Hi, welcome to the EEV blog today! We're going to take a look at the Alegria Hf G 30 from Canon. They're sort of top of the line consumer camcorder getting into sort of the prosumer category. It's practically identical to the X a 20 and X a 25 unit in terms of the body itself, but the Xae units have the carry handle on top and the XLR inputs and pro stuff like that, but essentially pretty much the same unit. So as you might know, I'm a professional Youtube video blogger and the Canon Hf G 10 this one I've been using this is two generations back.

There was the H FG 20 and now the H FG 30 which I've just bought and upgraded to. but this Hf G10 has been my main vlogging camera for the last couple of years and I've shot like I don't know 500 videos or something with it. so I know it really well. So I'm going to take a look at the H FG 30 pretty much in comparison to the H FG 10 and sort of its suitability to my blogging purposes.

So let's get into it. you and this is what you're getting. The box. You get the camcorder itself.

You get a very nice flappy front hood on it. You get the remote control, which is the standard one for the HF G10 as well. There still we've got that. It's got limited functionality, but I do appreciate.

The minimalist approach is very small. You can work it in your pocket. really easy. Power cord, no external charger.

really annoying. They only give you the lower capacity battery. They don't give you the high capacity battery that tight-asses. They give you a micro USB cable and they give you the audio interface lead and the mini standard mini be for the PC transfer as well.

Just writes like a normal wire drive a Quick Start Guide and some software which nobody ever uses. And by the way, you do get the standard lens hood as well so you can use either one. But I Do like this new flappy lens hood like that look. it's just beautiful.

I Love it and attention to detail. They even put little rubber stoppers on there so it doesn't. You know it so you just get it like a little gentle thud. You don't get a big clang like that, you know it's really nice.

Anyway, The camcorder itself is a beautiful build and finish. Really high quality plastics, feels and looks fantastic. Exactly like the Hf G10, so no disappointment whatsoever. A little bit bigger, as I'll show you at the moment.

I'm shooting this one with the Hf G10, but we've got the viewfinder which pops up. The Diopter adjustment on the bottom is in a much more usable place. You've got the eye cup and that is one and a half million pixels on that viewfinder, so greatly increased. They've got the X 20 zoom lens exactly the same if 1.8 as the Hf G 10, but it goes 2 times 20 instead of times 10.

So big improvement there. The same instant autofocus, the same 58 millimeter diameter our thread attachment which is great. I can use my existing macro lenses. It's got exactly the same built-in high quality mics which are great for our speech which I'm using at the moment.

I'm just standing over my Hf G10 at the moment and these building mics work fantastic! They're super high quality. Finally, we've got a standard cold shoe mount up the top and as a bonus, they have kept the proprietary Canon one at the back so that's really handy actually cuz she can actually keep both on their like you could have a wireless mic on here and you can have something else or vice versa so that's pretty handy. But and also it's moved forward as well so you get closer if you got like a a shotgun mic like the Rode Videomic Pro on the thing. we've got the proper rocker north/south this time are fantastic.

Words can't express how great that is and it's got the Lhasa T adjustment as well. so if you sort of touch it a little bit, you get a slower zoom and if you push faster, you get a higher zoom. But very customizable zoom options in this thing I Won't go into detail, but jeez, you can set the velocity rate and and all sorts of stuff. It's fantastic.

You'll notice a really substantial bulk difference between these two camcorders and the the new Hf G 30 is significantly longer because it's got, you know, the bulkier much improved by the way viewfinder. but yeah, it certainly is much wider there. and it's you know it is going to be a little bit heavier, but yeah, not much in it really. But yeah, you do.

get the extra functionality in this thing and look at that cold shoe are brilliant. Jewel shoe on the thing that's - I get the carry handle. By the way, if you get the professional model the XA 20 or the 25, it just has the handle which actually connects in there with your XLR inputs and things like that. But apart from that and and a night vision mode, there's basically no difference between the HfG 30 and the XA 20 and on the base of it here, we've got our standard tripod now actually have moved a little bit forward from the battery release mechanism there like that.

so this is my plate for my tripod. The other one was okay I could still get my finger in and release the battery when it was on the tripod and that's a big deal. trust me. If you're in the middle of shoot you don't want to get out and get the screwdriver and undo the dam.

you know, take the thing off just so that you can get the battery out. Screw that and the previous HfG ten had the custom wheel on the back here, but they've changed that to under the bottom I'm not sure I particularly like the placement of that button. It's okay on a tripod when you got the camera on a 45 degree mount, but if you got it there, you sort of sort of shooting it. you know, feeling a bit blind where the button is I guess you'd get used to that.

