9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
Wow
Date of Review: Mar 20, 2008
The Bottom Line: For the money, amazing HD quality. Canon makes the best lenses once again.
I have been making home movies since 1991. I have been through a variety of formats--VHS, VHS-C, MiniDV, and finally HD. For the last six years I have been using the prosumer Canon GL-1 model. It has a 3CCD chip and takes spectacular movies. Considering the quality of it, I was skeptical that any camera could do better than this one. Today I bought the Canon HV20 and I am just stunned by the video quality. The video is so crisp it almost looks three dimensional on my monitor. The extra lines of resolution do make a difference. My only complaint would be that under very low lighting conditions, my GL-1 does better, probably because of the extra CCD chips. The color rendering on my GL-1 is slightly better too. But the difference in the resolution between the GL-1 and the HV20 is amazing. It is still quite a step up. I recorded my test footage under various lighting conditions and was pleasantly surprised by all of them. It is hard to believe that the HV20, which I paid $730 for at Circuit City on clearance, is in many ways better than my $2500 Canon GL-1 prosumer video camera.
I have no regrets. I would certainly make this purchase again. The detail it captures is simply breathtaking.
