First Shooting with Canon Vixia G20 Prosumer Video Camera

My Canon Vixia G20 is small and light enough that I can
attach it to the handlebars of my bike with a Gorilla Grip.

So after having shot all 12 of the How to Defeat Dudes episodes on the director's Canon DSLR, I was naturally really impressed with what DSLRs can do for their diminutive size, and decided to pick one up, so that I could shoot all of the How to Defeat Dudes blogs with it as well. At the same time however, the more I looked into it, the more I thought that it wasn't really necessary for me to invest in getting one as of yet. Granted, I knew that I needed to upgrade from shooting them on my iphone as I had been doing, and while the trend is moving towards DSLRs replacing video cameras, the fact of the matter is, it hasn't happened as of it.

Even though the DSLRs do have far and away superior lense quality, the fact of the matter is, they are still primarily for shooting stills, and as such, shooting video with them is trickier, and focusing always has to be done manually. That may be fine for documentary or interview style shooting, but in addition to the video blogs, I also wanted a camera that I could use to shoot action with, which means an absolutely ton of movement, and not necessarily all in the same depth of field. Beyond that, there is also the issue that when you are not shooting on a tripod, the ergonomics of a DSLR are not exactly suited to shooting extensive amounts of video, like the shape of a video camera is. Lastly, insomuch as I am still a relative beginner to the world of cameras and editing, it didn't quite make sense to me to invest a ton of money into something that I don't have the knowledge to fully utilize. It'd be kind of like getting a Ferrari for a 16 yr. old who doesn't even know how to drive a stick yet.

The camera I decided on instead was the Canon Vixia G20. Although in the states the G20 are still around $1100 new, here in Japan (or reasons unbeknownst to me), they are relatively cheap, and can be picked up for around $700. (Here they are called the Ivis however). The menus are totally bilingual and can all be set to English. The only downside I have found is that the instructions do not come in English, so I had to download them from the internet. No big deal. The reason I decided to go with this camera was that for the price, it was just about the best deal you can get for a "pro-sumer" camera. As a Canon, the lenses are still amazing, and was also the only non-professional video camera I saw that came with it's own hood, and allowed for rack-focusing.

Just yesterday, I had the pleasure of finally shooting with it for the first time, and it was awesome to work with. Incredibily easy. I had heard that the microphones on these was sub-par, and that the battery sucked, but at least for my one day shoot, I had no complaints about either. On a half-charge, the battery let me take about 3 hours worth of footage, and the MIC worked well despite how much incredible background noise there was in the area.

Anyway, here is the video if you would like to be the judge of that yourself.


Beyond that, lacking a tripod, the camera was actually small enough and light enough that I could mount it onto the handle bars of my bicycle with a Gorilla grip, and that was all it took to get the job done. About the only complaint that I had was that after converting it to 1280 x 720 ("Youtube size" and the same size that the How to Defeat Dudes vids are) the video came out a bit grainy. Perhaps this is due to my lack of post-production editing skills, and could be fixed with color correction and what not anyway. Anyway, the point is that, I am very very happy with this camera, and looking forward to seeing what it can do once I really get it figured out.