Canon Vixia HF S200 – You Could Do Better, and Cheaper
Thumbs Up:
The Canon Vixia HF S200 has a respectably designed user interface; the phone has dual SDHC slots and superb set of manual features.
Thumbs Down:
The Canon Vixia HF S200 has a really small battery life; the camcorder doesn’t support SDXC; its default to inferior video mode; the camcorder has a really inadequately designed touch-screen menu system and it’s comparatively expensive.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Price: $1,399.00 – $1,399.99
Product Type: Camcorder – 1080p
Manufacturer: Canon USA
Part Number: 4374B001
Dimensions (W x D x H) in inches: 3 x 5.8 x 2.9 inches
Weight: 16.6 oz
Shooting Modes: Digital photo mode
Optical Sensor Type: CMOS
Exposure Modes: Program, Automatic, Shutter-priority and Aperture-priority
White balance: Custom, Presets & Automatic
Software: Drivers & Utilities and Pixela ImageMixer 3SE
Peripheral Devices: CD-ROM drive and USB port
Cables Included: Component video cable, A/V cable and USB cable
Connector Type: USB, Composite video/audio output, Component video output, Microphone, Headphones and Control-L (LANC), HDMI
Additional Features: Direct print , Face detection , 24p Cinema Mode , Contrast control , Relay Recording , Sharpness control , Histogram display , Built-in speaker , Brightness control , PictBridge support , Saturation control , Video Snapshot mode , Accessories hot shoe , YouTube capture mode , Progressive scanning , Backlight compensation , Touch-screen control , HD-to-SD downconversion , USB 2.0 compatibility , Face-priority AF function , Touch & Track technology , Digital tele-converter , Display brightness control , Scene Detection Technology , 5.1 channel surround sound ready , Takes photos while movie recording and Dolby Digital AC-3 (2 channel) recording
Focus Adjustment: Automatic and Manual
Shooting Programs: Beach, Fireworks, Snow, Spotlight, Sunset, Sports mode, Low light, Portrait mode and Night mode
Search Modes: Date search & Face index search
Supported Battery: Canon BP-808
Included Accessories: Stereo video cable, Compact power adapter, Wireless controller, Component cable and Battery pack, USB interface cable
Battery Type: Lithium-ion
Razzle Dazzle:
The Canon Vixia HF S200 is the heaviest and largest models of their class, buts despite their weight and size, these camcorders are immensely comfortable to hold and to use. Though it won’t fit in every pants pocket, but you can carry them in a spacious jacket pocket or can even use a handbag. Every model from the HF S2 family comes with little rubberized bumpers at the front of the zoom switch of the camera. These small bumpers not only provide a decent grip on the system but according to us are also a decent design touch. Just like its precursors, these cameras makes us of an oddly fitted lens cover which is more of a closing-eye type rather than being an aperture-blade design, which we’ve seen in most of the cameras. Though, the difference is hard to notice, but when the cover is closed the two plastic parts of the camera clatter against each other; it’s not a problem as the camera is closed, but still is a bit annoying.
Inside Dope:
The Canon Vixia HF S200 belongs to Canon’s 2010 HF S series of AVCHD camcorders. The good thing about the camcorders of this series is that unlike the camcorders from Canon’s 2009 Prosumer Vixia HF S1x series, they possess the EVF. And even though we liked the Vixia HF S1x series we just could not completely endorse the HF S10/S11 because of the same reason. Although the inclusion of EVF in the camcorders has given a steep rise of $200 to the price of these new series of camcorders, but if you look at the HF S200, you will feel that its worth paying, but at the same time the rise in price makes the camcorder expensive than its reasonably priced, EVF-free siblings and on a whole more expensive than most of its direct competitors. This hike in price could stop a lot of buyers from getting this system.
Canon’s 2010 HF S series of AVCHD camcorders has three models, each of which differs from the other by the abovementioned viewfinder and memory configuration. Though, the key specs for the system remains the same as that of their precursors. The camcorders come with Canon’s all new optical image stabilization technology, together with the fresh Powered IS ability to provide enhanced stabilization at the telephoto end.
Canon has packed a lot of functions in the cameras’ recessed LCD, such as the key for switching in between the shooting and playback, video snapshot (it makes use of a four-second clip to create a “highlights reel” result) and a pair of SD card slots. The inclusion of double memory slots is yet another feature that deserves appreciation, but that’s not the case here, as we think it’s just a way of making up for the omission of SDXC support in the camera. This means you’ll be using two 32GB SDHC cards if you want a 64GB, whereas had there been the SDXC card, it will be the minimum you’ll be getting.
Under a slide down cover there are the component, wired remote jacks and headphone/composite slots of the camcorders. The headphone jack is located somewhat awkwardly, especially if you use headphones and EVF a lot while recording. One another setback here is that if you use EVF and LCD at the same time, it will put extra burden on the already weak battery of the HF S200.
The top of the camcorder is unnecessarily crowded; it hosts the typical zoom, power and photo switches, apart from this there also is a wide assortment lights and labels. The camcorder also has a pop-up flash-video light and accessory shoe combo.
The performance of the camcorder has been improved a bit’ especially the low-light performance has a better sensor this time and the camcorder comes with an improved Digic DV III processor for enhanced depiction of blues and purples. Even the overall performance of the camcorder was better than some of the other camcorders we’ve seen in the past. Though the still images shot from the camera appeared a bit overprocessed, but we think, it still were better than some of the interpolated photos generated by Sony and Panasonic’s lower-resolution sensors.
Nitty Gritty:
The Canon Vixia HF S200 belongs to the superb trio of camcorders, the Vixia HF S21, HF S20, and HF S200. But they all are significantly highly priced than most of their relevant competitors, particularly the S20 and S200, which even doesn’t have electronic viewfinders. So if slight manual control subtleties of HF S200’s manual controls are not what you are interested in, then there is a strong chance of you getting a better and cheaper camcorder.
