Canon VIXIA HF M500 Full HD 10x Image Stabilized Camcorder with One SDXC Card Slot and 3.0 Touch LCD

Just got the camera today so I thought I'd jot down some initial impressions.The build quality is good, classy black with chrome. I bought an extra battery and noticed it wiggled slightly but no big deal. The cam is definitely light. The touch screen has a nice sensitivity to it. Had to turn up the brightness to get it to work okay under bright light.The menu system will take a little time to get used to. It's not the sort of system you can can just goof around with all the options and figure it out. If you know what functions your looking for you'll have to spend a little time in the manual figuring it out.Naturally, everyone would be wondering about the image quality. The video quality is very good. I took a little video of a friend of mine doing yard work in fairly strong daylight. I noticed that the lens is quite sharp, rendering lots of detail. Color is good. Image is perhaps just a tad overexposed but I was throwing it into a tough situation with the harsh daylight right out of the box. Zoom is smooth.The microphone worked well, even with a little bit of wind. Not overly sensitive, but it can pick up some low volume details in the scene.Bottom line, for the price you'll be happy with this camera. If you want to take some high quality HD without paying an arm and a leg for $1,000 plus professional camcorder, then this is the camcorder for you.FOLLOW UP (2 MONTHS LATER)Okay, now I've had lots of experience with this cam. Submitted some footage to the local access television station. So here's the scoop. The image quality, in low light, is superb for a camera of this price. Image quality is very good under normal lighting conditions. The cam tends to overexpose a little, however most people wouldn't notice it. However, if you want to "dial in" a "semi-pro" look, then definitely get acquainted with the exposure compensation. Definitely compensating one or two stops (darker) will make your image look really, really good, coming close to a pro look.The built in mic is superb. I took some footage of a music performance at the local high school and I was shocked at how good the sound was. I've been using an external shotgun mic for a few events and the cam handles that beautifully, just set the volume level to 50 out of 100 and I'm getting pro sound. Only minor annoyance is the external microphone volume is conveniently placed under the easily accessible "function" menu but the volume for external headphones is buried under another menu. Luckily the headphone level is "set and forget" because I always use the same headphones.The build quality is good but not top notch. But realistically most people aren't going to use this cam forty hours per week on the job. I'm using it about 10 hours a month videoing various programs for the local access station and I don't have any qualms about the cam standing up to that level of use.This cam is a serious amateur to semi pro rig for short dollars. If you know how to dial in exposure compensation you can really make the image shine. I was videoing an event beside a pro with a $3,000 camera and quite seriously, the images I was capturing, in my opinion, were very close in quality to the pro's cam.No camera is perfect, but your getting 90-95 percent the quality of a serious semi pro rig for about 1/4 to 1/6th the price.ONE YEAR LATERI've been using this camera about 10-20 hours a month for one year doing local access tv footage. This cam never ceases to amaze me. Really good low light images. We've used other far more expensive cameras than this one (won't mention the make/model) and this one still outshines in the low light department. Canon should have charged WAAAY more money for this cam (lol). I bought it when it first came out at $500 and now the street price is $350 which is an unbelievable deal.Super nice light rig when I match this cam with the Canon monopod. I use it on a light Velbon tripod as well. The shotgun I mentioned earlier in this article is hanging in there recording some nice sound.Couldn't be more pleased with this camera. Yah, it overexposes occasionally but no camera is perfect. The low light performance seals the deal.UPDATE, FIVE YEARS LATERThis cam is still going strong! I use it to video all day conferences. I bought a 256 GB SD card for it so that it can record for 24 hours straight at maximum quality. I set the cam up for a conference using aperture priority, wide open, 24P, to get the most light, and just start the video at the beginning of the day, and let it run all day. No problem catching a 12 hour day of continuous conference footage. That way, I don't miss anything or have to sweat it about swapping out SD cards in the middle of the conference. Later on, I edit out the gaps and break up video for each speaker and post to youtube.This cam just keeps ticking and ticking. So reliable. Video quality still great for youtube.For sound, I sometimes take a sound feed from the conference sound board. Or, I will run a shotgun microphone up to the podium. Or, record sound with the onboard built in mic.I've been thinking about upgrading to a 4K cam, but this cam has just been so reliable I just keep relying on it. I really don't want to deal with the size of 4K footage after, either.Probably recorded 3-400 hours footage with this cam and it works as good as new.Only minor niggle is that a lot of these conference centers have the lights turned down low to save money. I have to open up the aperture to F/1.8 (all the way open, depending on zoom range) and 24 frames per second to get the most light in possible. In post production, I bump up the brightness by about one full stop to get up to decent levels.If you can get this cam used, you'll be happy. What a great, reliable cam.

