Canon FS200 Review – A SD Video Recorder
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Slim design, include mic and headphone jacks.
Thumbs Down:
No option of extended battery life, lacks optical image stabilization.
Inside the Trunk:
Bundled software Drivers & Utilities, PIXELA Image Mixer. Included accessory – wrist strap, cables – USB cord and A/V cable.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
FS 200 is a camcorders with 2000 x digital zoom, 6.8 mega pixels, optical sensor size is 1/6”, videos are stored in MPEG-2 format, pictures are stored in JPEG. Maximum shutter speed is 1/2000 seconds, shooting programs include portrait mode, sports mode, night mode, spotlight, fireworks, sunset, beach, snow. White balance presets are tungsten light and daylight.
The camcorder has Zoom lens – 2.6 mm – 96.2 mm – F/2.0-5.2, with focal length of 2.6 mm – 96.2 mm, lens aperture is F/2.0-5.2, has 37x optical zoom, minimum focal length is 2.6 mm, maximum focal length is 96.2 mm, minimum focus range is 0.4 inch.
Additional features include Dolby Digital AC-3 (2 channel) recording, USB 2.0 compatibility, PictBridge support, Direct print. The camcorder has 2.7 inch TFT LCD display. Connectors on the device include microphone, composite video/audio output, USB. There is an expansion slot for SD memory card. The device is powered by Canon BP-808 Li-ion rechargeable battery. The camcorder comes with a 1 year warranty
Razzle Dazzle:
FS200 is slim sexy camcorder and its slimness is attributed to the lack of internal storage options. You record directly on to a SDHC or SD card. The camcorder is available in options for blue, silver and red. Because it is slim, it easily fits in your jacket pocket. It is 2.2 inches wide, 4.8 inches deep, 2.3 inches tall and weighs about 7.9 oz.
Inside Dope:
SD camcorders are still lurking around even though world has moved to HD quality recorders. Some people still stick to SD devices if they don’t care much about quality and want to save disk space. This device that we got from Canon is an SD recorder with pretty good video quality.
The camcorder can record movies or shoot photos and there is also an option called Dual Shot which lets you switch between video and still capture and you don’t have to change modes. However you can click photographs while you are recording a movie. On the bottom door are the battery and card slot. You can’t put in another battery for more life and the built in battery gives you recording of about an hour and 40 minutes.
The FS200 is user friendly and even newbies won’t need much time to get used to it. There is a 2.7 inch display screen and next to it there is a five way joystick. Apart from this, there are a set of buttons below the screen for recording. We really liked the way they were clearly labeled and were spacious for easy presses.
You seldom find a camcorder in this price range to sport a head phone jack and a mic input. Well, the FS200 has one and both of these are located on the cavity of the LCD on the left of the device.
There are plenty of auto and manual options for shooting. The former is for newbies and the latter is for veteran users of such devices. The full auto shooting mode is actually the Easy mode which locks all the menus and you just click and start shooting. If you want to change settings like white balance you will have to do it in photo or video modes.
For the video mode there is a choice of scene modes, shutter-priority AE or program AE. Further here you can adjust exposure, backlight exposure, focus manually and also turn the video light on. We were disappointed to find that there was no aperture adjust option.
The new thing on the camcorder is the video snap mode with which you can record small four seconds clips and then join them together and create a movie. You can also add a background track for more fun. It is up to you to decide if this is an innovation or a gimmick; we were really fond of this feature.
When it comes to video quality, the device doesn’t support HD recording but if you are fine with SD video quality then you will get along with FS200 nicely. The videos captured in low light conditions are soft and noisy but this is not unusual for camcorders in this class. There is a bit of noise in bright conditions shooting too however it is fine. The camcorder is capable of clicking photos too and the quality here is really disappointing. It is worse than a camera phone.
Nitty Gritty:
If you don’t care much about HD quality and SD quality is fine for you, go get the FS200. It has all the features that you need including some like headphone and mic jacks that you seldom on such camcorders.
