Canon HR10 images and photo samples

Lens coverage
The HR10's electronic lens cover is a welcome, high-class touch.

Can't miss the buttons
The buttons on the HR10 stand out physically as well as visually: each has a slightly different feel so that you can tell them apart without looking.

Connections
Like most other Canon camcorders, the HR10 uses mini-SD cards for photo storage. On this model, though, the cover feels a lot flimsier than we'd like -- even though it's tethered -- and oddly large.

Making adjustments
We like Canon's joystick for navigating the menu system and shooting options, but its location can be a problem when shooting via the eye-level viewfinder; we frequently found that our face got in the way, and ended up opening the LCD for menu operations. This is mostly an issue if you shoot in one of the semi-manual exposure modes, such as shutter priority, where you might want to change speeds while shooting.

Finger fun
Though the zoom switch feels a bit loose at first but eventually it becomes pretty comfortable for maintaining consistent zoom speeds when in variable speed mode. The Photo button, however, is placed just a bit too far back and down to feel natural.

Colourific
The HR10's automatic white balance seems to pump up the saturation, at least under the cloudy sky we shot beneath. These flowers are a deep magenta but, in this photo, the HR10 makes them practically glow with pink fire.

Photo Credit: Lori Grunin

Looking blue
In general, the HR10's automatic white balance tends to be relatively cool, under both tungsten lights and daylight. This also tends to make scenes, like this frame grab, look a bit washed out.

Photo Credit: Lori Grunin

Pretty sharp
The HR10's lens displays pretty good edge-to-edge sharpness. The jaggies seen in this frame grab are most likely the result of interlacing -- the HR10 shoots non-interlaced, but the AVCHD codec encodes interlaced video -- and compression.

Photo Credit: Lori Grunin