Upon opening the box, I was amazed by the FS10! It fits in the palm of your hand (about the size of a can of pop) and feels like a finely crafted piece of equipment. I started video taping two minutes later! Let's forgo the technical jargon and skip directly to the picture quality ... amazing! I was video taping in my store and instantly was impressed with how well the camera compensated for light shining through my windows. A quick scan around and I ask myself "how is this thing focusing so quickly?" Focus is instant and accurate. Now for the really cool thing - when out of zoom mode, you can focus on the hair of a fly! Well, I didn't try a fly, but I could literally get within 1/2" of an object and still have instant focus. How do they do it? No having set it for macro focus, it acts like the human eye. OK, how about zooming you ask. Well we had a Comcast guy working on a telephone pole about 200' from my office. I was videoing through my window. The camera still had no problem focusing, and the anti-shake feature of the camera worked incredibly. I've seen other anti-shake cameras and didn't like the digital blurring that occured. The FS10 somehow has eliminated the blurring. I actually zoomed in on the tool belt of the Comcast guy and could read the brand name! No exaggeration. OK, now for the real test ... transferring the video to my computer. Previously, I hooked my audio/video cables up to my video capture card and then went through a long process of capturing and then coverting and then putting the video on dvd. With the FS10, I loaded the software, plugged in the usb cable, selected my video from a thumbnail explorer type of program, and 1 minute later was watching my video with Windows media player. The file is MPEG straight out of the camcorder! REMEMBER, this camcorder has no tape, so all you are really doing is transferring a file from the camcorder to your harddrive. Burning a DVD from there is a no brainer. What else? Well, no moving parts to wear out. Yea, you do have a zoom, but that's about it. I did think the zoom button had a cheap feel, but not bad. One last thing. I videoed in a dimmly lit room last night. The picture was grainy. Not real impressed with that, but maybe there is a setting for low light. I did turn on the video light and that helped a great deal. Canon uses an LED light - so minimal battery consumption when using the light. All in all, very impressive!

First of all let me state that i spent 2 weeks researching camcorders before buying this one. Many mixed reviews on many different sites.
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br /What sold me on it was the fact that there's no tapes, dvd's, or other moving mechanisms to wear out, other than the zoom. No moving parts means batteries last longer. The mic input was a big plus as well as being compact.
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br /Upon arrival i was amazed at the size and weight. After trying it out there were a few downsides that could be fixed.
br /1.The biggy for me was no lens threads for adding filters for effects or for keeping mist and dust off the lens while shooting. I found a few universal lens adapters but the were too bulky for the cameras small frame. I decided to try something. The barrel of the lens measured at 34mm so i found a 34mm to 37mm silver metal step up ring on ebay for $2. Now i used hot glue on the threads of the step ring and quickly placed it into cameras the barrel. Fit perfectly and looks as if it was always there and if i want to remove it, why, who knows, the glue will just peel off the inside of the barrel leaving no marks. Now i can attach uv filters, wide angle lenses...etc.
br /2. No hot shoe. Ebay once again...found a cold shoe handle that attaches to the camera and gives me a place to attach a led spotlight and an external mic...cost-under $15
br /3. $80 for a replacement battery?!? You gotta like China. You can get exact knockoffs that work just as good as the original with a wall charger for $15 - ebay
br /4. Kind of grainy in low light. First of all it's not a night vision camera so you should have some sort of light source to begin with. Even in Hollywood they use lighting. Think people before you complain! Attached a led spotlight and it does the trick for me.
br /5. Saves as an .mod file but pc or editor won't recognize it. There's a free program called sdcopy that converts the files to usable/editable files in seconds.
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br /Outdoor video is awesome! Bright, crisp colors. Indoor is great as well with the right lighting. This camera is great! Battery life is incredible! I fit 2 hours of footage in the highest quality filming mode on a 4 gig card. Footage is easy to edit and looks great on dvd. I highly recommend it! The only reason i didn't give it a perfect score was i had to invent a lens adapter...but it can be done quick and easy!

I like the size of the camera, fits nicely in my hand. The basic controls are easy to find and use. The LCD panel is bright and easy to see on a sunny day. The battery seems to have a reasonably long charge, I used it for about an hour straight last night on a fresh charge on new batteries and it still had power to go. The flash memory means no moving parts except for the lens. Also its fast to start and shutdown. I like being able to have some removable media - the removable SD card. It uses a USB connection to the computer, which is ok. THE BAD IS.. the movies are saved natively in a unique file format forcing you to use the "imagemixer" bundled software to download to the computer. Once you successfully do this, then try to load these files (mpg) into MS MovieMaker you get a green screen for previews! I've got a support request in for this problem. No resolution yet. It did come bundled with it's own movie editor, but for those of us who are used to MS Moviemaker this is a problem. BTW the mpgs play nicely in the MS Media Player, it just MS MovieMaker that has the problem.

