Best of the Decade List Names Canon HV20 As Most Influential Camcorder

When I started this little experiment lab for learning and understanding my amazing new camcorder, I referred to the Pixelvision camera as a comparison – not because of any shared features or format or output, but because of the community that had developed around it.

It seems this impression held fast as almost three years later, the culture and community surrounding the Canon HV20, one of the first Prosumer camcorders to offer HD, 24P video with Cinemode and zebra stripes for under a thousand bucks continues to sell and continues to make great looking video. And the community has not left it.

Anticipating the end of the decade, video enthusiast and professional Eugenia Loli created a series of best-of-the-decade lists for a variety of categories that include best album, best song, best new tech, and most influential camcorder of the decade:

Most influential camcorder
1. Canon HV20 (has the strongest subculture)
2. Canon GL-2
3. Panasonic HVX-200
4. Canon XH-A1
5. Panasonic DVX-100

Like this site, there are dozens if not hundreds of sites dedicated to maximizing the potential and getting around the shortcomings of this excellent performer. Although updated versions have hit the market, the updates are typically very incremental but maintain all the original design and functionality of the HV20 – a testament to its clever and robust design.

See the rest of the list at Eugenia’s Rant.

Canon seems to have done well in this sense – their DSLR the 5D MKII has an equally avid fanbase and is a daily topic of conversation on such noisy platforms as Twitter. THe tools are in our hands, but we are only just waking up to the possibilities of what we can achieve with them.