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August 20th, 2008 
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Well I’ve had the Canon FS100 for nearly a week now after ordering from UKDigitalCameras.co.uk and I thought I’d dish up a review for anyone out there. Now previously I’d had a Sony SR32 camcorder with a 30gb Hard Disk which I bought last summer for £330 but looking back it was a bad decision. The quality was poor and very pixelated indoors and the hard disk could be noisy at start up (being a bit picky) but didn’t affect recording like a Mini DV tape. So I looked at getting a new one either with a better lens or 3 CCDs and eventually I chose the Canon FS series, I decided against a HD camcorder as not only would my Powerbook struggle but I wanted to buy other things.
So it was between the Canon FS100,FS10 or FS11. As camcorders they are all identical in quality and set up however they differ in memory storage. They all accept SD cards: the FS100 has no in-built memory, the FS10 has 8gb internal and the FS11 has 16gb internal. Now I opted for the the FS100 as it was the cheapest by £100 compared to the latter FS11 model and with this saving it was cheaper to buy a big SD card. My plan is to get a 32gb SD card soon and I’ll update you soon on that.
Anyway back to the camcorder; i was really impressed by its small size and lightweight yet sturdy build. I have shot some test footage in best quality and its included below. However it would be nice to have a dock to connect the camcorder to the computer easily, like my Sony SR32 came with, and this coincides with my biggest gripe with the system. When transferring videos, even with a full battery, you have to plug in the power cable. Now it might just be me but this means more effort,more cables and thus a messier table. Its a shame such a great product has such a flaw that hopefully could be fixed easily with a firmware/software update. Besides this the process is very user friendly and the camcorder uses simple instructions to guide you through uploading.
Regarding actually filming; it is simple point and shoot but if you delve deeper there are some manual options with focus however unless you deeply spend time exploring these you won’t lose anything. If you are a hardcore video film maker you really should be looking at something a bit more customisable and probably HD. On that point this Canon FS100 does feature an external mic port to enhance the sound on the camcorder. Now after playing around with it I found the inbuilt mic pretty good picking up my voice from the opposite side of the room clearly but for those looking for a bit extra its nice to have it there. The rest of the controls are well arranged and make the whole video experience easy with no “where’s that button” moments.
With these new non tape/DVD disc camcorders, the hard disk and flash versions mostly use a .mod format for saving video. Now so far the major video editing suites (Adobe Premiere,Final Cut) do not use this format natively so usually a conversion is required which slightly defies the point of using simple files. I know that Windows Vista plays .mods fine through Windows Media Player however for Mac OS X this is not possible. I think this is the biggest disappointment, not only with this camcorder, but with most on the market and I hope the major editing suites and operating systems improve this within the year. The software which comes with the Canon, Windows only, does edit .mod and work however it is so simple I would stay away from it and use something better. Saying that some new updates have been released and iMovie 8 works with this format and the Canon FS100 – shame it only works on Intel Macs and not on my PowerPC G4 Powerbook…
I’d recommend this camcorder to anyone coming into amateur film making or even to someone who takes it more seriously as it is just so well made, anyone will have fun using it despite the slight problems.
ADVANTAGES:
- Small
- Lightweight
- Good control menu system
- Nice automatic lens cap to protect the lens
- Good quality 37x Optical zoom
- Excellent battery life about 3hrs
- External Mic port
- Nifty battery level indicator without having to actually turn on the camcorder fully
DISADVANTAGES:
- Annoying .mod format. Not very Mac compatible if you are an amateur unless you have iMovie 8
- You have to plug in the power cable to transfer videos through USB
- Low light footage isn’t great
- The added torch is not really that useful at night time.
- Out of the box it has no memory storage and requires an SD card to be bought
Test footage: (Click on the video then select the high quality version underneath the video to see what the Canon actually records)
Test zoom footage: (Click on the video then select the high quality version underneath the video to see what the Canon actually records)
Test indoor footage: (Click on the video then select the high quality version underneath the video to see what the Canon actually records)
That’s it! I would like to thank the people over at AVforums.com with some of my decision making – they are very helpful! If you have any questions feel free to comment below and I’ll get back to you. Thanks.
UPDATE: If you want to download the original .MOD files I have uploaded three here for you to test. It will be interesting to see which software you use and if the files are compatible, please comment on your findings so you can help the rest of the community.
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[...] new camcorder the Canon FS100 last week and I posted up a review a couple of days ago, you should check it out. Now the footage is captured in an obscure format being .mod with not many Operating Systems or [...]
