Like many of you, I have a great 3-chip pro HD camera with all the bells and whistles. Amazingly flexible and dripping with accessories, it's capable of making truly superb images. I often see things I'd like to capture on the spur of the moment, be it beautiful lighting or an interesting composition. But I can't, because my professional HD camera is at home. Wouldn't it be great to have a camera you can take anywhere to shoot candid scenes unobtrusively and without fuss, in full HD?

Click To Enlarge Are the Sony HDR-HC3 and Canon HV10 single-CMOS sensor HDV cameras good enough for pro use? Is the resolution really HD?

You can take it with you

Until recently, using a micro-camcorder meant shooting standard-definition only, but no longer. The first crop of HD micro-cams is now available. While it's easy to think of them as consumer cameras, you can just as easily imagine them being used on lightweight jib arms, as hidden cameras, as helmet cams, as handheld B-roll cameras, or as emergency backups to your 3-chip professional HD cameras-basically, in any role for which a bigger camera would be too large, heavy, expensive, or obvious. So to get behind the hype, I tested two of the most popular HD micro-cams: the Canon HV10 and the Sony HDR-HC3.

Are they good enough for pro use? Is the resolution really HD?

The answer to the first question is complicated, but to the second question, the answer is an emphatic, "Yes." As small as these two cameras are, they're still true HD.

The rundown

Both the Canon HV10 and Sony HDR-HC3 have single-chip CMOS sensors, 10:1 zoom lenses, and reasonable quality still-photo capability. They both record to the miniDV tape-based HDV format and normally record at 30i (in the United States), though the Sony HDR-HC3 has a Cinematic mode with simulated 24 fps recording. But despite their many similarities, these are very different cameras.

The Canon HV10 is exceptionally small and, because the lens is mounted on top of the tape transport section, very thin. At just under 1 pound, it's very light as well. The HV10 is about the size of a large point-and-shoot still camera and definitely qualifies as pocketable.

The HDR-HC3 is Sony's update of its HDR-HC1-the first entrant in the HD micro-cam category. Although the HDR-HC3 is still very small, the camera section is to the side of the tape transport in the handgrip, so the whole package is fairly wide and a bit heavier than it looks at 1.3 pounds. It's still a pocket camera, but you'll need cargo pants-sized pockets.

Click To Enlarge Detail of an image from: (left) the Sony HDR-HC3, (middle) the Canon HV10, and (right) a Canon XL-H1 for comparison. The Canon XL-H1 is set up for shooting darker and lower contrast for digital cinema. Note how well the Canon HV10 matches to it.

If you've used a Sony consumer camera recently, you'll find the HDR-HC3 controls, from the touch-screen interface to the left-right index finger zoom control, familiar. Two new and welcome features are the Smooth Slow Record function and an HDMI connector. The Slow Motion Record function captures 3 seconds of 240 fields per second, high-speed video, saves it to a buffer, and then records it to tape in 12 seconds at 30i. You're locked out of operating the camera during the 12-second write-to-tape operation.

The HDMI connector allows you to output uncompressed video and audio. When you use the Sony HDR-HC3 in combination with a product such as Blackmagic Design's $249 Intensity capture card and a qualified RAID, you can capture uncompressed HD with genlocking and switching at a reasonable price. HDMI capture goes beyond FireWire HDV capture, though you can do that with a Sony HDR-HC3, too.

The Canon HV10 is very old-school by comparison. No slow-mo, no infrared night shot, no HDMI connector-just component analog HD output and FireWire for HDV capture. The only tricky speed thing it does is play back 24p (and 24f) tapes from Canon's larger HD cameras. The HV10 is Canon's answer to those who've complained about the lack of a reasonably priced editing feeder deck (though I had some tape interchange problems resulting in glitchy playback when I tried to capture a 24p HDV tape from an XL-H1).

Audio has never been a strength of small cameras, and these cameras are both inclined to prove the rule, but the Canon HV10 is particularly bad. It's top-rear mounted microphones are perfectly placed to hear the operator's every breath, cough, and sniffle, and to especially emphasize the drone of overflying aircraft, while mini-mizing sounds from subjects in front of the camera.

That would be all right if there were a microphone input jack, but there isn't, and Canon chose to put a plaque boasting about the 3.1-megapixel still capture right where an accessory shoe should be (but isn't)-a perfect example of marketing over functionality. Neither camera has a headphone jack, but the Sony HDR-HC3 has the more directional ECM-HGZ1 accessory shotgun microphone ($69.99), which will work with Sony's proprietary Active Interface Shoe.

Click To Enlarge The Canon HV10 looks similar to the old Elura-A (right), but while the Elura-A's controls can be operated with your thumb, the HV10's cannot.

For any work requiring good audio, I'd recommend recording double system with a small solid-state recorder, such as the M-Audio MicroTrack 24/96 ($499), using an old-fashioned clapper slate to synchronize the sound and picture. Synching shots up in an editing program later is actually very easy, since you have a rough cue track from the camera to match the good track to, as well as the slate video. We did it with film dailies for years.

