Canon HF R11

Canon Vixia HF R11

There's a lot to like about Canon's entry-level Vixia HF R series of "high-definition" camcorders, such as its user interface--which is better than that of its more expensive sibling--and its mic and headphone jacks, which are a rare find in this camera class. But these models give me flashbacks to the early days of HD when everyone was taking old, relatively low-resolution sensors and up converting from 1,440x1,080-pixel resolution, either in software or in hardware, to real HD 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution. For its modestly priced (though not dirt cheap) HF R series, Canon captures video at 1,664x936 pixels and up converts it to 1,920x1,080 pixels before saving using the AVCHD codec. I can see the logic of using 1,664x936 pixels instead of the older 1,440x1,080-pixel standard--the source video has the same 16:9 aspect ratio as the upscaled video, unlike the 4:3 aspect of the older system--but my experience has been that for decent video, the HD source has to be at least 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution before you start compressing it. In the case of the HF R models, it's complicated further by its use of electronic image stabilization, which effectively reduces the available resolution as zoom increases--in this case, it drops as low as 1.04 megapixels when the image stabilization is set to Dynamic.