Week 17 Sony HDR-HC3 and Canon HV10

Sony HDR-HC3 and Canon HV10 Micro HD Camcorders

Until recently, using a micro-camcorder meant shooting standard-definition only, but no longer. The first crop of HD micro-cams is now available. While it’s easy to think of them as consumer cameras, you can just as easily imagine them being used on lightweight jib arms, as hidden cameras, as helmet cams, as handheld B-roll cameras, or as emergency backups to your 3-chip professional HD cameras-basically, in any role for which a bigger camera would be too large, heavy, expensive, or obvious. So to get behind the hype, I tested two of the most popular HD micro-cams: the Canon HV10 and the Sony HDR-HC3.

added April 28, 2007
By Tim Sassoon at dv.com