Canon Vixia HF G10 Camcorder Review

Color

The new Canon HF G10 produced excellent results in our color accuracy test and we were pleased to see the camcorder offered significant improvement over last year's HF S21. The G10 had a low color error of 3.22 and a saturation level that fell just under 100%. These are top-notch results for a consumer camcorder, although the Panasonic HDC-TM700 did fair a bit better in this test. More on how we test color.

The map above is a diagram of the color error. The length and direction of each line indicates how the camera processed each particular color while capturing video.

The Canon Vixia HF G10 produced a color error of 3.22 and a saturation level of 98.21% in our bright light color testing.

In addition to its good color accuracy in auto mode, the HF G10 also has a few manual color controls that offer adjustments to color depth, contrast, sharpness and brightness (each with a -2 to +2 adjustment range). Examples of the color depth and contrast adjustments can be seen below. If you don't want to adjust these things manually, the HF G10 also has a set of Cinema-Look Filters, a few of which alter the color performance on the camcorder. These filters include options called Vivid, Dream, Cool, Nostalgic, Sepia, Old Movies, Memory, and Dramatic Black & White.

On the surface, the colors produced by the HF G10 don't look all that much different to what we see from the HF S21. Looking closer, though, you'll see the G10 has a better contrast range and its colors are deeper and more vibrant. You can see this in the large comparison images below, as well as the close-up color comparisons that follow. The Panasonic HDC-TM700 produced equally vivid colors (saturation level of 98%) to the Canon HF G10, while both the HF S21 and Sony HDR-CX550V had saturation levels below 90% (88% for the Sony, 84% for the HF S21).

Low Light Color

Continuing with its strong low light performance, the Canon HF G10 produced colors in our low light test with very good accuracy. The camcorder managed a color error of 3.89 and a saturation level of 76.73%. Both of these numbers are a bit worse than the G10's bright light performance, but they are still well ahead of the competition (particularly last year's HF S21). More on how we test low light color.

The map above is a diagram of the color error. The length and direction of each line indicates how the camera processed each particular color while capturing video.

As we did with our low light sensitivity test, we also tested the HF G10 in color accuracy using its alternate frame rates. The alternate frame rates did allow the camcorder to produce a brighter image, which resulted in higher saturation levels, but the color accuracy didn't increase significantly (as you can see from the chart below). We saw the same amount of improvement when we shot with the camcorder using less zoom and an aperture of around f/2.

The HF G10 doesn't have a much brighter image than the competition, but its colors are very strong (and it is a bit brighter than the HF S21 overall). What the camcorder's excellent sensitivity score tells us is that its image doesn't get much darker than what you see below—until the light levels get extremely dim. Essentially, the HF G10 is able to produce a usable, consistent image until there is very little light in your shooting environment.

Noise

Noise levels were just under 0.6% in our bright light testing with the HF G10. Much like we saw in our color accuracy test, this is a better performance than the Canon HF S21 registered (0.75% noise). None of the camcorders below did a "bad" job in this test, and we rarely see a sub par noise performance from a high-end HD camcorder in bright light. More on how we test noise.

Since none of the camcorders shown above have a terrific problem with noise, let's take a look at the sharpness each camcorder is capable of. The crops above do a great job illustrating sharpness, and you can see that the HF G10 and the Sony HDR-CX550V have images that look a bit softer than the Canon HF S21. The Panasonic HDC-TM700 has the most detailed image by far, and that is a direct result of the camcorder's pristine 1080/60p record mode that utilizes a very high recording bitrate.