Canon HV30 review

The Canon HV30 is a very minor upgrade from the admittedly top-notch HV20. It has a sleeker-looking black body, introduces 25p progressive mode and supports the high-capacity lithium-ion battery, but otherwise remains the same as its 2007 predecessor -- making it a well-designed prosumer camcorder with a useful feature set, good overall performance and excellent video quality.

Design
It's relatively big, weighing 535g, though it fits into a large, loose jacket pocket. We like the black chassis more than the silver, but the tape housing feels a little flimsier than we remember. When gripped for shooting, the cover moves a little. In all other ways the build quality seems solid, with tethered covers over the Advanced Accessory Shoe, HDMI/FireWire ports and mic/headphone/component-out jacks.

On the left side of the body sit a few slightly difficult to feel controls: backlight compensation, display and video light, plus a manual focus toggle and loose focus dial

The 69mm (2.7-inch) widescreen LCD is on the small side and at 211,000-pixels not very high resolution, but it's sufficient for manually focusing. The eye-level viewfinder is relatively large, but doesn't pull out or up, and we wish it had a softer eye cup.

In addition, we just had to laugh at the Catch-22 diopter control. Since it's right on the viewfinder, you have to move your head away to get your finger on the switch, which means you can't set it with your eye pressed close. The HV30 supplies both a video light and a flash for shooting stills. As always, we really like the built-in electronic lens cover.

All the frequently used shooting controls -- except for manual focus and zoom -- fall comfortably under your right thumb

Shooting with the HV30 feels easy and natural. Canon places the most frequently used options -- notably exposure compensation and microphone level -- under the control of the set button/joystick. Other shooting options -- program, shutter and aperture-priority, cine and scene modes, white balance, image effects and still-image mode -- get called up via the function button and navigated with the joystick. Since your thumb controls all of the activity, it's pretty straightforward and fluid to use.