Canon HF M32

The HF M32 is the latest member of Canon's line of small Full HD camcorders and it's a treat to use.  We put it through its paces at the Paris Horse Show to see how it coped with tricky conditions—low light levels and lots of fast-moving subjects.

Handling

The HF M32's sleek glossy black exterior contains just about everything you can expect from an £800 camcorder these days.  There's a reasonably responsive touchscreen which allows you to flip through your clips or see a thumbnail of each one like on an iPhone.  If you're interested in that kind of thing, the screen is also your way into adjusting advanced settings like the zoom speed, the focus system used (face detection), the overall quality (bitrate) or where you're recording to (memory card or internal memory). 

And the HF M32 has plenty of memory: 64 GB is enough for over ten hours of video.  As it uses flash memory, it's not only lighter but makes fewer demands on the battery than a hard drive would.  Indeed, the HF M32 is something of a featherweight camcorder at just 320 g.  Flipping open the screen switches it on—there's no viewfinder so that's the only way to see what you're filming—and it's ready to go quickly in three seconds.  The 211 000, 2.9'' display is about average, which is perfectly good.

Photo button and zoom controls	Line in for a mic and line out for headphones

You can switch to playback mode by pressing the Play button on the side of the case: it's simple and easy.  The face detection system works well—too well, actually: sometimes we wished it would spend less time looking all over the place for a face to focus on and just concentrate on the subject at the centre of the frame.  In some cases, we ended up turning it off in the menu.  The BP-808 battery that's supplied recharges inside the camcorder and lasts around an hour and a half, which isn't bad.

Scrolling through clips on the display	Settings Menu

There's no lens cap: a small cover slides over the lens like it would on a point and shoot digital camera.  If you want to use it for still photos, then the Photo mode takes 3 Megapixel shots and is backed up by an automatic flash.  Under the lens, a small manual dial controls the focus, exposure, gain or the mic level.  If you plan on using the HF M32 for conducting interviews, there's both a line in for a mic and a line out for headphones.  There's only one irritation: the strap on the handle is very tricky to attach, and we're sure Canon can do better than this on a camcorder in this price range.

Image Quality

We took the HF M32 for a ride at the showjumping competition at the Paris Horse Show, which would prove challenging for any camcorder.  The HF M32's 15x variable-speed optical zoom meant we could quickly change our focus in a matter of seconds.  The zoom is certainly powerful by itself, but it's even more impressive when coupled with the Power IS image stabilisation system.  First used on Canon's binoculars, this technology ensures perfect stability even when zoomed right in.  You can turn it on by pressing a button beside the LCD screen, and as you hold it down you feel you're filming on a tripod.  The autofocus works like clockwork, even on fast-moving subjects like the horses which really aren't easy to focus on.

39.5 mm wide angle	Zoomed in 15x using Power IS

The lens isn't really a wide-angle as it starts at 39.5 mm, which is a shame because lots of other camcorders now offer a field between 28 and 35 mm.  The HF M32 records video using a 1920 x 1080 pixel interlaced scan (1080i) and a bitrate of 24 Mbps, the maximum permitted by the AVCHD codec.  A progressive 'Cinema' mode at 25p is also available.  The amount of detail captured is very impressive but doesn't beat the Panasonic TM700 which remains the leader in this field ahead of both Sony and Canon. 

The HF M32's main weaknesses is its lack of sensitivity.  As we filmed in the low light levels around the Show, electronic noise crept into our video.  When we went below 10 lux, the results were very dark and suffered from a lot of noise.  If you get an HF M32, you're better off filming outside than indoors.

Overall, we're pretty pleased with the HF M32.  Unlike Sony and Panasonic, though, Canon still hasn't managed to solve the riddle of sensitivity, but its 'advanced' optical stabilisation is still the best on the market.

We shot this video at the Paris Horse Show and it should give you an idea of how the HF M32 performed.  It would have been almost impossible to do something similar using a reflex like the Canon 5D Mark II (see inset).