A Review of the Canon HF200 Camcorder

The Canon HF200 is a flash memory camcorder that belongs to the company’s Vixia line of high definition (HD) video cameras. It is much cheaper than its top of the line brother, the Canon HF S11. In fact, its price its almost half of the price of the HF SF11. One of the reasons why it is much cheaper is that its CMOS image sensor is designed for 3.89 megapixels, compared to the 8.59 megapixel CMOS image sensor of the HF S11. Moreover, it does not have an internal flash memory but instead relies on a removable SDHC card for storing the video recordings.

The Canon HF200 is very similar to HF20 except for the fact that the latter has a 32 GB built-in flash memory. The HF200 and HF20 are slightly less powerful but they are smaller than the HF S10 and HF S100. Both the HF200 and HF20 do not offer a manual control dial, color bars, zebra stripes, or a pop-up flash. They also do not have an eye-level electronic viewfinder.

The Canon HF200 is more expensive than the Panasonic HDC-TM20/SD20 and the Sony Handycam HDR-CX100. However, the Canon model offers a microphone input, accessory shoe and headphone jack, which are not provided by the Sony and Panasonic models.

The Canon HF200 is relatively light at 13.9 ounces and it can easily fit into a jacket pocket. Most of the shooting controls are conveniently found on the LCD bezel. The zoom rocker and photo button are also comfortably placed right under where the forefinger is positioned. Its function button provides the most frequently used settings. It also offers the usual controls for image effects, white balance, digital effects, still-photo size, video quality, several scene modes, and programming.

The camcorder is able to focus precisely and rapidly even in low light conditions. Battery life is approximately 1.5 hours. However, the battery does not quickly charge unlike in the HF S10, HF S100 and HF S11 models. In conclusion, the HF200 offers features that are almost similar to those offered by its higher priced brothers at a relatively cheaper price.