Canon Legria HF M506 Full HD Camcorder (10x Optical Zoom, Professional CMOS sensor, Optical IS)

Compact, Full HD camcorder with 10x optical zoom and an inbuilt professional sensor

The LEGRIA HF M506 is the perfect camcorder for the intermediate home-movie maker that demands quality High Definition recording. It delivers brilliant Full HD movies at an affordable price and incorporates a host of new features, including a professional sensor. All of this is recorded straight to memory card so you can quickly and easily share your movies with friends and family.

Features include:

• Full HD CMOS PRO sensor for superb High Definition filming
• Canon HD Video Lens with 10x optical zoom and iris diaphragm
• Optical Intelligent IS (Image Stabilizer)
• SDXC slot for recording onto extended capacity SD cards
• 7.5 cm (3.0”) LCD full flat touchscreen display with improved user interface
• Range of control and creative options which can take your movie making to the next level:
  • – Cinema-Look Filters add visual effects to your scene
  • – Improved Story Creator provides onscreen guidance when shooting
  • – Touch Decoration helps add in-camera effects to your movies
  • – Video Snapshot creates bespoke video montages
• Smart Auto ensures great results in every situation
• Face Detection Technology can detect the faces of up to 35 individuals

The HD CMOS PRO sensor ensures detail is captured, even in tricky lighting conditions.
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Astonishing High Definition

At the heart of the LEGRIA HF M506 is an HD CMOS PRO sensor taken from the professional Canon XF-series of camcorders. This sensor gives previously unseen levels of detail even in tricky lighting conditions like high contrast scenes, for example, a white wedding dress against a groom’s black suit or an ornate archway shrouded in shadow cast from the sunshine.

Thanks to the larger light-gathering area of the pixels, the HD CMOS PRO sensor enables you to shoot in low light conditions by coupling high sensitivity technologies with a wide dynamic range ensuring dark scenes are captured in bright detail with minimal noise.

The HD CMOS PRO sensor has been optimised to capture video at Full HD (1920x1080) resolution, offering a significant advantage over more conventional high-resolution CMOS sensors which have to resize their footage to digitally create a Full HD movie. Digital processing can compromise on quality but with the Canon HD CMOS PRO sensor the recording is captured in native HD resolution, ensuring uncompromised quality when replaying your movies on your High Definition TV.

The Optical Image Stabilizer ensures shake-free movies every time.
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Superb optical zoom and Optical Intelligent IS

The 10x optical zoom ensures you can get up close and personal, even with faraway subjects, for example at weddings or sporting events. Plus, an advanced iris diaphragm creates a more attractive and professional looking background blur.

Canon’s enhanced Optical Image Stabilizer technology with Intelligent IS, enables the camcorder to automatically switch between four image stabilisation modes to ensure your movies will always have a smooth, professional look. It automatically detects whether you need to stabilise heavy hand-shake, for example, when on the move (Dynamic), when filming at maximum telephoto range (Powered), when filming up close to correct angular or shift shake (Macro) and when you’re using a tripod to turn off the Optical Image Stabilizer to prevent blur (Tripod).

The combination of Canon’s Intelligent IS and Smart Auto means that the LEGRIA HF M506 automatically detects the scene and the best image stabilisation mode for optimum results, whatever the situation.

The high resolution touchscreen display makes viewing and changing settings easy.
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Touchscreen control

The LEGRIA HF M506 combines a high resolution, high contrast 7.5 cm (3.0”) LCD full flat touchscreen display with an improved, intuitive user interface making it quicker and easier to find and adjust all of the functions and settings when shooting and viewing images.

Each of the camcorder’s key features has an accompanying icon with supporting guidance notes to ease you through the navigation. As a result, when filming you are just a touch away from sliding control options that allow for the easy and precise adjustment of settings such as aperture, shutter speed, focus, exposure and audio levels. Plus, thanks to Touch Focus, a single touch to a face or object on the screen will set the focus, while Touch and Track will ensure the focus remains locked on to the selected face/object even if it moves - the exposure will also compensate automatically.

Effortless movie-making with guidance from Story Creator

The improved Story Creator function provides guidance and direction for making well composed movies by providing a list of scene suggestions linked to one of five preset themes. Before you start shooting your movie the Story Creator function offers you the choice of five topics to select from (travel, kids and pets, party, ceremony and blog) and then advises you on the order in which to capture the shots and even recommends a length of time for each scene. In addition, a new on-screen guide button provides additional information to assist with subject composition and recommended duration as and when you need it.

After filming, Story Creator then enables you to categorise your videos by theme, rate each scene and even mix in music by connecting an external music player or using pre-installed music tracks, all from within the camcorder itself so there’s no need for a PC. Then, once you’re happy with your final movie, you can play it back on an HD television or other HDMI-compatible device via the integrated mini HDMI socket.

Cinema-Look Filters change the very look and feel of your movies.
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Change standard scenes into cinematic creations

The LEGRIA HF M506 features a number of Cinema-Look Filters which have been designed by professional film-makers. These allow you to transform everyday scenes into professional-looking footage by applying a range of filters including Vivid that accentuates primary colours for a bright, cheery look, Nostalgic that helps recreate the look of an old ‘70s TV programme, Sepia to add a sepia tint for an antique look, Dream that applies a soft focus adding a magical look for a dream-like sequence and Memory to give a light fall-off at the edges of the clip which adds a faded, misty look to create flashback scenes.

Each of the seven filters comes with an explanation on the screen before it is activated to ensure you select the right filter for the type of scene you are looking to record.

Touch Decoration

To enhance your movie personalisation experience Canon provides you with Touch Decoration. This exciting feature helps you to easily add effects to your movies in-camera using the touchscreen display without the need for a PC. It allows you to add in animations (like shooting stars), write over your videos with a stylus pen (e.g. Happy Birthday!) and even interweave still images into your final film.

Video Snapshot

Video Snapshot mode is a fun and easy way to shoot short scenes and combine them without the need for a PC. Simply press the record button to capture 2, 4 or 8-second clips, either during filming or playback and then select a series of clips to create a 'playlist' in one file for a simple, professional-looking, multi-shot movie.

With this camcorder you can mix both the original audio track and additional music during playback as well as rate your favourite scenes for playback giving you even more creative options.

38 Smart Auto scenes help you capture the perfect image

Smart Auto mode analyses the scene and selects the appropriate settings.
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To ensure top quality, true-to-life video in any lighting conditions, the LEGRIA HF M506 boasts Canon's Smart Auto technology that was pioneered in their digital still cameras. Smart Auto’s scene detection technology optimises settings according to the situation - detecting people, distance, brightness, colour and movement information - then selects the perfect settings from 38 specially defined scenes.

Face Detection Technology

Canon’s sophisticated Face Detection Technology can simultaneously detect the faces of up to 35 individuals in a single frame and optimise the shooting settings for each. One face can then be selected as the main reference point and Face Select and Track will ensure that the camcorder remains locked on to the selected face for as long as possible, even if the subject moves.

Over 70 years of lens excellence

Every Canon camcorder lens is constructed to the most exacting standards and backed by more than 70 years’ experience in crafting lenses for broadcast. Up to 13 individual lenses can be included in a single Canon camcorder lens, each featuring aspheric lens elements to remove any image distortion for the highest quality movies. Canon make their own lenses and their outstanding image quality is underscored by their use in most broadcast applications. For example, programmes like Coronation Street, Casualty and X Factor, nature documentaries like The Blue Planet and Life, as well as the majority of outside broadcasts in the UK, are all recorded using Canon's state-of-the-art broadcast lenses.