Update 5-22-13I recently used this to record about 10hrs worth of footage for a company symposium. Upon transfering the files, I noticed they were all broken into 20min blocks, and that was using the AVCHD. This caused extra editing, with bumps in video and audio that cannot be averted. The manual says only mp4s are recorded for 20 mins max, but makes no mention of the file breaking every 20 mins in the other formats. On average you lose about 1-2secs of footage and makes the audio stutter unless you get it on a quiet spot. Needs alot of improvement for memory saving ability. I used the recommended SDHC for it as well.----------This camera is pretty good quality, it seems to have a wide variation in price on Amazon though as I bought it new for $319 and at the time of this review its up to $399.The major con is that on the product description it has "Transfer Utility/Video Browser", which I was buying it because it was supposed to come with the Pixela Video Browser/Editor. It does not. The description on CNET also changed to from several months ago to no longer say it includes the Video Browser.

I purchased this camera to replace an older Canon Vixia HF S100 camera. I use this camera to produce a number of video podcasts online (have been podcasting since 2004), and as a result, tend to be a bit more of a pro-sumer.PROSThe image quality is excellent for AVCHD. I generally shoot with a 3 point lighting set-up and manually set the white balance, and exposure using an exposure card and a whi-bal card, and always shoot in AVCHD PF30 (1080p 30fps) MXP (24Mbps). The HFS100 that was replaced could shoot with the same settings and the video quality was pretty good, however the HFM500 is visually a step up in image quality. Very nice.The audio quality is OK. Not bad, but not awesome. Compared to the audio quality of the HFS100, it is a HUGE step up, but I was hoping for more. My setup is actually a little unique, I capture all my audio via studio microphones and a Mackie mixer, with channel inserts to do live audio processing to get that nice presence with little background noise, then send that resulting sound to the camera via the mixer's aux send using a custom adapter cable that converts the 1/4" mono aux out to 3.5mm stereo the camera is expecting (sleeves tied together, tip goes to the tip and ring, basically dual mono into the camera, which sees and records it as stereo). The old HFS100's audio subsystem was terrible, getting the levels right was a bear and there was still a lot of noise that had to be cleaned up in post. The new HFM500 handles the line level audio into the mic jack quite nicely (this is the reason why I listed this as a pro), however, I wish I had more control of the audio sub-system. If you set it to auto (the default), the noise floor is way too high at -48db (per the audio meters in Premiere Pro) which results in fuzzy sounding audio when listening via headphones and you can hear the auto-attenuate function kick in every time you say something. It's OK if you listen on speakers, but way too much noise with headphones. The same aux out level into a nice digital audio recorder results in a noise floor of -72db (with all the mics plugged into the mixer and mic-levels set on the mixer to peak at -6 to -3 db), so the auto setting leaves a lot to be desired. Setting it to manual and 50 out of 100 (halfway) results in a comparable noise floor to the auto level. It's ever so slightly lower, but still way too high. I dialed the level down 5 steps at a time and didn't hit the same -72db noise floor until I was down to an audio level of 20 out of 100. At that setting, the noise floor is about -72db and in my studio setting the audio peaks around -6db to -3db, right where you want it. In my situation, any higher setting than that results in a higher noise floor and the audio auto attenuate function kicks in (I wish I could turn if off so I can see if I'm feeding it too hot of a signal). The great thing about the HFM500 is when setting the audio, you get a visual indicator as well as the actual numerical range, which makes precise and repeatable settings a lot easier. The HFS100 only showed the visual range and no numbers so in many ways you kind of had to eyeball it if you ever had to change the setting for something else and was trying to get back to your old setting. Once the levels are set, the actual audio quality is not what I would call pro-quality (this is coming from a guy who's done lots of pro-audio and knows good sound when he hears it), but is more than passable for something that is not pro-gear and will serve the average consumer very well. It's good