Buy Canon LEGRIA HF200 Camcorder - Silver (15x Advanced Zoom, 2.7 inch Widescreen Colour LCD) Value Up KitCanon LEGRIA HF200 Camcorder - Silver (15x Advanced Zoom, 2.7 inch Widescreen Colour LCD) Value Up Kit Product Description:
Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
By SpecialOrder937
Prior to this camcorder, I'd only ever owned older Sony Handycams. The Canon HF200 is a departure from what I'm used to in two major ways: it's full HD and it records to SD cards. Both SD and SDHC cards are supported but, at the rate filming consumes gigabytes, the former are next to useless, at least for the higher recording modes. There's no internal memory, so you'll need a good supply of 8 or 16GB SDHC cards, class 4 or above. Thankfully, these cards are now relatively cheap.The build quality of the HF200 is excellent. The exclusive use of flash memory allows it to be very small and robust, weighing it in at only 340g and freeing it from hard drives and other moving parts. The main body is tubular in shape, making it really comfortable to grip. The "Quick Start" function starts the device up in about a second whenever the display -- a bright, clear 2.7" multi-angle LCD -- is opened. This screen isn't touch-sensitive; instead, the controls are manual, with a row of buttons beneath the screen and a mini-joystick on the side. I expected to lament the absence of a touchscreen, but actually I found the manual controls to be just as good, if not better, since you're less likely to smother the screen in fingerprints.Videos shot with the HF200 (up to a max of 1920x1080, 24Mbps) look great. Colours are vibrant, saturation is good, and only very low light conditions produce unacceptable noise. The machine includes Canon's "Instant AF" focusing technology. Combined with 15x optical zoom, image stabilisation and face recognition, videos are incredibly clear and smooth. An HDMI port allows for easy connection to an HD television.Like most camcorders, the in-built audio isn't brilliant, but there's a port for an external microphone, allowing the audio to be as clear as the images with the right accessory. The only deficiency in this area is that the advanced accessory shoe is proprietary, so not all accessories are connectable.There's a still photo mode and a "Dual Shot" mode which takes stills while filming. These images are limited to 3.3 megapixels, good for culling frames from a video, but hardly a replacement for a dedicated digital camera taking stills of 10-14 megapixels.A very welcome function is the "Pre REC" mode, which continuously records 3 seconds of video while recording is off but the display is open. This makes it possible to capture moments you might have missed, but I really wished you had the option of making the recording interval longer than the 3 seconds allowed.Battery-wise, it records for about an hour in all modes (investing in a larger battery pack can increase recording time to up to 3½ hours, but note that packs cannot be charged independently of the camcorder). Included in the box are a remote control, power adapter, battery pack, component cable, stereo video cable, USB cable, wrist strap, user manual and PIXELA ImageMixer 3 SE on CDs (good for Windows only).Overall, the HF200 is a fantastic purchase for people whose other possessions make the leap to full HD worthwhile (decent computer, large HD TV, etc.). More casual users might be dismayed by the long transferring and encoding times, or by the GBs rapidly disappearing from their hard drive.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
By Peter A. J. Bennett
The Legria is small, amazingly small and fits snuggly into the hand. It is of very high build quality and feels solid.It powers on very quickly and is ready to record within seconds of getting it out of its case.Lacking a viewfinder means that you need to open the screen to see what you are recording but this is probably what most people would instinctively do anyway so is not a big issue.The review version I got lacked the case and the memory card so I can not comment on the quality on these parts of the value pack. What I can say is that you need to be careful about buying a high quality SDHC card - some of mine were "rejected" by the camcorder with a "memory card may not be of high enough performance to record video" so invest in a professional, high capacity card when you decide to upgrade.Recording is very user friendly for basic use. I found the camera's menu system rather clunky and hard to navigate and would have preferred a touch screen. I also found it rather counter-intuitive to do things like change the resolution the camcorder captures video at (out of the box it is native 1080p which is great but which eats up memory).The software which comes with the camcorder is really not great. I would advise you to install the minimum (i.e. the drivers and the codec) rather than the editing suite (by the way, the serial number it wants is the 16 digit number behind the battery!). Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows Media Player 12 are far superior and both are available free from Microsoft so use these to get started with basic editing and conversion to a more manageable format such as WMV or to burn to DVD. Then if you want more advanced capabilities I would recommend Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 Pro Pack - the bundled software is just clunky and lacking in useful features.On the accessories side the camera comes with a useful array of cables for connection to a variety of devices which is always nice to see.So - you can see why I want to love this little camera but in the end, I found the quality of video it produced slightly disapointing. In bright light this is a subjective thing - hard to measure but niggling at me. As light levels drop it becomes more obvious and the video gets noticably grainy and washed out. All digital video cameras struggle in low light but this Legria gives up sooner and more quickly than others.And, then there is the price, for this sort of money I would recommend you also take a look at the Sony HDR range (e.g. Sony HDR-SR10E High Definition 40GB Hard Disc Drive Handycam Digital Camcorder- 4MP) - in my experience, better video quality, great built-in storage and equally good build quality. Only if size is essential to you will this be a worse choice as it is 50% larger than the tiny Legria.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
By R. Bruce-brand
I tried to buy this camera from a few different companies (not Amazon directly) initially and had lots of hassles (partly because I needed delivery to N.Ireland, but largely because of shoddy customer service). I then bought directly from Amazon without any hassles at all. Very happy with the camera. Very compact. Great picture - no imperfections seen when playing it back on my 42" lcd tv. Camera has several higher than normal HD resolution settings, but I can't see any visual benefit over the standard HD setting. HDMI cable, nice carry case and 4G memory was included in Amazon's package. I bought a 16G memory stick separately - you get around 3 hrs recording at std HD resolution on this.
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