Canon HF10 and a Slew of Panasonics Arrive at CamInfo

	Left to right: Panasonic HDC-SD9, Canon HF10, Pansonic HDC-HS9, Panasonic SDR-SW20

Here’s a look at the immediate future for CamcorderInfo. Earlier this week we received three exclusives from Panasonic – the HDC-SD9, HDC-HS9 (Review, Specs, Recent News, ), and SDR-SW20 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $0.00) – straight from Panasonic headquarters in Japan. Then today, a Canon HF10 showed up in our mailbox. Hallelujah! We’re in camcorder heaven. We have no official testing results yet, but here’s a first look and photo gallery.

The Canon HF10, an AVCHD camcorder recording to SDHC flash memory cards, is highly anticipated. The hope is that it follows in the footsteps of the Canon HV20 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $903) and HV30 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $0.00), HDV camcorders that produced absolutely beautiful video. However, the HF10 has a smaller imaging chip (1/3.2-inches versus 1/2.7-inches). Our early shooting indicates that this may be increasing the noise. We’ll have more on this soon. On the plus side, the HF10 is very compact and lightweight, and the auto focus is fantastic.

The Panasonic HDC-SD9 and HDC-HS9 are near-identical AVCHD camcorders. The former records to SDHC cards, and the latter records to both SDHC and a 60GB HDD. The early test results indicate a highly saturated image and poor low light, no doubt because of the three small 1/6-inch CCDs. However, the optical image stabilization is outstanding. The Panasonic SD9 is even smaller than the Canon HF10, if that’s your key criteria.