The best consumer HDV camcorder: Canon HV40

📹 In the early 2000s, four Japanese companies  -  JVC, Canon, Sony and Sharp  - developed a format to record HD video on DV cassettes. They called the new format HDV.

All samples have been shot with the HV40 in 24F mode.

#hdv

[craigw.scribner]

Great video! I got a Canon HV30 in December 2009 and still have it. For the money and features, it (along with the HV40) may be the best value camcorders ever made!

[fotomatic]

I have an european Legria HV40 nearly brand new ... with loads of accesories ... xlr mic with the converter and dead cat, a handle, a light, the wide angle lens for it, the extra large battery, etc ... I think I even have the box 😊

[TheCymbalProject]

So glad I invested in the HV20 back in 2008 and even more pleased that shot all my footage in the native HDV 60i format.
New software like Topaz Video AI plays very nicely with HDV footage and its easy to deinterlace, upsample frame rates and upscale to 4K with incredible results. From a visual quality aspect, the HDV's high quaility 25 mbps / interlaced signal is mathematically on par with 50 mbps / 60 FPS progressive AVCHD footage I currently shoot with Sony CX900. The HV20 was expensive when i bought in back in 2008, but that original investment in the best possible camera at the time helped to "future proof" all my original footage.

[ZakWolf]

Yep, I've got an HV40 as my backup camcorder, with a Canon VIXIA HF-R600 as my main camcorder. The HV40 was Canon's final consumer/prosumer-aimed tape-based camcorder, because after that they finally began making flash memory camcorders that match (or even surpass) DV and HDV quality, compared to the early years of tapeless camcorders where the quality was inferior to the DV and HDV tape-based models. (And they also discontinued DVD and hard drive camcorders, since flash memory/SD card camcorders don't use moving parts when recording onto the medium.) And yes, my HF-R600 camcorder's footage is slightly but still noticeably higher-quality than the HV40 when both are on their highest resolution/quality settings.

[williamoverton]

speaking of which no one has done a video of the filters for the HV series not even me. I'd love to see that. most of them can be easily replicated with software such as sepia but the art filter that mimicked developing emulsion film in negative film chemicals it makes everything look weird. the real thing was used in the movie domino but the in camera version doesn't quite look like any software version I've used. I'd also like to know which platforms version of the effect is most like HV20 video. it might be easy in AVID or something but I haven't tried it for hardware reasons.

[budthomason]

I have 4 of them. The canon vixia hv 40

[j_cinema]

I live in Korea. When I saw reviews of HV40 I was like "24P HDV on this size? awesome" and really wanted to buy it. but literally no one sold used HV40, even in Japan, so I bought HV30 instead. It's nice too, but it's pain in the ass to remove 2:3 pulldown contained in PF24 footages MANUALLY. (I use After Effects for it.) Still better than Cineframe24 mode of early Sony HDV, though.

I guess HV40 has never released in Asia, only HV10, HV20 and HV30.

[jamesjr]

I have the sony hdr-hc1 and the sony hvr-z1u nice camcorders

[allenmovies]

I had the HC5, HC7, & HC9 from Sony! Really amazing cameras, the footage still holds up so well

[angelfire]

I've had my HV40 for a few months now, and to circle back to a much older comment on an earlier video, it's dethroned the VHS camcorder I had been using before, and I now find myself using it for most of my day to day capturing and special event capturing, both for videos and photography (it's a pretty decent cam for still images imo).

My only issue is with it's 24F mode. I've found myself using it quite a lot recently due to the film look it gives recordings. I am worried about headwear though, since, at the end of the day, every recording wears it down a little. I'm possibly going to get a second HDV camcorder (or deck if I can find one for less than five quadrillion dollars) to use for copying over tapes to my comp to reduce potential headwear on my camera. Do you know if tapes recorded in 24F mode work with any deck/camera, or would I have to go after specifics (i.e. a second HV40)?

[CREEDFILMSMEDIA]

I had the HV40 I loved that camera shot really good short films ok that camera.

[antoniodbo]

Do you feel there’s a difference in image quality from the cameras that used mini DV HD vs SD Card HD footage? I’m looking for that 2000s broadcast tv look

[securityg]

And if the tape mechanism for either of these camcorders fail or malfunction because believe me, any tape mechanism will eventually cause problems, simply get a CLEARCLICK HD 4K ULTIMATE EDITION and hook it up to the camcorder and shoot the footage directly onto a SD card OR a USB drive by using the included HDMI cable. - James D. Watkins, artistic director of PHOENIX PRODUCTIONS.

[williamoverton]

I'm still sentimental. what a pain working with tapes though. still using raylight and an HV20 I was able to make something that worked on a big screen. I got mine when it was newish I upgraded to an HF-M41 and that was a great camcorder too. I like canon because you have to correct the video for the best performance. it seems to be designed for those who adjust the contrast and color balance in post. that wouldn't matter with a pro camera because they have more manual controls but with consumer cameras the most important feature of all of them is exposure lock. still the HV20 was delightful to use. I liked it's reversal chemistry filter.

[jorn]

What is the value of these nowadays? People are sometimes asking prices over 200 euros for Digital 8, MiniDV and even Hi8 camcorders. Is it possible to get a HDV camcorder for around 100 euros?

[m]

While I agree on the superb quality on models like the HV20-30-40 from Canon, The HV30 was the reason why I launched into that adventure and retired pretty quickly from it: the Camera was great but the real-time capture via Firewire was slow and clumsy, sometimes failed, required frequent user intervention (if anything to change the tape) and despite having idiotically spent a lot for a Stereo Video Mic from Rode the cardioid shape of the microphones' pick up meant the noise from the tape transport was almost as present as the one from the internal microphone or even worse thanks to the microphone of wonders' optimum sensitivity.

After that I found out that I had to inverse-telecine all the footage which required an INSANE amount of processing time and knowledge at first as it wasn't really a perfect science and also because that process was barely optimized. And back then I am sure the graphics card wasn't even contemplated to process video so despite not having a dead horse it sat there idling barely lukewarm.

Then there was the editor that I BOUGHT which was owned by SONY at the time. It turned out to be a complete BUGFREAK. I could work hours on end and my project's timeline would garble up (went corrupted) several times for no reason and there was NOTHING that I could do to restore the functionality except going back to a saved version of the work, probably from 30 minutes prior at best and find out all the steps that it was missing... Every time this happened it took something like 15 to 20 minutes to go back to where I was before, it was EXCRUCIATINGLY SLOW and PAINFUL. And it wasn't even computer related, on my laptop it played the same tricks... The result was HOURS and HOURS of pure FRUSTRATION.

It was at that point that to maintain my SANITY and recover some money I decided to throw in the towel. And while I've ever since missed the quality and convenience of my HV30, I will never miss the experience as a whole. In retrospective I could have bought a normal shotgun mic and waited for the software to improve because I've had the opportunity to use newer trial/demo version of the same software and it wasn't that bad and it didn't fail so dramatically and quickly. But that came after a decade of failures while YouTube and non linear video editing became mainstream. By then real time footage capture would have been a ridiculous waste of time and I'd still be tied to inverse-telecine which in the meantime, since nobody uses it anymore could have seen new bugs introduced and worsened quality/options. I am glad of the choice I made.

[budthomason]

I now have 6 of the Canon vixia hv 40's What agreat camcorder.

[_FullerFYI]

I have owned five of these and all of them fail in the same way: they stop playing back tapes eventually. I can put tapes in and it appears that it will work, but when I press play...nothing. Frustrating.