I bought this as a replacement for my Sony MiniDV camcorder. The video quality is roughly the same using the default settings. However, because I can adjust many more settings on this, I end up shooting better video than I could have with the Sony.
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br /I also like the smaller size (you have to see this to believe it) and the flash memory (no moving parts equals faster response and longer battery life).
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br /I mostly use the camcorder for filming my kids and then uploading it for my parents to watch (they live overseas). It's perfect for that. I download the video to my MacBook Pro, edit in iMovie 08, and then publish to my MobileMe Gallery. It's a very fast and easy process.
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br /Oh, and finally, I loved the price! All this for only $385.00.
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br /I've owned this camcorder for 6 weeks and taken quite a few hours of video and so far can't think of anything I don't like about it.

It works with my macbook! I was a little concerned when I first tried to install the software. I did not think it was going to work. iMovie recognized the files straight from the camera though.
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br /1) Plug the camera into the electrical socket
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br /2) Make the camera switch set to "play video"
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br /3) Choose the "printer/PC" option on the camera's screen
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br /4) Launch iMovie, it recognizes the camera!
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br /I did not end up even needing to install the software it came with. (ImageMixer 3 SE or the Digital Video Solution Disk Ver.30.0)
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br /I realize this isn't really a review about the camera itself, but I was stumped for a few minutes on how to use the software on my mac... which it turns out I did not need to.
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br /The camera itself seems to be working great so far .... but I only just got it today. Clear picture and audio. So far so good.

I get abused by my wife for over-analyzing every purchase, but after playing around with this camera a little, I've earned a stay of execution. The camera is amazingly small and light. The low-light performance is on par with this class of camcorder (none are great) but I found tweaking the settings a little make the noise much less noticeable. The battery life is between 2-3 hours and it charges fairly quickly. I prefer the optical anti-shake of higher end camcorders, but it looks like Canon has the digital version working pretty well now. The "auto-shutter" to protect the lens is really nice since my past camcorders always had finger smudges regardless of how often I cleaned the lens and kept the cap on.
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br /The functions are fairly intuitive and I only needed the manual to figure out I had to push the photo button down a littler further to actually take a picture. It definitely isn't going to replace my real camera for photos and it'll be used 99% of the time for video only, but the photo quality was good enough to work in a pinch.
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br /As usual, throw away the provided software and use the movie editing software on your computer. For me, that meant iMovie 08 for the Mac. There's some nuances with iMovie and this camera, but if you turn off Time Machine and set the camera USB port to always connect to "PC" (not sure why it doesn't default to this anyway), you shouldn't have any issues. iMovie 08 is the only Mac software that recognizes the camera without requiring additional software (ugh - not the fault of the camera though).
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br /The only difference between the FS100, FS10, and FS11 is the amount of internal flash. With the battery life and the availability of an SD/SDHC slot capable of supporting up to 32Gb cards, the FS10 looked like the "sweet spot" of the 3 versions with the best balance of price and memory.
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br /If I really needed a view finder, hot shoe, great low-light performance, HD video, etc... I would've just bought a much more expensive camera. For what this camera is designed to do, you can't go wrong.

This is very simple to use and transfer to your computer. It is so easy if you have a Mac. I was worried that it may not be compatible, but it works perfectly. It is also great to have both HD and flash. You can separate to film different subjects. I am very happy with my new camcorder.

This camera could not be any easier to use that all the previous camcorders I've used (Hi8 and DVD). I love the fact that I don't have to think about how much time is left on the tape or if I brought enough DVD's. It might not be HD but for $300++ you can't really go wrong. File transfer to the computer could not get any easier too. Just install the image mixer program and just plug in the camcorder via USB and power it with the power adapter (so you won't lose power when transferring files) and it lets you select which files you want to upload to your PC. It could not get any simpler than that. I didn't have to read the manual too.
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br /If there was a con to this product I would have to say I wished they added a lens filer thread on the camera so I won't get too worried about dust and dirt getting on the lens and having the auto lens cover close and scratch the lens.
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br /If you're into HD and stuff like that, this camera is not for you. If you want to record memories and transfer then to you PC without complicated transfer procedure, I suggest you look into the FS series.