enough that if I get the levels set right (much easier with this camera), I don't have to do any cleanup in post, which is a time saver for me and a plus. The simple fact that it can handle a mixers +4dBu line level out without distorting should say a lot.The AVCHD is a joy to edit in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6. It just works. Make sure you pull in the full contents of the card before importing it into either Prelude or Premiere, and use a card reader and at least a class 10 card.A nice 4:2:2 HDMI out. You can use an external capture device and really get wonderful footage.The strap is removable. A plus for those of us who primarily shoot on a tripod/monopod and/or tethered.CONSNo included remote. Really?!?!?! My biggest single gripe. I use the remote on the HFS100 constantly.I'm not a fan of the touch screen, and I'm not really a fan of some of the consumer features that Canon includes, however, going into full manual mode does disable most of them. This isn't a pro-camcorder, but still, for those of us that are at least pro-sumer, a bit of a gripe.I wish setting the audio level, exposure, and white balance were easier to get to through the menu system, but they can be gotten to in manual mode.I wish clearing off the SD card was faster to get to. Re-initializing the SD card is something you're going to do a lot of and you can't do it with the computer. I produce 3+ new episodes a week with this camcorder and it would be great if there was a way faster way to get to this functionality.I wish the audio system was 24 bits and not 16 bits. If I set the audio level to 0 out of 100 there is no sound, if I set it to 1 out of 100 the noise floor sits right at -90db. Clearly not converting it from analog to digital with 24 bits. At least the analog part is clean enough and has enough headroom to handle +4dBu (pro line-level) levels without distorting.I wish I could turn off the audio auto attenuate function, but I suspect that it is the way it is because the ADC conversion isn't 24 bits. I think Canon wanted to make sure that no matter the signal level, the dynamic range fit inside of the kind of restrictive 16 bits that it uses to convert from analog to digital. For a home user this is OK, for a pro-sumer who may want more control, this is a gripe. It can be made to work, and is a lot easier than the HFS100 it replaced, but can be much better by a long shot.I wish the audio level display on the camcorder was greater than 48db. 90 to 120 db would be great that way at least you can see where the noise floor is on the camera itself instead of really only knowing where you are peaking.Per other reviewers, the camcorder does occasionally not recognize the SD card, but if you power down, take the card out, then put it back in, that usually does the trick, however, in reality, it should never happen unless the card is bad.Another gripe is the power connector on the camcorder, on the HFS100 it was a barrel connector, and so made providing power via an external battery pack super easy. On the HFM500 it is some proprietary square connector, which makes tethered shooting on-location a lot more difficult from a power supply perspective. Also, the power supply is now a wall-wart as opposed to a power cord with an in-line transformer, again making power supply more difficult compared to the HFS100.I wish Canon would let us shoot in 2K. The difference between HD and 2K is minimal (1920x1080 vs 2048x1152) and there is no reason why it at least can't be an option on the camcorder for us pro-sumers that might want to make a movie with this thing.And last but not least, I wish canon would allow recording to MPEG-2 at 50Mbps and 4:2:2, or even better, DNxHD or ProRes with 4:2:2 color. AVCHD is really just h.264 under the covers, which is a sucky codec to use for an acquisition format because it is bit rate limited and only 4:2:0 color (unless you get into blu-ray profile levels and bit rates, which the camera doesn't do). I'd love to have a camcorder that doesn't cost an arm and a leg that captures HD (or 2K) at higher quality than blu-ray (which is also h.264, but up to 40Mbps). They have the sensor and the control of pro-sumer stuff in this camcorder, I just wish they would back it up with acquisition that was pro-sumer to pro for less than $1000. At least you get an uncompressed 4:2:2 source via the HDMI out and can record that to something like the Blackmagic Design's Hyperdeck shuttle or Hyperdeck Studio.That is all. It's still a very good camera and I'm glad I made the upgrade and it is still a steal for the money, I just wish it had more (as is usually the case with me).