HV30: Camcorder and Accessories

I just bought Canon HV30 (Amazon, Review) recently for my baby. Before buying HV30, I was agonizing over the selection between HV30 and Canon HF10 (Amazon, Review) (although I know that HF100 is better than HF10 from money point of view since the internal 16GB flash drive of HF10 does not justify the price difference, I do like the black paint job of HF10 and HV30).

Comparison of HV30 vs. HF10

So why I chose HV30 over HF10? The following is my comparison.

Features	HV30	HF10	Comments
Price	MSRP price is $999 in US and ¥10580.00 (about $1514) in China	MSRP price is $1099 in US and ¥14080.00 (about $2014) in China	The price difference in China is quite significant, which is true even for street price.
Performance	1/2.7 in. sensor	1/3.2 in. sensor	According to the review, HV30 has slightly better performance over HF10 thanks to larger sensor, however the gain seems to be marginal for most cases.
Functionalities	Viewfinder, Zebra, Peaking
Accessories	Standard accessory shoe	Canon proprietary accessory shoe
Backup	Tapes are cheap for backup	Additional backup is needed since SDHC cards are expensive and will be reused.
Community	A mature community (looking at hv20.com for example)	Situation will improve
Form Factor	88x82x138 mm (3.5x3.2x5.4 in.), 535 g (1.2 lb.)	73x64x129 mm (2.9x2.5x5.1 in.), 380 g (13.4 oz)	HF10 is small and light, which is ideal for traveling. Normally the camcorder which you takes out often is the most useful one.
Media	Tape	SDHC card + internal Flash	Flash card is really convenient: just like small DCs. No hassles for rewinding and no worry for overriding.
Zoom	10x optical zoom	12x optical zoom
Noise	Tape noise can be heard in silent environment	No such noise since flash card is used.

Accessories

What I have:

• Battery and charger: compatible ones
• Camera bag: Lowepro Edit 120+
• CPL filter: Kenko 43mm
• HDMI cable
• IEEE 1394 cable: Belkin 4-pin to 4-pin
• Lens cap
• miniSD: Transcend 2G. Not sure whether 4G could be used (the manual only states that up to 2G has been tested).
• Tape: Panasonic AY-DVM63PQ
• UV filter: Kenko MC-UV 43mm

For future purchase:

• 35mm adapter
• Close-up lens: +1/+2/+4
• Mic: Canon DM-50, or combination of Rode Videomic and stereo mic. Maybe XLR adapters with XLR Mics?
• Neutral density filters: ND2/4/8
• Shoulder strap
• Steadicam Merlin
• Telephoto lens: Canon TL-H43 (any black version?)
• Tripod and fluid head: Manfrotto 190XPROB (tripod) + 701RC2 (fluid head) + MBAG70 (bag)
• Video light: Canon VL-3
• Wide angle lens: Canon WD-H43 (any black version?)
• Wrist strap

Final Words

After over 1 month's usage of HV30, I'm pretty satisfied with it. There is a lot of things for me to learn: how to shoot, how to edit, just to name a few. But all the efforts are worthy when you view the video clips produced from it.

MID for Programmers

Lots of MIDs were showed off in CES 2008. However, none of them satisfy my requirements. What I need is a device for web surfing, RSS feed consuming, programming, and of course blogging. The one closest to my criterial is from LG, however I shunned away from Windows. Following is a list of features I expect an MID to have, from a programmer's perspective.

Mandatory factors:

• Around 5 inch touchscreen. Size matters. The screen size is the most difficult factor when making tradeoffs. We want it smaller for portability (otherwise why not a gorgeous 17 inch MacBook Pro?), but not so small to hurt our eyes. 5 inch seems to strike a nice balance. At this size, 800x600 resolution seems to be preferred.
• Full keyboard (similar as that of laptop in terms of keys equipped). Interface is critical. I am an Emacs fan, and the main usage of the MID is to try interesting programming ideas within Emacs and to compose blogs as well. Therefore I need the keyboard to have Ctrl and Alt equipped as a minimum. I also hope numerical keys have their independent positions (e.g. not shared with QWERTYUIOP as my Dopod 838, which is really painful). Keyboard from LG prototype satisfies all requirements here, therefore I do hope other vendors could follow suit.
• Fast CPU. Gentoo is my favorite Linux distribution, therefore I may try to install it (somebody has already done so on Q1 Ultra). In addition to satisfy a power-demanding distribution, a powerful CPU is also a right for programmer even on such a tiny gadget.
• Linux based OS. Linux will shine on MID, which is actually an old news. However, there are also devices running Windows at least for Menlow based MIDs, e.g. the one from LG. The reason for me to mandate Linux here is that I can easily install other flavors of Linux distributions if the device itself comes with one. With built-in Linux, we can make sure that source code for hardware is readily accessible: every vendor should learn something from the event of Eee PC GPL issues.
• WiFi access. Connection is important. Without WiFi access, I guess we can remove Internet from the name of MID.
• Miscellaneous. We should match the fast CPU with at least 512 MB RAM. 8 GB internal storage is a minimum to fool around. SD card slot is a must to connect the MID with other devices, and Bluetooth with A2DP support is necessary to avoid hairy wires.

Optional features:

• Phone capability. This feature is actually desperately needed. However I doubt whether I could find one MID if I insist on this feature. There are various reasons for vendors to drop this feature: maturity of the needed software, regulation aspects, and marketing issues (imagine the impact on N95 if N810 is a phone) etc.
• GPS. This is always a nice feature to enjoy.
• Nice camera. Just imagine the wow moment when you use your 5-inch-LCD-digital-camera.

Finally, is it possible for MID + Android?