that Canon's new combined HDV and MiniDV camcorder differs little from last year's HV20 in anything but the sleek black body colour, you'll soon appreciate what this fully featured high definition camcorder has to offer.

Although pricier than Canon's regular miniDV offerings, it offers picture and sound quality that will do justice to your shiny new 1080 line HDTV - and you'll be able to continue using your MiniDV recordings too. Not only does the HV30 provide a superb level of functionality for the newcomer to digital video, but its specification will attract semi-pro users too.

As usual with Canon, the HV30 uses a 1/2.7 inch CMOS sensor to capture up to 2.96 megapixel moving and still images. The 10x zoom lens includes optical image stabilisation to help iron out shaky camerawork. You can save 2048x1536 stills to MiniSD card, with proper camera features like exposure bracketing and built-in flash. But it's on the movie side that the HV30 really shines. You have the option of full manual control over aperture, white balance and audio input, in addition to a backlight compensator and zebra peak white exposure indicator. There's also a 25P progressive frame mode to give footage a more film-like look.

As for connections, the HV30 has the lot. There are HDMI and component digital video outputs, a two-way FireWire socket for copying HDV and DV movie clips out and back, plus Mini-B USB 2.0 for exporting pictures to your PC. Serious users will welcome the mic input and headphone output.

The impossibly small, fixed viewfinder is open to question, and the menu thumbwheel is rather inaccessible, but the HV30 will amaze and delight users looking for ease of use, superb HD quality and an unrivalled set of specifications and features at the price. If you're OK with shooting to tape rather than direct to hard disk or memory card (tapes are easier to archive; drawbacks include slower transfer to PC), the HV30 should be at the top of your list.