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Canon FS100 Digital Camcorder (45 x Advanced Zoom With 2.7" Widescreen Colour LCD)
See it at Amazon.co.uk for £149.99Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
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(4 out of 5) by Mr. Robin Chawner on Sep 7, 2009I'm a complete newcomer to Digital Camcorders. I bought the Canon FS100 [] on behalf of our Public Speaking practice club. We needed it to be SD card-based, good zoom, lightweight and have audio input for a microphone. The FS100 ticks all these boxes and more. The instruction book is comprehensive and reasonably easily assimilated. We've used it and it seems to be just what we wanted. We also bought a tripod (would recommend this)
Canon FS100 Digital Camcorder (45 x Advanced Zoom With 2.7" Widescreen Colour LCD).
Canon FS100 Digital Camcorder (45 x Advanced Zoom With 2.7" Widescreen Colour LCD).
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
A Neat Little Camcorder!
(5 out of 5) by Mr. N. Thompson on Jul 11, 2009 (Essex)I purchased the Canon FS100 and am very impressed with it. Here are the features that are the most impressive.
1. External Microphone Jack- There is a jack where you can connect an external microphone, because most of the time the built in microphone (Despite being a solid stereo mic) just don't cut it, even on really expensive cameras. Have you ever filmed someone from far away but been dissapointed you can't really hear them? Or recorded in a noisy room and you only pick up what you don't want to hear? Well with a decent external microphone these problems will be a thing of the past. You could even buy a wireless microphone and using a supplied reciever box that will clip onto your hot shoe, record people up to a hundred feet away. Or if you buy a Directional mic, you can point it in the direction that you want to get audio from, so you will only pcik up the noise you DO want to hear!
2. Picture Quality- Compared to my old Sony this picture quality blows it out of the water. It is clear, sharp and almost looks like high definiton at times! Occasionaly it can get a bit grainy in low light but when you edit your clips on a computer they don't really show up as much, and with appropriate lighting you can fix it. Even the most basic video editing programmes will have some kind of feature to clear up video.
3. SD Recording- The Canon FS100 records onto a memory card instead of tape. So fumbling around trying to find a DV Tape and the limitations off it are another thing of the past. I bought a Trancsend 8GB Memory card which does great
4. Editing- Editing your footage is easier than ever. You can ever simply connect the camera to the computer via a USB Cable or just take out the memory card and slot it into the memory card slot in your laptop or desktop.
It's a great camera, buy it and you won't regret it!
1. External Microphone Jack- There is a jack where you can connect an external microphone, because most of the time the built in microphone (Despite being a solid stereo mic) just don't cut it, even on really expensive cameras. Have you ever filmed someone from far away but been dissapointed you can't really hear them? Or recorded in a noisy room and you only pick up what you don't want to hear? Well with a decent external microphone these problems will be a thing of the past. You could even buy a wireless microphone and using a supplied reciever box that will clip onto your hot shoe, record people up to a hundred feet away. Or if you buy a Directional mic, you can point it in the direction that you want to get audio from, so you will only pcik up the noise you DO want to hear!
2. Picture Quality- Compared to my old Sony this picture quality blows it out of the water. It is clear, sharp and almost looks like high definiton at times! Occasionaly it can get a bit grainy in low light but when you edit your clips on a computer they don't really show up as much, and with appropriate lighting you can fix it. Even the most basic video editing programmes will have some kind of feature to clear up video.
3. SD Recording- The Canon FS100 records onto a memory card instead of tape. So fumbling around trying to find a DV Tape and the limitations off it are another thing of the past. I bought a Trancsend 8GB Memory card which does great
4. Editing- Editing your footage is easier than ever. You can ever simply connect the camera to the computer via a USB Cable or just take out the memory card and slot it into the memory card slot in your laptop or desktop.
It's a great camera, buy it and you won't regret it!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
My 5th video camera!
(5 out of 5) by fivish on Jun 12, 2009 (UK)Having started videoing in 1981 with a full size VHS 'portable' Panasonic NV3000 recorder and JVC GX88E video (plumbicon)camera, I can say I have some experience with domestic video! The VHS kit was followed by a Fuji 8mm and then a Canon 8mm. I went digital with a Panasonic Mini DV.
I recently started looking for a fully solid state camcorder. The HDD versions are fragile and have too much storage! I short-listed the Canon FS100 and the Panasonic 26. I bought the Canon as it had the slightly larger CCD! Its a very easy to use video camera. You can change just about every setting manualy, but why bother. The auto settings are perfect nearly all the time.
The only issue is with the video file extension! Why do they use .mod ?
This is not recognised by anything except the video software that is supplied with the camcorder!
In order to play it back on the usual suspects (GOM, VLC, Irfanview etc) you have to rename it to .mpg ! It is after all just mpeg2 (DVD standard).
Complaints about low light performance are generic to devices with such small CCDs. And of course cmos is much worse. The FS100 has a 1/6" CCD.
Finaly, its made in Japan.
Thats much more reasuring than made in China or Korea etc.
I recently started looking for a fully solid state camcorder. The HDD versions are fragile and have too much storage! I short-listed the Canon FS100 and the Panasonic 26. I bought the Canon as it had the slightly larger CCD! Its a very easy to use video camera. You can change just about every setting manualy, but why bother. The auto settings are perfect nearly all the time.
The only issue is with the video file extension! Why do they use .mod ?
This is not recognised by anything except the video software that is supplied with the camcorder!
In order to play it back on the usual suspects (GOM, VLC, Irfanview etc) you have to rename it to .mpg ! It is after all just mpeg2 (DVD standard).
Complaints about low light performance are generic to devices with such small CCDs. And of course cmos is much worse. The FS100 has a 1/6" CCD.
Finaly, its made in Japan.
Thats much more reasuring than made in China or Korea etc.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Like it
(4 out of 5) by James Mckenzie on May 20, 2009 (London, England)For general amateur use, this is great value. Very small, very light, good image quality. Battery life isn't amazing so am considering getting a spare. The audio input is useful if you want to do some video podcasts, and there's an audio monitor on the screen but you can't listen on headphones. Image stabilisation seems to work well, and the zoom range is great. Recommended for the price.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Canon FS100
(4 out of 5) by M. Wood on Apr 27, 2009 (Wales)The Canon FS100 is an excellent widescreen digital video camera with a great optical zoom and plenty of other good features. It has given excellent service with only one issue. The power supply unit used to recharge the battery went 'bang' after about four months and when I contacted Canon they told me that DESPITE THE WARRANTY, THE POWER SUPPLY UNIT IS NOT COVERED! I was very surprised and disappointed by this news as it does not seem to be made clear by Canon, as far as I could see, that the PSU isn't covered until you try to claim! Amazon however replaced the whole package without any fuss or charge - full marks to Amazon, minus several million to Canon!