Canon's family-friendly HD camcorder – the LEGRIA HF21
Canon’s other camcorder launch of the day, the LEGRIA HF21, is aimed squarely at the family market. Smaller and less feature-rich than the HF S11 it nevertheless shoots at shoots at 1920×1080 Full HD video which it then archives to a 64Gig flash memory drive – apparently enough for up to two hours of HD footage or 24 hours on the lowest quality mode.
Like the HF S11 it includes an updated Dynamic Optical Image Stabiliser (OIS) which apparently eliminates virtually all camera shake while filming and even lets people capture steady footage while walking or climbing.
Other apparently family-friendly features include a Video Snapshot mode that allows four-second clips to be captured with a single press of the record button, then easily arranged into a movie and set to music on the camera. The camera even has some music pre-loaded – though users can add their own.
Also on board is a face detection facility that can detect up to 35 faces in a frame, and controls all the technical settings automatically to ensure friends and family’s faces always appear clearly in the video. It is apparently even smart enough to be able to select a single face to track in crowded scenes.
It also features a Canon’s 15x optical zoom HD Video Lens, a 3.3 megapixel CMOS sensor and DIGIC DV III image processor.
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