But anyway, the custom button and then they've got the custom wheel on there by default. it's set to what exposure and that's what I've got mine set on my HfG ten because apart from focus, the most important thing I have to do as a video blogger is to make sure I've got correct exposure and I'm shooting this at the moment with manual exposures. So if I touch the custom button on the back of my HF G10, you'll notice the exposures changed and when I go in and out, that auto exposure can be a little bit annoying. So as a you know a little pro tip, when you're a blogger, it just press that custom button.

we just want to be on the bottom and it fixes that focus. and yeah, my hands are a bit overexposed, but it means I can move things in and out and it doesn't. You know, affect doesn't automatically change that exposure so just makes your videos look a bit better if you set the manual exposure and having that custom button to do that is great. But by the way, this one has one, two, three, four, five customizable buttons.

Fantastic! Then the dual SD card slots remain, but Canon the Thai dices have removed the internal memory. The HF G10 had a very generous 32 gig internal memory on this thing. This thing has nothing. Sip nada sweet.

FA Ah, screw you Canon and they've changed the main button here and they've put it on the top instead of that soft button on the side here. so maybe if you got it in your bag, you might accidentally touch that on and may be wasting battery if you don't have auto power off set to a short thing. Anyway, that's a minor gripe, but a major gripe is that you know camera this way and to go back to the media, you've got actually switch it off, then back on. It's just ah, so you've got to do that.

Operate this manual switch every time. If you're in the habit of playing back your clip. after every clip, you would have to switch your camera. You're straight over to the media, which technically switches and often they're an art.

It's just dumb, but one very nice touch. The nice zoom ring that we had on the front on the HF G10 was just a zoom, but now it's selectable. Zoom or focus by switch here. Nice touch and what they've done is gone and replaced the headphone jack which was here so you have to have the LCD open for your headphone jack.

That's all changed and now it's around here behind this little flappy thing which I actually find rather annoying. but anyway, you can now plug big Jack's into your microphone, You've got your headphone, you've got your mini B to connect to your USB its standard mass storage device. no problems at all and the standard micro HDMI output. But yeah, I just find that a little bit annoying that you have to always open that thing because I'm always out unplugging and plugging in my external mic.

It was just handy when that wasn't behind a flap. And one thing, they've actually added a dedicated headphone socket whereas before on the HF G10 it was combined with the AV output here and you had to go into software to switch that over and it was really annoying. So yeah, big thumbs up to that. and the X a 25.

The pro version of this has an SDI coax connector output there, but this one's not fitted. Wonder if you could hack it? and battery life on this thing still remains to be seen. I'm getting the higher capacity batteries with it, but the standard battery at least is higher capacity than the old standard battery in the HF G10, so it was actually better battery life. but the HF GTN always had an awesome battery life with the extended battery pack which I had for these things.

Here it is and that one I could get like five hours worth a continuous recording recording with that puppy. So yeah, I'm hoping that I'll get some decent recording. These are quite a low-power relatively low power camcorder, so they do make fairly efficient use of the larger batteries. So, but still I don't have those yet, so that still remains to be seen, but still pretty decent battery life.

I Think the standard one will go for like a hundred and fifty minutes or something like that, so not too bad. Now as I said, you only get the standard battery pack the Bp8 20. With this, you don't get the high-capacity 8 to 8 tight-asses once again. But worse than this, they have changed the battery from the Hft G10.

