Canon HF G30 vs Sony SR7E.

[BrianCattell]

I am considering buying a Canon HF G30 as a replacement for my Sony SR7E. My only concern is whether the Canon camcorder will produce video with image quality equal to the Sony. I have used the SR7E for five years and have found the picture quality to be very good. My main interest is videoing wildlife and the x10 optical zoom is becoming limiting. The advantage of the Canon is the x20 optical zoom and what appear to be easier manual focusing controls and visual aids. Any guidance on the comparative merits of these two camcorders would be appreciated.

[aedipuss]

camcorderinfo.com is usually helpful

[turk690]

The hard drive-based Sony HDR-SR7 AVCHD camcorder (and its memory stick version HDR-CX7) are several years old. Things have grown by leaps and bounds since then and you might find that the Canon HF G30 is superior in all respects. But I'm curious: why are you not considering another Sony as replacement for a previous Sony??

[BrianCattell]

I am unable to find a Sony camcorder that offers a x20 optical zoom and manual focusing. The Canon appears to be the only camcorder that offers these at a price of about 1000 GBP.

[budwzr]

20X optical zoom is indeed nice to have, but how useful is it, really?

1080 resolution doesn't allow much room for error. At 20X, there's vibration error frequently. That would have to be stabilized, and doing so will degrade the image.

And your f-stop goes way down too, probbly, forcing you to up the frame rate.

I do love that camcorder too, but the price was just too much for me. I went with a Sony HDR-710pj. I found one for $700 OTD earlier this year. A floor model at Best Buy.

[smrpix]

Almost all current Sony Camcorders have manual focus via touchscreen. They have one with 60x optical zoom for under $200

[budwzr]

I remember Sony stamping 300X Zoom on their camcorders even 20 years ago. And that was back in the SD days. Certainly 300X at 720X480 has to really suck big time. But the sheep believe what they see in writing. Somehow it's "got to be true" if it's written.

I can remember salesmen hawking the big Sony zoom numbers. But if what you get is unusable, what good is it?

Optical zoom is not new technology. It's a cheap way to boost the retail price. Compare the G20 to G30 and you'll see.

Again though, the G30 is an awesome camcorder, just too expensive for me. But if budget doesn't matter, by all means go for it.

My Sony camcorder does have that little "button wheel" nub thingy, and that's a real PITA compared to a lens ring. So Canon is tops in that aspect.

But Sony has very nice stabilization built in to the lens itself. It floats like a gyroscope. It must have sensors built in to know it's orientation, something like that. It works very nice, but you have to be in full wide mode.

If you start zooming, the stabilizer changes to a digital zoom. It still works pretty good, but you get artifacts if you go too fast.

Sony does have a nice accessory wired grip that has a very smooth power zoom built in to the grip right at your thumb. Canon doesn't do stuff like that for some reason. You still have to use a rocker switch on the body, AFAIK. So your right palm is stuck on the camera body. Short fingers are helpful.