Home > Consumer Reviews > Canon FS100 Digital Camcorder - Garnet Wine Red (45x Advanced Zoom,2.7 inch Widescreen Colour LCD)

When I started looking into buying a camcorder some of the things I was quite specific about were:

1) Had to be Mac compatible
2) Recording to hard disk or memory card
3) Cost no more than £300

The relevance of the last point is that this is my first camcorder so I wanted to make sure that using a camcorder really is for me before splashing out on a more expensive high spec model.

After speaking to someone in the know about the recording format I was advised to go for the memory card option for two reasons; generally lower cost and because a memory card is not a moving part and therefore not in danger of breaking down. And with the low cost of SD cards on websites like Amazon the cost of additional memory sticks should be an issue. The camcorder only came with a 1GB SD card which holds about 15 minutes of footage.

This particular camcorder is light and fits very well in the hand, and the various buttons and controls are logically placed; zoom slider on top of the unit under the index finger, and the record/stop button at the back under the thumb. Note this is quite clearly designed for right-handed people as are all other camcorders I have seen.

The screen is clear and easy so even in bright conditions, and it swivels and rotates making is easy to see even holding the camera at awkward angles. You can even turn the screen around back to front so that you can see it whilst filming yourself ... should you wish to do so that is. The camcorder can be mounted on a tripod.

Obviously this is not a HD camcorder so some may argue that you sacrifice picture quality. For the average amateur home user my guess is that the quality is more than adequate.

The microphone seems to be as sensible as it needs to be without it picking up too much background noise and wind noise.

After putting the camcorder through its paces on a recent holiday I have only found two real points of criticism. If zooming in on an object too quickly the camera can lose focus - but as zooming too fast looks awful when playing back video footage this should never really be a problem. The second point is that the battery life isn't all that impressive - that said I found that it easily lasted a day on a full charge - so this issue can easily be dealt with either by making sure you keep the battery charged or by buying a spare battery.

One final point worth bearing in mind if/when buying memory cards is that you can get large capacity memory cards which will work with the camcorder, but that is not a guarantee that your computer can handle memory sticks over a certain size.

All in all this is a great little camcorder which is easy and intuitive to use. And for the beginner or very occasional user it represents great value for money in my view. It is a fun piece of kit to use, and with applications such as Apple's iMovie it really is a doddle making good quality holiday movies etc.

A fun product. I love the functionality. My SD camcorders is best cam i have bought. Vacation and functions are fully covered without worry about batter life.

Great small camcorder to record important time of my family. Really good outside and inside with day light. Not too good to use in the evning, when it is dark. (I am learning still, maybe I used the wrong setting). Very light, fast, good for trips.