Are you me? the? This is my aftermarket Wasabi Power batteries which are very good by the way. They do physically fit but watch. this battery pack is not compatible. Turning off the camcorder? Are you me? It's exactly the same battery.

they've just chipped it different? Are you kidding me on a shove this battery up them Canon Marketing managers arse and they've increases synthesizing this thing from a third inch which was still a pretty darn good considering that it was just the 2 megapixels HD sensor in the thing and now it's increased in size to 1 on 2.8 4 inch. So pretty good. So that should increase the already excellent our low life performance in the HF G10 and the other thing which makes the lower performance even better. They've upgraded the process in engineering this thing from the digit 3 to the digit 4 processor, so apparently you get better low-light performance not only from the sensor but the processing engine as well and also at the processing engine is capable of full 50 P instead of 50 I before.

Fantastic! That stepped into the modern age. And also it cannot record Mpeg-4 Z' at the same time as your AVC HD Terrific! And you bet your ass this suckers got Wi-Fi so you can actually aren't remote view and control this thing from your smartphone. Awesome! And one big thing that they've added. you don't have to actually use this as a touchscreen.

They've added a dedicated joystick control here and you can get the hell out of that. You can go function, call it up, and then scroll around and do the business. Excellent look at that if you want to use it that way. I Don't know I think it's a bit Dicky I just prefer to use the touchscreen see I Still got that habit of putting my hand behind there, but now it's just got this beautiful capacitive touch screen and don't have to dig around.

It's just soft to the touch and smooth. Awesome. except you get to leave all your grubby finger marks on there. And yes, the confusing that Canon menu system has stayed pretty much the same.

but because I'm used to it hey big thumbs up to that. Now we've got a Wi-Fi remote option which I'll show you now. One thing they've added, they've chasey audio around a bit. there is you to traditional manual microphone level which is how I always do it i alway unless I'm out in the field and I don't want to dick around and I'm on location just getting random you know shots of the show I'll whack it on automatic and well you know just be done with it.

but generally they've changed that around. They've got a new option here for audio scene so that you know you can just shoot say you know, indoors or outdoors and people's voices stuff like that which will just add a mid boost filter on it. A bit confusing. you've got to sit over here this see this custom before you can actually get in there and manually adjust the mic level.

and as before you can just take a single shot photo and you can just touch the screen to focus on any part of the screen that you want so that's often handy. and they've got focus peaking as well. You can see the red tinge around there. you can change the color on that and the zebra stripes as well.

All that feature all that good functionality is still there, but apparently they have removed the waveform monitor personally. I've never used the waveform under, but for those who love their waveform monitor, I don't know why can't it removed it? Thumbs down! Now the image stabilizer has changed a bit. As I said, they've added an extra axes on there so it should work a lot better. I'm take a look what happens if we go to dynamic range.

It actually does sense a shift as well, so you'll see the frame change. See, we get a slightly different frame when we have that. Alright, we'll do a very quick a stability test. I've mounted both cameras on top of one another like that, so yet they'll be exactly the same.

So let's give it a bill. I'll put on the dynamic stabilization on the G 30 and the G 10. Okay, I've got both cameras set up the HF G10 on the top and the new G 30 on the bottom and I'm hand-holding this and if I just rotate it like that, you can see I can see on the screen that the HF G10 on the top is rotating the G 30 on the bottom. It requires, you know, significant tilting to make that thing move and you can see it sort of jerks around.

which is I don't know. Is it good or bad you tell me and now up and down. I would just give a little. Maybe you can.

the G tens might they're probably similar I think maybe I Don't know. Hard to tell, but there you go. that's the image stabilization. and if I wonder around? good thing my lab is really messy here.

I can step over things like this and I don't know it's you know I'm not really doing a hugely scientific test here, but you notice yeah, that difference there, especially on the tilt like that, is really noticeable on the HF G10 and it just doesn't seem to move rock solid on the G 30. Very nice. And if you plug in the external mic here, bingo, you automatically get the extra options on the menu and the audio mix. As I said, this is a great feature.

If I'm out in the field, let me turn that mic on. There we go. I can. Actually, they've got the internal microphone and the external microphone so you can mix them together, but they're not actually mixed.

