Canon Vixia HF M400

The good: With a nice set of features  for home-movie-type shooters and pleasing video quality, the Canon Vixia HF  M400 series has lots to like.

The bad: A small, coarse LCD that’s hard to view in  direct sunlight and touch-screen-impaired menu system hamper an otherwise solid  design.

The bottom line: A  fine follow-up to last year’s M3xx series, the Canon Vixia M4xx series should  please most home-movie-oriented videographers despite its relatively high price.  If you don’t need the EVF, the M400 is your best buy, but if you’ll be shooting  a lot in sunlight, it’s worth it to step up to the M41.

With the Vixia HF M4xx series of HD camcorders, Canon maintains its reputation  for delivering a solid midrange consumer camcorder, once again at slightly  higher prices than those of the competition. The series consists of three nearly  identical models. The cheapest, the M400, has no built-in memory, the M40 adds  16GB, and the M41 adds another 16GB plus an electronic viewfinder. All use the  same HD CMOS Pro sensor found in the HF  G10, but paired with a smaller, less expensive lens. This review is based on  the Vixia HF M41.

Overall, the camcorder’s video looks relatively sharp–and like most looks  even better played directly on a TV. There is some aliasing on edges, generally  a result of the interlaced video format; one difference between the M4xx series  and its step-up sibling is the lack of a native 1080 progressive encoding format  instead of the AVCHD standard of encoding 24fps and 30fps video as 60i.

Exposure and color rendering look very good, with a broad tonal  range–there’s no excessive clipping in the highlights or shadows. Though the  M4xx series uses the same sensor as the more expensive HF G10, the lenses are  very different, and it shows in a variety of ways. In this case, the more  pentagonal aperture renders less pleasing out-of-focus highlights. That probably  won’t matter to most potential users of this model, but will affect those  seeking a more artistic look.

The camcorder’s low-light video (about 17 lux) looks quite good; a little  soft, but with a nice balance between sharpness and color saturation and  accuracy in its noise reduction. Lower light–dim living-room quality–displays  more softness and color noise, but I think most people would consider it  acceptable.

For shooting stills, the low-resolution sensor may not suit some folks’ need  for large still photos. Like the G10, the stills look sharp and fall just short  of looking too digital; they look fine onscreen and printed, but I wouldn’t  recommend printing them larger than 4.5×8 inches.

As for audio, the stereo microphone is quite sensitive with a bright sound,  but the automatic wind filter doesn’t work as well as I’d like. It has a decent  set of audio tools, including the ability to mix internal and external levels,  set directionality (mono, normal, wide, zoom), equalize (boost LF, low cut,  boost MF), boost HF+LF), and attenuate.

It meters and exposes correctly and consistently most of the time, but like  many camcorders tends to underexpose in situations where there’s not necessarily  backlighting, but a large subject surrounded by a lot of ambient light (think of  a flag waving against a blue sky). The image stabilization is solid; the Dynamic  setting works well up to about 75 percent of the way through the focal range,  and Powered IS is rock-steady at maximum telephoto. It focuses quickly, though  you can somewhat adjust how gradually that happens (Instant and Normal). The  autofocus works well, but not significantly better than we’ve seen in previous  models, and like all camcorders can inappropriately lock on the background  instead of the subject. Zooming feels smooth, and it’s easy to keep it at a  consistent rate.

I’m not crazy about the LCD; though it’s slightly larger and higher  resolution than that of the preceding M3xx series, it still feels too small and  coarse and frustrating for navigating the menus; however, because of the  relatively large virtual buttons, it’s not bad for accessing the frequently used  shooting settings. I had a tough time viewing it in direct sunlight though, so  if you shoot outdoors a lot you should seriously consider the M41 for its EVF.  While small, it’s serviceable and comes in very handy when you can’t see the  LCD.