Photos: Hands-on with the high-definition Canon HG21

By Rich Trenholm on 25 November 2008, 12:03pm

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21 is the year you come of age. Can we draw a parallel between that and the coming of age of high-definition video? Er, no, not really. We'll stick to telling you about the Canon HG21, an HD hybrid camcorder.

The whopping 120GB hard disk drive gives you 45 hours of HD footage. Video can also be recorded to, or transferred via, SD and SDHC memory cards. This way, you can backup your footage and hopefully never lose 40+ hours of precious, precious memories.

It's quite a chunky fella, thanks mainly to that large HDD. Drives such as this are more vulnerable to drops than, say, flash memory, but as always we're impressed by Canon's rugged build quality.

It spits out 1,920x1,080-pixel full HD, at 24Mbps. Video is saved in AVCHD format, with a full-sized HDMI connection for watching on your HDTV. Other high-end features include a microphone input, accessory shoe and viewfinder. For a closer look at these and other features, say "hit me", click 'Continue', and we'll deal out more details.