One goes to one channel and one goes to the other on your stereo recording. so you can actually in post editing. You can actually take them out or combine them or delete one all you know. Mute one, do whatever you want and of course you can change the mix on them.

check, check, check one two and you can do that. So that is an absolutely fantastic feature because as a professional video blogger who puts out you know at least three videos a week and has done for five years, I could not do this if I had to post process all of my audio I'd be spending my whole life just doing audio editing and that's just ridiculous. I'm not shooting a Hollywood feature here I'm doing a video blog so I get all of my audio right in camera. It's critical, that's why I need a proper professional view on the screen at all times which this one has and when I'm out in the field doing stuff I can mix audio in camera.

it is fantastic and also a real professional feature. You can set the color balance of the OLED screen here and well for those that color purists out there who've got to get their color just right on in camera on your LCD screen. this is fantastic and here is where you can assign all those five different buttons. and sometimes they're just like menu like a short cut to the menu and you still have to use the screen or the joystick to select them.

but hey, it's a really good shortcut and there's the custom dial up there so you can actually change that between, you know, manually exposure which is by default which is what I mainly use it for, but if you can change it for other stuff as well. and they've actually changed this button here by default, it's now the pre record button so you can set it to the camera to automatically pre record three seconds before you start the video so that you know if you're always oh, look, I press the record button too late and I miss something. That mo can actually be handy, but on the old one, it had even still selectable as the powered image stabilization. So I can just hold that down like that and you notice the image stabilization comes on and that's a real handy feature.

You can just turn on image stabilization anytime you want, and the combination of having your hand on here, holding the button and holding the camera at the same time actually works a really well to help stabilize the camera anyway. So that's just beautiful Placement of the image stabilization button I've always loved that feature and you can also set up our FTP server settings and transfer your files directly to your FTP server. but this service is severely limited in that it doesn't let you set a different FTP servers and B it's limited into what files. you can actually upload either the whole lot of files before you since you last uploaded, which is pretty much everything or you have to manually select the files and copy em over.

I Won't go into details, but yeah, another completely feature which they you know heavily advertise this feature and well now it's just crippled. I'll just show you the ability of the focus here. it's automatically focused on the calculator here, but I can touch the power supply behind there, all that the auto transformer and then we can take it off manual focus and it'll go back instantly. Pull back to where we were off the calculator.

very nice and if you turn the ring on the front, it's still got that excellent focus desist. It zooms in and you can control the focus like that and then it'll pop back out. Very nice. Comparing the screens in my HF G10 on the top, the new HfG 30 on the bottom.

Exactly the same sized screen but a greatly increased resolution. This one's got 1.2 megapixels or there abouts. this one's only got 920 catered. HF G10 was pretty good, but this one is noticeably sharper, which is fantastic.

If you like me and you're shooting stuff like in front and you're watching the screen because you know you're making sure your audio level is right and everything's in frame and all that sort of stuff, then you know it's great that increased pixel resolution is everything so huge. Thumbs up! Now the HF G10 look. there's a I'm holding that firm but usually I've got to put my hand behind here so that I can actually operate the damn thing like this because it was just annoying touchscreen. This one is just a feather touch.

It's just fantastic. They've fixed it. Thank You Canon and if I start recording on both of them, you'll notice a big difference here. The HfG 30 now has look, it's got hundreds of a second counting over there and whereas the Hf G10 didn't have that, but it's a different format as well, it's a true elapsed time since you started shooting all of your clips.

So I've shot 40 minutes and 26 seconds worth of accumulated clips. so that just gives you life. You like me, you speak too long and your videos are really, really long and then sorry about that. If you haven't seen my videos before, it's just my style.

Anyway, yeah, it shows the elapsed time of your entire footage. and if you shouldn't, everything. one camera. Fantastic.

You know how much total footage you got and you should have wrap it up now because you've been yapping on for 30 minutes or what. Terrific. Now for a professional video blogger who shoots a video, could have a half fifty, or a hundred clips or even two hundred clips in the one video for, you know. And I make like three videos a week on average.

