I currently have a Canon HG-10 and am getting ready to beging shooting some images of my sailing trip from California to Panama for future use in a DVD series. I am impressed with the image quality I see from the HG10. Having never personally used or seen images from Canon's Prosumer XH line of HD cameras, is the image quality worth the $3200 purchase price? I plan on buying a second HG10 before I leave in a few months....but my stomach keeps me thinking about the XH line...but my wallet keeps telling me about the roughly $2500 price difference!

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!


Regards

Rich Boren
S/V THIRD DAY
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/svthirdday/

I have an HV20 and XLH1 (more or less, the same as the HG and XH)...and I can tell you there's a difference in image quality. If the price is worth it is really up to you and depends on what you plan on using it for.

Right off the bat, the extra $$ gets you get a better lense, larger/more CCD's, and XLR audio. Also, consider the perception of how much more profesional the camera's look...I can't show up for a corporate gig (in which I'm getting paid a good amount) with a small camera that looks "consumer"...no matter how great the images look, it's just not going to fly...clients would be worried from the start.

Don't get me wrong, my HV20 is a great camera...but I only use it for a feeder deck, location scouting, back-up cam and travel cam...my XLH1 goes to all my paid gigs.

Rich -
Short answer is you get what you pay for... BUT you get a lot in a small cam for the money - it will be a question of how critical you or your intended audience will be vs. the increased cost.

If you need a big cam for "image" rather than image, that's another topic, and the small cams have their limitations and attached perceptions.

If you're video'ing for web use, you'll probably never see the difference. Blow the images up enough, and you'll see the differences, which ultimately may or may not be material to your purposes.

Can you arrange to rent/borrow one of the big cams and shoot side by side? Either you'll decide it's worth the $ difference, or you're fine with the HG10...

If you do decide to get a second HG10, you might consider an HF100 instead. The price is about the same (HF100 might be a tad lower even) and the HF100 should give you better quality images.

Why should the HF100 give better images?

The maximum bitrate on the HF100 is higher, it can record 1920x1080, a 30P mode has been added, and apparently the quality in progressive modes has been improved considerably also.