Canon Vixia HF S10

Miscellaneous Controls (12.50)

Tele-conversion

Digitally enlarges the center of the screen by roughly 1.7 times—essentially producing the same effect as a tele-conversion lens. This is a digital image effect that lowers the effective pixel count from 6.01 megapixels to 2.07 megapixels.

Color Bar

Displays an original set of SMPTE color bars that can be recorded as footage and used for calibration later. The camcorder can also produce an audio reference tone with the color bars.

Zebra

Zebra is a common professional feature that assists with manual exposure adjustment. With the setting activated, black and white stripes will appear in overexposed areas while you are shooting. (The stripes won’t end up on your final footage.) This helps you manually adjust exposure levels to make sure nothing in the frame is blown-out from over-exposure. You can set the sensitivity of the zebra setting to 70% (slightly overexposed) or 100% (very overexposed).

Onscreen Markers

Onscreen markers, or guide frames, on the Canon HF S10 can be displayed as a single horizontal line in white or grey, or as a nine-quadrant grid also in white or grey. These lines won’t be in your recorded footage and are simply used to assist with framing.

Audio Controls (5.75)

The Canon HF S10 has more audio controls than your average consumer camcorder. Unfortunately, the most basic audio feature, the on-board microphone, is not one of the camcorder’s strengths. The microphone is a Dolby Digital 2-channel, where many high-end camcorders feature 5-channel sound. The is also poorly placed, flanking the camcorder’s lens on both the left and right side. The mic on the right side is easily scuffed by the hand gripping the camcorder; the mic on the left side is just asking to be hit every time you operate the custom control dial.

Near the very front of the HF S10 is a 1/8-inch external microphone jack. This is an adequate position for the jack, but the port itself has no covering or protection of any kind. We’re surprised Canon would leave this important port completely exposed, particularly when the Canon mid-range HF20 offers much better port protection. The audio levels can be manually adjusted for both the built-in and external microphone, which is a good feature to have if you’re planning on using the HF S10 to shoot concerts, plays, or any event where good sound recording is vital.

When adjusting audio, the camcorder doesn’t display any hard numbers or actual decibel gain levels. Instead, you are provided with a long bar that can be raised or lowered, almost like you’re adjusting a volume knob on a radio. While this is still a useful feature, it can be a hassle if you’re trying to adjust audio to a specific gain level. The HF S10 does have an audio level display, however, with markers set at -40dB, -12dB, and 0dB—so you can still get an idea of where your audio levels are peaking. If you plan to spend a lot of time adjusting audio levels, you can assign audio levels to the custom control dial and use the dial for finer control. (Just beware that your finger isn’t scuffing the microphone in the process.)

Editing (7.00)

Like its sister models, the Canon HF S10 simply comes with too many software discs. There’s the ‘transfer utility’ disc, the ‘video tools’ disc, the ‘video software’ disc, and the instruction manual. Four discs is enough to make you pull out your hair, even if you aren’t easily intimidated by technology. The instruction manual disc might be self-explanatory, but you’ll probably spend too much time figuring out what the other three discs are.

Our suggestion is to slog through installing all three—even if you don’t think you’ll need the software. When you first plug the HF S10 into your computer, you’ll probably also have to install a driver. Windows will hopefully help you do this; otherwise, you’ll need to get it from one of these discs. (Probably video tools?)

Once you install all three discs, you’ll have access to the transfer utility, as well as software for editing both photos and videos from the HF S10.

ImageMixer 3 SE is the heart of the software package. The most important task handled by the program is transferring your files from the camcorder to your computer. You can’t simply drag and drop AVCHD files. This program, however, makes the transfer process very easy. This is especially important when you’re working with internal memory camcorders that should be backed up from time to time. ImageMixer also allows you to transfer footage from your computer back onto your camcorder.

The Editing/Authoring portion of ImageMixer is a little more complicated to use, but it has several options that intermediate video editors will welcome. You can adjust the volume of your video, add your own audio files, add text/titles, or do some basic splicing and trimming.

Though ImageMixer is at the core of the HF S11’s software, it also comes with a separate photo viewer/editor and a program for transferring your own audio files onto the camcorder (for use with playlists and Video Snap). For an overview of the software that ships with this and other camcorders, see our article: Video Editing Software For Your Camcorder.