Canon Vixia HF R32 First Impressions Review

Lens & Imaging System

Canon put a new lens on its entry-level "R-series" camcorders this year, and the results are likely to impress people who love fiddling around with extensive optical zoom. The HF R32 has a 32x optical zoom lens, which is over 50% more zoom than Canon featured on last year's HF R21 (20x zoom). This zoom can be cranked up to 51x when using Canon's advanced zoom feature.

The HF R32's image sensor underwent a more modest redesign compared to last year's R21. At 1/4.85-inches, it's the same size CMOS with the same total pixel count of 3.28 megapixels. Canon did claim it did a few tweaks with the sensor placement and design, but it should only translate to a subtle improvement in video performance—we'll see if that's actually the case when we get the R32 into our labs later this year.

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