Uh-huh It's kind of important to be able to replay your previous clip that you just shot and the HfG Tim was so bad that they're so frustrating that I just you know gave up and I had to learn how to trust myself that I actually shot the material. Anyway, this one has a now a preview button that previews your last clip. but look how batshit useless it is. This is the last clip I just shot and it only displays the last four seconds of it without audio.

What the Unbelievable. Anyway, I don't think there's any camcorder on the market that actually not in this sort of price bracket. that sort of lets you instantly replay the videos. They're all completely like this.

If you want to do it, you gotta flick the switch there. you've got to go over to here. I'm gonna read the memory card and there are my clips and then I have to go in there and press it and then I can replay my clip. but then I can move it back to the camera mode and then I lose my exposure setting that I had.

Ridiculous. And why do I have to pop that up again? Because I've turned it on like no, it's retired now. the new OLED screen. I Don't know if this will show up on camera yet, but it is noticeably dimmer than the HF G30.

Maybe I can change the brightness on it I haven't This is just that stock straight out of the case. but anyway, it's a little bit different and you'll notice that the Vu meter is a little bit different as well. It's exactly the same. And the great thing I Always loved about the Canon not own it is I have internal audio mixing so you can mix the internal mic on the top of the camera here with an external mic.

Fantastic when you're doing interviews and you're behind the camera and they're in front and stuff like that. Terrific. Fantastically flexible. Anyway, kept the same venue made it's a little bit smaller and they've relocated it down in this corner here.

They don't have the little green you know, sweet spot marker on - 12db there. they've got like -10 but still. it's a real Vu meter. Fantastic.

And if you're doing videos professionally, you've got to have a proper Vu meter. Not some kiddie toy consumer bloody rubbish like you get on the Sony's for example. oh goodness. And the other menus pretty much all the same.

It's got the all the excellent are zoom speed controls, the wireless zoom controller speed. This thing does zoom like there's no tomorrow. Really fantastic. That's got the face detection and tracking, all that back lights, the ND filter, it's all there.

It's all exactly the same. and you can also add audio filters to the building mic and change the directionality. But as a video blogger who does mostly audio speech, I'm shooting always in to channel mono mode. If we go over here movie format, this is added because we've never had the ability to shoot in Mpeg-4 before.

If you want slightly, you know, in theory lower quality but better compression. I should shoot the same scene in AVC HD and Mpeg-4 but Ive got a workflow for AVC HD so I'll stick to that and of course the recording modes. Here we go, we can shoot up to 35 megabits per second. 50 P Fantastic.

24 P 17 mega bits per second which is what I generally operate at, but that's for Mpeg-4 if we go back into AVC HD and then we go back out. Recording mode: Boom! Look at this we get it doesn't go up to 35 and now and he goes to 28 megabits per second in AVC HD. But it does do l PCM recording which is there going to be higher quality audio? but I You know for most ordinary users, you're never going to notice that L PCM difference. Now you've ever got joule recording mode or relay recording.

Real a recording is where if you put in two SD cards it'll or if one SD card falls up, it automatically switch over to the next one. Very handy if you're doing. you know long period recording time-lapse things like that. but unfortunately the dual recording mode is not available in the 50.

P Here you've got to go down to the 24 megabits per second before that joule recording option pops up here. That's really annoying, but it will on card a record 24 megabits per second IVC HD So you can choose either to copy it. so to get a redundant and redundant backup store the same video onto two cards that's really handy or the second one. Unfortunately this is a big thing which they they actually promote.

Big feature they promote with this camera but it's completely it doesn't let you do four HD Mpeg-4 as the second recording. it only. It only does a little pissant. 4 megabits per second, 1280 by 720.

Well yeah, it's ok. The whole idea behind that is so that you can get quick footage and upload it to the Internet using their further our FTP upload option which I won't get into. Oh goodness, give me a break. Well they give the option between 3 and 4.

Gee, Thanks! Well there we go. I can make my screen brighter just as bright or brighter than the HfG 10, but presumably that's going to choose some more power I'll leave it on normal probably. Please excuse me for not being able to record through this so if you find it very well. but trust me, it is absolutely beautiful.

