The Legria HF S11 is Canon’s top-end HD flash camcorder with 64GB space and 10x optical zoom.
The Camcorder
Here’s the camcorder itself.
Front view.
Back view and side view, many stickers along the body – just like almost any other product.
The panel is on the left (camcorders are always made for right handed people), that’s where the screen and control buttons are situated.
Output ports. It’s a pretty tight area.
Here’s the video light, it also doubles as flash for photography mode.
Microphone on the right.
Microphone on the left. Take note of the word CUSTOM there, next to is is the Creative Manual Control.
A Custom Key lets you activate one of five variables which can be assigned to the manual Control Dial, including focus, exposure, and audio level. Further advanced controls include AGC (Auto Gain Control) limits – usually only found on professional camcorders, this boosts or limits responsiveness when shooting in low light – Zebra patterns, Colour Peaking and Colour Bar / Test Tone output.
– source
Next, the Mini Advanced Shoe for add ons.
And lastly, the battery and its compartment.
For more details, please visit the official product page.
User Experience
The videos for my article The PC Fair Experience were done with the HF S11. The camera is easy to use. Buttons are comfortably placed, even for a person with small hands like myself have no problem with the start / stop and zooming.
Here’s the front view of the camcorder, along with the LCD.
Spend a little more time with the interface and you’ll see a wealth of other features.
As you can see from the button, just a few taps and you could start and end your video with some fancy effects. You’ll see that effect in my PC Fair videos.
Speaking of editing, it’s also great to know that I could clip certain parts out of a clip. For example, Say I have a 5 minute clip. I could take out the portion from 1:00 to 2:00 by first splitting the 5 minute clip at 1:00. So this results in Video A with 0:00 to 0:59 and Video B from 1:00 to 5:00. From here, split Video B from 2:01 onwards, resulting in Video B being from 1:00 to 2:00 while Video C is from 2:01 to 5:00. 🙂 I know, it’s tedious but it is convenient as you need not a video editing software to get the job done.
Besides the usual zooming in and out, you can even do focusing with the dial available. Here’s a video where I used the custom function dial for focusing.
The microphone is very sensitive in pick up, you can hear my surroundings very clearly. It’s good but it has a downside where the mic also pics up the noise from button clicks.
I think the BEST part about the S11 is the 64GB Internal memory – record all you want, my friends! The 64GB space is supposedly able to last you for nearly 6 hours of video Full HD video clip but from my experience, you’re bound to run out of battery before running out of disk space.
From my experience, that whole PC Fair footage, along with a few clips while I was in the car, some re-takes and all, it comes to about 2 hours. The available recording time varies depending on how you use the camera because the functions and features like the image stabilization, the act of zooming in and out, editing, playback and whatever super-combo you have all adds to the power drain.
The camcorder also has dual more, meaning it works as a video camera and an 8MP digital camera. It also has dual-mode function where it works as both, allowing you to capture photo in the midst of video recording. Download Sample Images.
Conclusion
It’s a good product, and certainly is worthy of the recommendation………… BUT only if you have RM 6k+ to spare and really find the features useful – 64GB Flash, Image Stabilization, Full HD recording, Custom function and so on. If not, there are plenty of other options out there.
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