Canon FS200 (Blue)

• Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 4 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

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• 8 stars

  Great Camera for the Price!

  by Desert_MP on January 4, 2010

  Pros: Light. Easy to use. Good auto-focus. Good Microphone. Small. Very good picture quality at highest video recording resolution for standard definition.
  Battery Life very good.

  Cons: The software that is bundled seems really cheap and crappy. The drivers are good with OTHER editing software.

  Summary: I am really pleased with the performance of this little camera. It's simple enough so my 7 year old can use it and my mother-in-law (technophobe). This picture quality ...

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  Summary: I am really pleased with the performance of this little camera. It's simple enough so my 7 year old can use it and my mother-in-law (technophobe). This picture quality is good for non-high defintion. I really like that it doesn't use any weird proprietary format on the video files. Pulling the SDHC card is easy and fast and transfers well to both PC and MAC. I am stunned at the amount of video you can record on a 16GB card in all the resolutions, anywhere from 6 to 3 hours. The battery won't last that long but that's a lot of video on one card. I probably should've purchased an HD camera but couldn't justify the $200+ more dollars it would've taken for the amount of video we actually take. Another great thing is the size and weight, I can put it in the pocket and not even know it's there, couldn't say that before with my older cameras. Also really impressed with the onboard microphone, it did a great job at a music recital and didn't sound tinny or bassy.

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  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 3 stars

  Good Camera Lousy Software

  by thinkermonkey on November 12, 2009

  Pros: The Camera was easy to set up, controls worked well and the video image quality appeared good for what I needed.

  Cons: The software from installation to functionality.

  Summary: I got this camcorder because I was looking for one that can connect to an external mic at a budget price. I tried shooting in several lighting conditions with various ...

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  Summary: I got this camcorder because I was looking for one that can connect to an external mic at a budget price. I tried shooting in several lighting conditions with various levels of background noise - house, outside and in a club during an open mic. Everything seemed fine until I tried to install the software. All of the discs had to be put into the drive several times before they could be read by the drives (3 computers (1 XP, 1 Vista, 1 Mac), 4 drives all the same problem). Software for the Mac did not transfer the files and there was no MOD to any thing converter for the Mac. This ought to be available out of the box. The video ran smoothly when displayed on the camera... when it was transferred to the PCs using the PIXELA music transfer utility the videos were choppy and noisy (clicks, pops and dead air).
  Did I say I was no conversion software for Macs? The mpegs created on the PC did not work in Movie Maker (caused it to lock up) and did not work at all on a Mac. I downloaded some shareware that successfully converted 1/2 of short five minute videos. The video and audio quality was good with these and worked in Movie Maker. Did I say that a commercial product should work at least as good as shareware? Well, it should. I don't want to pay more for software to correct issues that the manufacturer should have taken care of before releasing the product. Its on its way back to the store and I will settle for a camera without and external mic input. I would not recommend buying a Canon camcorder of any type until they can prove the conversion software they provide works.

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  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 8 stars

  Excellent little camera for the price

  by Mad_Mickey099 on December 17, 2009

  Pros: I bought this camera just to make little Internet videos. It was important for me to have an external audio input. The camera has a solid feel and its controls are responsive. The videos are more than adequate for viewing on a Web site.

  Cons: This camera, like many camcorders I researched prior to buying this one, creates video clip files with a file extension of .MOD. The only work-around I have found is to convert the file to an MPG-2 before editing and viewing.

• 2 stars

  The instructions were terrible.

  by ronron56 on October 15, 2009

  Pros: The camcorder was light & compact.

  Cons: The instructions were mixed with 4 models and on small pages that were difficult to read & incomplete. We lost over 1000 pictures of our trip to Europe when we transfered them to the computer.

  Summary: We will try to return the camcorder where we bought it. We will never buy another Cannon product again!

  Summary: We will try to return the camcorder where we bought it. We will never buy another Cannon product again!

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