Thank´s for the rewiew and for the MOD-examples, they playd fine on my Vista and mediaplayer.
Yes, thanks for the review, and the sample files! I’m looking for a great, inexpensive memory card camera. The .mod does seem annoying. I’m looking for 90 to 100 cameras so don’t want to make a mistake. -M
How do you set the picture funcion so that it flashes?
Tim: From my experience there is no flash on the camcorder, however you can have the flashlight on and take a photo. To turn the flashlight on, all you need to do is click in the joystick and flick it right. I hope that helps, if there is anything else just ask.
Thanks, I knew about the light that the camera comes equiped with but it was not making a very big difference during the night. I guess I will just have to use my old digital camera for night shots. Thanks anyways.
-Tim
You know what this review and all others of camcorders needs? …A size reference picture of the camcorder sitting next to something like small like a set of keys. I knew the FS100 was going to be small – but not this small (nice).
I just bought on of these. I’m not totally happy because the low light sensitivity really is bad and it’s not HD. But to get “happy” would cost about $300 more and the FS100 is good enough. BTW – I was really not going to get this as I didn’t want to spend over $300. I needed a new one ASAP before Thanksgiving so I was afraid to order online. On the way home from work I stopped in a WalMart and by accident I noticed the price tag was $299 instead of $399 (US). The big retailers all still list this as a $399 camcorder and no one has it on sale this week. I had a WallyMart “Sales Associate” verify the price and it shocked him. Apparently in the last two days the standard price in-store dropped from $399 to $299 and he didn’t know about it. Also (as of today) Walmart’s online site (totally seperate business entity and prices than the retail stores) still lists it for $349. Anyway – when I saw $299 in my head I yelled “sold!” and bought one.
A couple of things:
-By default out of the box it was set to 16:9 WS. I really didn’t expect that (surprise)
-I use Cyberlink Power Director a lot (v7). I just did a drag-and-drop of the MOD files into Power Director and (16:9) and it worked perfectly.
-On page 99 of the manual (bottom of page) it says the camera takes 195 minutes to fully charge the battery, but the external charger only takes 105 minutes. They’re $55 on Amazon – I went ahead and ordered on and an extra battery. $55 for an hour and a half faster charge seems worth it to me. To find it on Amazon, the product title is “Canon 2590B002 CG-800 Lithium Ion Battery Charger for 800 Series Batteries”.
Thanks Reno. You make some good points and that external charger sounds a really good idea!
Hi, i’m going to buy the FS100 but i’m still not sure about it ’cause I had another canon camcoder (mv630i, is an old one, i know) and it was very bad with low light and audio in comparison to a sony cam as old as the canon one. Can you reassure me about it? And what about zoom and engine noise? Has it this kind of problems? thanks a lot, Davide
Davide: Thanks for your comment. From my experience with this camcorder it is not great in low light and any image quality from a digital camcorder struggles to beat the image of a good mini dv camcorder but then you get all the hassle of uploading the video etc. Regarding the Canon FS100 there is no engine noise as you put it if you’re talking about motors inside like the tape mechanism in your old canon, because the new FS100 has no moving parts. So when recording it is absolutely quiet no noise! Now the actual lens zoom noise is fine and non existent but if you’re a bit heavy handed on the zoom button you can hear it on your video but then that’s the same for a lot of the new smaller camcorders. When will they learn we don’t have the small hands of a child!
Hope that helps and I look forward to hearing your experience if you choose to buy it.
daz4590
Hi, you were right! Finally I bought the FS100 too and there aren’t any kind of noise… the only hassle I noticed for the time being, is that every time you stop your shooting the camcorder create a new video file so, when you edit the video on your pc, you have to open a lot of video files instead of an only one with a lot of scene like with a dv cam… but it’s not a problem… I think it’s really great as you said… I’ll post you more when I’ll test it better. Thank you very much, Davide
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Yo everyone!
I am new to daz4590.co.uk.
I hope I can be a regular here!
jennepdo: Welcome!
Драсте,блогер!!!
Сильно понравилась новость. полистал новости, то скажу, что пишете очень красиво и выбираете полезные рубрики информации. Большое Спасибо!!!
Отличный пост. Хочу тоже поделиться прикольной ссылкой – скачать NFS Undercover
Very nice site!
Great blog! I posted some comments before anyway, because a lot of your stuff is really great. You are a verry good at this.
Big thanks…)
Thanks!) good site..
Thanks! Good site…)
Can you guide on a high definition review website. I got this from my friend looks ok
High definition camera
Bob