Customer Reviews

Canon VIXIA HF S30 Flash Memory Camcorder with SuperRange Optical Image Stabilizer with Powered IS

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought the VIXIA HF S30 Camcorder about a month ago to take with me on a trip to Orlando Disney World and Universal Studios. I loaded it with 2 x 32GB SD cards and the optional 5.1 microphone. I also bought the optional battery charger and took it with me instead of the power supply that comes with it. Of course, and optional battery the BP-819 was a must have since the bundled one, the BP-808, won't last for any useful shoot. My total investment was about $1,300 for this package which is a lot. Putting the cost aside, I am happy with this purchase and I think I got what I was looking for. Here is a rundown from my experience:
1. Canon needs to learn from Apple how to make user friendly interfaces to their products. I have been buying canon cameras and camcorders for a long time and they all come with thick manuals (211 pages) in small print and a ton of instructions. I spent the two weeks before the trip trying to learn how to use this camcorder. In the end I was able to get most of what I needed to do. Of course, you could set the camera to auto mode and it would take care of itself, but that's not what you want to do with this camera. You want to have control and that's what you pay for.
2. The touch screen is great. Contrary to the CNET review that I watched before purchasing, you don't need to use the scroll bar on the right edge. You just run your finger up or down anywhere on the screen and it will scroll. The screen is very clear and the text and messages are helpful. The images are vivid and the screen will be your reference most of the time except in bright daylight.
3. One of the best features of the camera is the viewfinder. First you will need it in bright sunlight. More importantly, I used it when recording in dark locations such as in theaters when you don't want your camera to be the only source of light in a room.
4. The BP-819 battery was more than enough for my purpose. I would leave early in the morning and come back after midnight and watch some of the recorded videos before I set it to recharge overnight. I never needed the original battery that I used as a backup. It doesn't add much weight and it sits flush with the viewfinder. Recommended for sure.
5. The 5.1 microphone was fun to have and added dimensions to the recorded sound. However, it added volume and its rabbit skin cover made the camera look more like a production type than a hobbyist one. When listening through the earphones, the recorded sound was amazing. Clear, directional, and full of details. There is definitely a tradeoff here: compactness vs. the sound quality.
6. The bundled software includes useful tools. However, there is a conflict between the Pixela software included on 2 CDs. When I tried to install the Transfer Utility, I got a message saying you already have VideoBrowser installed and you need to uninstall it to continue. After going back and forth between these two applications, I ended up installing the VideoBrowser alone which I used yesterday to transfer my recorded videos to my PC. It did a good job transferring everything. I now need to learn about editing and transferring to disc although I intend to use Adobe Premiere for editing.
7. When connecting the Component video cable, or the RCA cable to your TV, you cannot close the camera screen. I guess this is because the remote control sensor is on the screen. This remote control has very limited playback functions: Play and Pause only. No fast forward or rewind, although these are available manually on the touch screen - Duh!
8. The bottom line: This camcorder produces vivid HD images in bright light. It does record in very dark places but you need to adjust its settings and do some experimenting. Having Disney's Electrical Parade recorded in HD and 5.1 surround sound is worth all the investment. The camera is powerful, compact, lightweight, and full of features. No tapes, disks, or hard drives to worry about. Absolutely commendable.

Two of my favorite things about this camcorder:

1. It has a mode that lets your start recording 3 seconds before you hit the record button.

So, say you're trying to record little Timmy slugging a ball into the outfield, but he keeps swinging and missing. Over and over and over. Just keep the camera on him until he hits the ball, then hit record. The camera starts the recording with the 3 second buffer it's been storing. No more digging through tons of video to find the moment you were trying to capture.

2. It can upload footage and photos wirelessly.

Stop digging for cables or swapping memory cards! Well, ok, this feature requires that you buy an Eye-Fi card and pop it into the second memory slot. But once you've done that, any time you want to send a photo or video to Facebook or YouTube (or just to your computer) you just a have to push a button, and the camera not only transfers the selected media from internal memory or slot 1 to the Eye-Fi card, it also transcodes your hi-def video into a more YouTube-friendly format for faster transfer.

The image stabilization also seems amazing to me, but this is the first camcorder I've had with that feature, so I'm not sure how unique it is. (I've always been an 'everything on manual' type.)

The menus can seem a little confusing at first, as some things are rather well hidden, and the touch screen is resistive rather than capacitive, so it takes a bit more pressure than an iPhone, but these are things you get used to pretty quickly.

The picture quality is, of course, amazing, but that's to be expected.

