The Canon FS200 is a pretty nice video recorder.
I'm fairly happy with the Canon FS200. It can records in widescreen mode, making videos I upload to Youtube fill the entire player rather than having black columns on the sides. The battery lasts about 3 hours, and if you have a 16 GB card in there, you'll get over 3 hours of footage, so it works out well. I like the settings available within the menus. They are generally easy to access and provide a lot of control over the footage. The zoom is very nice, but just make sure you turn off digital zoom. You don't need it anyway. One of the biggest selling points for me was the external microphone jack, which in this price range is extremely rare. But it's not a perfect device. First of all, it's not HD. And even though is widescreen, that's not the same. Don't try to fool yourself into thinking it is. The quality just can't match up to an HD device. Secondly, it occasionaly drop pixels from the video. I don't know exactly how this happens, as the video looks fine when played on the FS200, but when I transfer the files to the computer, there are often glitches. And the overall color seems to worsen when transfering to the computer as well. I thought this might just be my color calibration, but the footage looks the same on other computers as well. It's as if the colors just became darker and more dull, often with more digital noise. Overall, I'm glad I bought this. It's easy to use, generally outputs good footage, and was at a great price. I recommend it.
brochris
Nokomis, IL