Set the controls

The ergonomics of manual operation are a challenge with both these machines. I had high hopes for the Canon HV10, because the layout was obviously based on Canon's original Elura-A miniDV camera-one of the best little cameras ever made. If Canon could combine that "wave it out the car window with one hand" usefulness with a decent HD image, they'd have a world-beater.

But the Canon HV10 falls short in the details. For example, the tape mechanism door opens toward the bottom of the camera, not the back or top, so you can't change a tape while the camera is mounted on a tripod or attached to a quick-release base, adding at least 30 seconds to any non-handheld tape change. Also, the sliding zoom button is mounted near the front of the camera and is rather a stretch for a middle or index finger, making it awkward and quite difficult to operate smoothly. Worse still, for wider angle you have to push the zoom button forward, and for telephoto you pull it to the rear. I know it's a common fault of consumer cameras, but to me it's the product of a reverse-logic alternate universe.

I'm not happy about the other controls, either. The power camera/play switch looks pretty solid, but on several occasions it turned itself on in my bag and ran the battery down. The very important Function, Focus, and Exposure buttons are small and almost flush to the camera body. I have large hands, so I needed to actually look at the button and push it with a fingernail.

The rotary adjuster is similarly cursed. Instead of the Elura-A's standard clicking thumbwheel, which I find quite acceptable, the Canon HV-10 has a jog wheel that's less predictable. You can't roll it one click or two and know just by feel what it's done.

If that sounds bad, well, the Sony HDR-HC3's manual controls are worse. Because of Sony's reliance on the touch-screen menu system rather than physical buttons, the camera has only one adjuster for all functions, the Camera Control Dial, which is forward of the flip-out monitor. To change between adjusting, say, focus and exposure, you have to hold the Manual button down for several seconds, then scroll through a menu of available functions. Enable the manual function you want to use, confirm, and look up to see that your intended subject (was that an ivory-billed woodpecker?) has flown to the next county.

Alternatively, you can press P-Menu; then the Dial Set touch-screen button; choose either Focus, Exposure, AE Shift, or WB Shift; and then close. I don't know if that's any easier, though. Between the two cameras, I like physical buttons better than touch-screen menus, even if the buttons are tiny.

The flip-out viewfinders on these cameras are almost identical; both are quite good, but both also have a lot of overscan, the Sony HDR-HC3 perhaps a bit more than the Canon HV-10. The Sony has a histogram, plus start/stop and zoom controls-very useful-whereas the Canon has a histogram, but it's for stills only.

Another negative for the Canon HV-10 is the battery. The supplied BP-310 850mAh battery is barely adequate to pull a single tape when new, so for professional use, a couple of larger BP-315 1520mAh ($75 street) and the CG-300 external charger ($70 street) are highly recommended. The Sony HDR-HC3 uses P series batteries, which are available in greater variety and higher capacities than the Canon BP-300 series, up to the NP-FP90 2460mAh ($100 street).

As you might expect, there really isn't a manual gain control on either camera, but you can use the preset scene files to prevent the cameras from boosting the gain. This is a workaround, though, and somewhat limited. Both dusk presets are fixed at daylight white balance, for instance.

At least the Canon HV10 has the option of shutter or aperture priority exposure, though for some reason there's no AE Shift/Offset, a function I use a lot, generally shooting a half to one stop darker than the auto recommendation for more highlight detail.

Click To Enlarge Resolution chart results from the Sony HDR-HC3 (left), Canon HV-10 (middle), and Canon XL-H1 (right). Both small cameras show similar results on the resolution chart, but are much worse when compared with a Canon XL-H1, partly because the XL-H1 is a 3-chip camera with a better lens.

The choice

So which camera would I buy? At the end of the day, I prefer the Canon HV10. Why? Despite many faults, it has simply phenomenal picture quality (that's more likely to cut well into material shot with bigger and better cameras) and it's slightly easier to switch between manual focus and exposure control. The Sony HDR-HC3, while very good, doesn't render fine detail nearly as well as the Canon HV10, relies too much on contrast and edge enhancement, and has very clumsy manual controls.

The Sony HDR-HC3 may be a very good small camera, but the Canon HV10 is a very small good camera. The full 1920 x 1080 sensor really shines, as does the excellent 10:1 lens and superb optical image stabilization. That said, the Sony HDR-HC3 probably has a better mix of features to appeal to true consumers, like night shot and 4-megapixel stills.

It's a close call, though. In plenty of situations, I'd reach for the Sony HDR-HC3 first. Shooting events, for example-especially sports, where the faster tape changes and larger available batteries could easily outweigh other considerations. Or any situation where I had to rely on the built-in audio. Or needed slower motion than the Panasonic VariCam, but couldn't afford to rent a true high-speed camera.

Maybe I'll have to get both of them.