If you buy this (or any camera worth more than fifty bucks) buy yourself a filter to protect the lens, and a lens cap to protect the filter. This should be common knowledge, but apparently it is not.

A bit on the expensive side (for me), but this camera really delivers. It's hard to imagine doing much better. I use this camera for web videography, and the quality of the HD video it produces speaks well for the camera's optics and electonics. I've shot about 6 hours of video so far, and I'm very pleased.

I recommend an external microphone for any & all interviewing work, and this camera will accomodate one through its "mic" jack. That's the main reason I bought it instead of a less-expensive, purely consumer-grade camera. The camera is light, small, and portable -- great for 'field work' covering public gatherings.

They're costly, but I also recommend one of the longer-life batteries for the camera unless you know you need less than 1 hour of video on every shoot.

All in all, I'm very pleased, and if I had it to do over, I'd go right back to this very same camera.

Before buying this camera I read a lot of online reviews that praised the HD quality, but all commented on how user-hostile the camera is. They were right. The menu doesn't work at all unless you hit the playback button, then everything is counterintuitive. It's best to set aside some time with the manual and struggle to get it set up the way you want it, then don't change anything. You won't anyway, it's just too hard. This camera comes with Pixela ImageMixer for transferring movies to your PC. This software isn't as hostile as the camera, but the features are very limited. Want to drop a full resolution video to an iPad? Sorry, no can do, use the iPod resolution instead. How about dropping a high res movie? Well, ok, but only WMV format. Where are my files? All that's hidden from the user.

Would I buy this camera again? I'm not sure. The movie quality is definitely there, but everything else is second rate.

Camera works great - mechanically & electronically. Menu is non-intuitive and a struggle. Touch screen works - once you know what you need to to. .MTS video files are *extremely* limited in what you can do with them. Software is absolutely terrible. Crashed in Windows 7 (64 bit). Without the software, camera is fairly useless. So steep learning curve and crappy software.
Would probably be great just to take videos and play as AVCHD native format. Or if you already have or are willing to find and buy a H.264/AVCHD capable editing package. I'm really disappointed that Canon neglected the software; farming it out to a third party with miserable results.
Microphone is pretty good. HD video quality is pretty good. IS is good, too. So, TAKING pictures is very good - unless you need to use menu. (macros haven't turned out well - but I need to dig into the menus to see if I'm just missing the right settings - jury is out on them)
I hope that I will eventually find a way to fix the contrast of the video I took this week. But that should be *bang* right there in the high quality software that a thousand buck camcorder provides. Its not.
Boooooo.

This video camera amazes me in many ways. I use it mostly for hunting and other adventures. It takes great quality video, great stills, and has a ton of great features. Good in low light, an awesome zoom, lots of recording space with a good battery. Can't say enough good about this camera

I purchased this camera in preparation for my trip to Italy. In regards to the camcorder features, it was was great. The clarity of the recording was good. The built in microphone was ok. Mainly I used it to record all the monuments and sites we had visited. In addition to the movie recording, it took good pictures of the places we visited too. There were a few images that didn't turn out too well but it could be because of a combination of poor lightning and my inexperience of using a device. For night viewing, it was good so long as there was enough light in a given area.

One area that I wasn't too impressed with is the battery life. When using the camcorder under low light conditions, it drains power fast. I'm not sure but having the camcorder in standby drains the battery life faster than I expected. It is recommended you carry a spare battery. When downloading the videos/pics from camcorder to the computer, you have to have the power cable attached to it before it allows you to access the files. Not a big inconvenience to me but it was something strange.

Invest in some cleaning cloth to clean the surface of the touch screen. It attracts a lot of fingerprints. Again, I am inexperience with all of the features but the remote control to the camera doesn't cover all of the features and so you have to press the screen to change from movie to photo mode. It seems that you can't scroll down from the menu screen without the remote control so you better not lose it.

This camera is great. I have used it for dog videos so far and the flyball races were amazing in 1080p. While I recommend the camera it is only fair to mention its two faults. First the original battery is worthless as anything other than a backup I purchased a BP819 and it is great, what should have come on the camera. Second the field of view could be wider, not terrible but depending on your intended use it may be an issue.

The camcorder is very good. Videos, photos and sound are very crisp. The touch screen is not the most smart I saw, but is good enough so that you get used to it and can use the camera fluently. Less important is the fact that this camera is really beautiful.

I recently purchased the Canon VIXIA S30 HD Camcorder for producing industrial machinery videos. This camera is simple to use and provides professional results. I am very pleased with the quality of the video when shot in the auto mode. This camcorder also features many manual controls. I would recommend this.