A buddy of mine was asking for advice about flash-memory HD camcorders, and I recommended the Canon VIXIA HF100 to him, because it’s the upgrade to a model another friend of mine has, and these things take awesome video.

With features like a 3.3 Megapixel Full HD CMOS, Canon’s Digic image processing, image stabilization, 12x optical zoom, and a huge 2.7-inch widescreen lcd screen, it’s hard to find a more capable flash-memory camcorder.

It records video in AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) format, which uses an MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video codec allowing you to get true 1080 High Definition resolution video. The compression algorithm of this codec lets you get twice as much video as a raw DV stream, in the same amount of space… which is what truly allows this camera to stand out against tape based video cameras.

Measuring only 2.9-inches wide, 2.5-inches high and 5.1-inches deep, and weighing only 13.4 ounces, with all of the controls in the right place, you’ll love holding this camcorder.

As always, we recommend picking up an extra battery and a few extra memory cards (get 32GB or 16GB cards if you can) and you’ll be set.

Price: $600 - $700 at Amazon.com