That's a Diopter adjuster there and 1.5 megapixels. Ah, it's just as this. Clarity is just stunning. It really is.

And if we compare the HfG 30 which is this one where my hand is hello, the barrel distortion look compared to the Hf G 10. yeah it's probably just as bad on a similar sort of frame there. So yeah, haven't really improved that. but you do get the extra wide angle.

and by the way, if you turn on the image stabilization that sensor shift thing, it takes it from about 26 millimeters to about the same 30 millimeters as on the HF G10. Now one feature I'm very excited to try out is the Wi-Fi So I can, actually, uh, switch that on? I've got a button set down here for that I can switch it on. ya gotta set it up first. Anyway, Yeah, you got to put in a password of a certain leaf.

all that sort of stuff. but you don't need an app or anything like that. All you need is a web browser and you put in that web address. So I've switched that on and now it should turn you and tell you on the screen.

Wi-Fi is now switched on and I can should be able to reload that. Here we go. it should connect and Bingo we're in like Flynn Look at that. Now we have complete remote Live view.

Look. look at that as a slight lag on that. but who cares, right? I Mean it's fantastic. If you've got this something set up on a balcony or in a remote location, you can actually control it and it's got a simple or advanced mode.

We're in the advanced control at the moment and look, we've got the counter and everything and we can set all the manual modes and ah, it's just fantastic. We can start, Stop here, We go. start recording. There we go.

Bingo. It's recording, start and stop and live view that is worth its weight in gold. It really is. Look at that.

Love it. look I mean this even has sort of like a slightly better control than what's on the camera itself. Look I can change between the two slots here and it'll tell me the time remaining, but that is terrific all within a web browser. numbers app.

Rubbish. I Just love it. It works. Look at this.

We can turn manual focus on and we can control the focus manually. We can control the zoom. we can control the exposure. Oh man, they've just.

they've got that completely right. That's exactly how it should be and built into your browser. Unbelievable. Kevin can actually get stuff right if they put their mind to it.

There you go. So there you go. That's a rather lengthy look at playing around with the Canon HfG 30 and it is a very significant step up from my HF G10. So I'm very very happy with the extra cold shoe mount on there.

the extra like these separate headphone jack, the much higher resolution screen that Wi-Fi feature. Fantastic! I can now record in 50 P which is terrific which of other brands being able to do for ages. we've got the increased better rocker switch the Viewfinder I don't care about I don't use it but it is absolutely stunning. The Viewfinder Fantastic.

X 20 Zoom which works with my macro lens. it's just it's got some extra function assignable function buttons on it. Pissed off Totally pissed off that they changed the battery that is. Just absolutely want to shove that up.

Marketing are so really. do. That is just pure marketing evil. That's what it is.

But geez. Apart from that, it is a really, really nice camcorder. and I you know it's got all the stuff that I'm used to all my work. My workflow doesn't have to change.

the Vu meter on it is fantastic. The internal audio mixing and stuff like that is all still there, which is fantastic. It's got the wanky cinema mode still on here. and really, as a professional video blogger, the only thing I ask Have not only Canon but the other manufacturers, can you please add a single button on here, even if it's assignable.

Whatever a single button that plays back the last clip that I recorded is that freaking rocket science. I Mean it obviously must be Obviously because they've only got the last four seconds, they're only storing it. then they're cashing it in some internalized CPU memory. some temporary memory in there.

rather than actually replaying it from the SD card. That'll be my guess. and that's why it's You know they can only do the last four seconds. You can't even get sound with it.

It's ridiculous. Please figure out a way to just play back the last clip and and delete it. It would be nice if you could, just you know there was a button on it. Play last clip.

Boom. You know, Delete Last. No, that was that was a clip delete. So I don't have to waste, you know, card storage and upload storage and everything else and then delete it later.

Oh man. anyway, but this is a great camcorder. It really is and I highly recommend it even though it still has a few little flaws in it. It's a nice upgrade from the Hf G10.

Worth every cent and it is a top quality piece of kit. It really is. So anyway I hope you enjoyed that ramble. Catch you next time you.