I love the camera, have used it for a variety of things like shooting in snow, and playing tennis, also I love the camera light, it's small, but gets the job done. the only downfall is, when shooting without any other sound, the camera clicks get recorded.

This is truly an amazing camera. It is very small; easy to carry. Video picture quality is excellent. As are individual snap shots. Has fantastic telephoto (48x Advanced Zoom) BUT, I find I need help on holding Camera steady when shooting high levels of telephoto. I plan on getting a monopod rather than a tripod simply to have the advantage of a more compact, easier to carry unit.
br /If you are looking for a sub-compact size video - the Canon FS 10 with 8GB internal memory - is the one.

This camera is light as a feather! Upon seeing video shot with this camera, everyone's reaction was "Wow, great picture!". Being DUAL memory means that you can add an SD card in addition to the internal 8GB flash drive. There are plenty of settings for shooting video and still images including Night, Portrait, Fireworks, etc. Battery consumption was surprisingly good and very reasonable.
br / Downsides: if you shoot to the internal flash drive you MUST have the AC Adapter hooked to the camera while downloading to drives, computer, etc. **BEWARE: The AC Adapter costs $125.00 to replace - act accordingly!!** I shoot to the the SD High Capacity Card and then pop that out, into a reader into USB port on my MAC; NO cables to worry about. I can also shoot to the internal flash drive and then COPY that to the SD Card. Although this takes decent still images, it will not replace a high quality digital SLR. Besides the AC Adapter issue, my only real niggle is there is no way to mute or turn the audio off when recording.
br / Without question, this is an exceptional value for the money. A very good investment. Do yourself a favor and buy the optional battery charger so you do not have to hook/unhook the AC Adapter to the camera when charging the battery. Exceptional value for the money!!

Don't be fooled by some of these other reviews. People just need to realize that your computer from 2004 just does not cut it anymore. I have a circa 2007 HP slimline computer and everything was 100% compatible. I took the HDSC card out of the camera...plugged it directly into the computer and it played instantly on my Windows Media Player. The zoom is great. Battery life is as expected. The size is perfect for travel. I recommend this item to anyone. As always, Amazon had great pricing and if you are not a Prime member yet...have your head examined!!! I paid $3 and it was here the next day!

We used this camera for our wedding and it worked out beautifully. We just passed it around to whomever was interested in taping for a while. No one had any problems figuring out how to use it, and it had enough internal memory to capture the whole day. Only complaint would be the battery life. The battery life indicator is a little mis-leading, as it goes from 2 hours left down to 10 minutes left in about 40 minutes. Overall, this is a great product.

I like this camcorder. It weights almost nothing and it's very easy to view and backup the videos.
br /Bad things are:
br /-I was a little dissapointed when I filmed in darks places.
br /-You cannot take pictures when you are in movie mode
br /-It doesn't have an optical viewfinder. The only way to see what you are recording it's the LCD viewer. So you can't see nothing if the person you are recording wants to see himself while recording (my kids love seeing themselves online in the lcd viewer)
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br /A hint to view the videos everywhere: change de extension of the file .mod to .avi.

Finally a digital camcorder that won't break your bank but is not skimping on the features. I tried other digital camcorders in the past, from the cheaper $100 range, and they all have two major flaws: lack of image stability control and poor performance in low light. This one overcomes both and I'm very happy with it. It also takes decent pictures, although it doesn't match current cameras resolution.

I ordered my camera just before I left for France. It came 4 days before I left so I had very little time to figure out how to use it. It was a snap. The videos are clear except in low light. The zoom is great. And the still pictures were better than my digital camera. I love the camera. I haven't had time to use the software to make a CD so I can't rate that.

this is more than just value for money. This is the best value for money one can get

This is exactly what we were looking for. We were tired of mechanical camcorders that eventually break down and tapes that fail. The Canon is small, lightweight, and the battery lasts a long time. I added a second 8GB memory chip and we have hours of video between dumps to my computer. I haven't tried editing the video files yet and will add that review later.

Good camera features: v small, silent, good battery life and quick to start. However, the picture quality is disapointing for both bright and darker lighting (indoor shots are very grainy). I used to own a Canon DC40, which had great picture quality. I expected the same when I bought the FS10, but I was wrong. I returned it the next day.

What a great product. Have been very happy with it. Only problem is that the battery life does not outlast the disk space so it is probably not worth getting an extra card unless you want to store your videos on the camera itself. Also, the joystick provided does not function as well. The screen should've been touch screen.