Canon Vixia HV40

Video Sharpness (10.19)

Video sharpness is a key element to measuring video quality because it gives you an idea of how much detail a camcorder will be able to capture in its image. The Canon HV40 was quite good with sharpness, but it was definitely a notch below some of the high-end AVCHD camcorders out there. The HV40 measured a horizontal sharpness of 700 lw/ph and a vertical sharpness of 600 lw/ph. Compare these numbers to the Canon HF S100, which earned 800 lw/ph horizontal and 650 lw/ph vertical, and you can see the difference we’re talking about. The Panasonic HDC-TM300 and the Sony HDR-XR520V also bested the Canon HV40 in this category, although the results were close.

During the test, we noticed the Canon HV40 managed a vertical resolution of around 750 lw/ph when the camcorder and the subject we shot were perfectly still. Once we put the camcorder in motion there was a lot of aliasing and the lines on our sharpness chart began to break up around 600 lw/ph. We score our sharpness test with the camcorder in motion, however, which is why we gave the HV40 a final vertical sharpness of 600 lw/ph. This is actually a very common occurrence with camcorders, although the difference between sharpness in motion versus still usually isn’t that substantial. More on how we test video sharpness.

Stabilization (0.54)

Even though the Canon HV40 is equipped with an optical image stabilization system (OIS), the camcorder didn’t do very well in our stabilization testing. Yes, the camcorder’s OIS does help stabilize shake in hand held shooting, but our results found that it did not work as effectively as other camcorders—particularly in our high shake test.. More on how we test stabilization.

In our low shake test, the HV40 was able to reduce roughly 7% of the shake by using its OIS system. This isn’t very good, especially when you consider the HV40 is so heavy and box-shaped (which should keep it more stable). In our high shake test, the HV40 didn’t show any improvement with its OIS engaged. These poor numbers aren’t that different from what we saw on the Canon HF S series. In comparison, the Sony HDR-XR520V had one of the best stabilization systems we tested. The Panasonic HDC-TM300 also did quite well with this test.

The video above shows the HV40 with both stabilization turned off and on. As you can see, it is difficult to notice any difference between the two images. We must say, however, that in real-life, hand held shooting with the camcorder we did notice a difference with OIS engaged. When we hooked the HV40 up to our shake rig, however, the camcorder had a lot of difficulty stabilizing the footage.