Camcorder Reviews

The Shape of Things to Come
Canon ES1000 Hi8 Camcorder
Canon
One Canon Plaza
Lake Success, NY 11042
www.usa.canon.com
($1900)

It seems Canon's popular L1 and L2 get most of the industry attention--this makes it easy to forget that Canon is a company committed to offering a full line of camcorders for all levels and pocketbooks. Their latest offering is the ES1000, a Hi8 unit priced in the upper midrange of the tinycam pack. In physical makeup, the ES1000 departs from Canon's earlier designs. This unit places the lens next to the transport, much like a Sony Handycam. Though just introduced, the ES1000 looks and feels familiar right off the bat.

The ES1000 spells the end of Canon's UC-series camcorders, which boast an upright design with lens above the transport. Likewise, Canon will no longer make the lens-in-front E520 and E350. In the not-too-distant future, Canon's line will include only the ES series and the L2. In spite of its small size, the ES1000 has an impressive 12x zoom lens. With a short focal length of 5.2mm, the lens goes nice and wide. I've said it a million times: for most shooting, a wider lens is more useful than a high-power telephoto setting. Bravo, Canon. Like the UCS-5, the ES1000's zoom lens lever moves perpendicular to the lens axis. I think this scheme gives the user better control over the zoom speed. This is important with the ES1000--it has 8 zoom speeds in each direction. Even with the well-designed zoom lever, it's hard to find more than about 4 speeds. Only by listening carefully to the zoom motor could I verify the 8 speeds.

These vary from a slow zoom that covers the range in about 13 seconds to one that snaps through it in 3 seconds. The motor steps through the intermediate speeds smoothly, giving the illusion of a true infinite-speed zoom. The Canon's zoom system is one of the best I've used. The ES1000's color viewfinder sports a high-resolution LCD that delivers over 140,000 pixels. The image is quite good, and the nearly 300 lines of horizontal resolution makes it possible to manual focus consistently. LCD displays still have a long way to go before they match the resolution of monochrome, but the ES1000's viewfinder is a definite improvement. There is no SportsFinder mode on the ES1000, which allows you to see the viewfinder from a foot or two away.

Canon's "third-generation" optical stabilization system graces the ES1000. Improvements supposedly include less floating and better high-frequency compensation, but I couldn't see any difference between this scheme and Canon's second-generation system. They both work amazingly well at killing handheld camera shake.

The ES1000 has a built-in light that sits near the lens. With just 4 watts of output, it will fill in shadows or enrich colors in marginal lighting conditions. It's not bright enough to use as a key light, but that was never Canon's intent. Running the light cuts battery time roughly in half. In addition to full auto, the ES1000 has four special exposure modes. These include sports, portrait, spotlight and sand and snow. All divide the image into 64 regions, setting exposure based on different weightings of these regions.

You select exposure mode with a knurled wheel on the left side of the case; this oddly-angled wheel is rather hard to turn. A backlight button sits in the middle of the wheel, gradually opening the iris an additional two stops. The ES1000 does not have a manual iris control. Likewise, white balance is continuous auto only. The ES1000 reacts quickly to changing lighting conditions; it wasn't easily fooled. When you power the Canon down or remove the battery, it stores the last white balance setting. The ES1000's fader is not linked to the trigger, meaning you can hold it down to lay black on tape for as long as you want. This sure beats faders that work only with the record/pause trigger.

Other controls fall under a sliding panel on the left side of the unit's case: high speed shutter, autofocus on/off, title, counter reset and tally/IR sensor enable. The unit's titler overlays two lines of 16 characters each. The white characters have black outlines, making them easy to see against most backgrounds. One button the ES1000 doesn't need is line in/out. Canon implemented an auto-sensing feature that detects signals coming into the unit when in VCR mode. If no signal is present, the S-video, composite and stereo audio jacks function as outputs.

The ES1000 is comfortable and light, and quite enjoyable to shoot with. I had no problem working most of the controls, though the autoexposure knob and sliding panel do take some concentration.

Image quality is very good. Resolution is nothing short of excellent, as is color reproduction and accuracy. My only complaint lies with video noise levels: the Canon picked up more noise than I expected it to in moderate light conditions. Give the ES1000 plenty of light, and excellent images result. It's easy to dial in your image with manual focus, thanks to a knurled ring near the lens. The manual focusing system is responsive, but you may not need to use it too often. Autofocus on the ES1000 is very fast and solid, locking in on the subject with a minimum of hunting. Once locked, it doesn't shimmy much. Notably lacking from the Canon are headphone and external mike jacks. In my opinion, these are unforgivable omissions. Someone spending this kind of money on a camcorder probably cares about audio.

To make matters worse, the ES1000's built-in mike picks up plenty of unwanted motor and button noises even in moderately loud environments. Coupled with the absence of an external mike jack, this makes the ES1000's audio virtually unusable for serious videomaking. The built-in mike is also highly susceptible to wind.

Noise and wind aside, the ES1000's audio sounds great. Stereo imaging is dramatic; sounds come across with a high degree of realism. It's too bad Canon engineers didn't spend the time required to lick the noise problem. In its favor, Canon's new ES1000 offers impressive image quality, rock-solid image stabilization and a nice color viewfinder. On the flip side, it boasts sparse manual controls, somewhat substandard audio and no RC time code. A winning package? You make the call.

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