On the left there's a flip out widescreen LCD, which conceals most of the other available controls, headphone socket and card slot.
As the HF200 can take stills there's a shutter button on top just behind the zoom control. Your thumb falls on the record button and fingers find a zoom control on top.
The mode dial which selects photo, video or dual shot sits in the crook of your hand. The right hand grip hides the HDMI and USB ports under a cover. The HF200 is about as small as is comfortable. With no moving parts the response of all the controls is pretty much instant. The widescreen LCD flips out on the left and the small hand grip has an adjustable strap to keep it stable as you shift your fingers and thumb across the controls. The Canon HF200 is a conventional palmcorder in almost all respects, although it does lack an eye level viewfinder. HandlingĪlthough there's scope to play games with the shape of tiny camcorders I'm not sure there's been a successful alternative to the palmcorder layout which has been dominant since cameras became too small to sit on shoulders about 20 years ago. These cards have to be the SDHC variety to ensure they are fast enough to store video. Its snooty brother the HF-20 has both 32GB of internal memory and a slot for SD cards, the HF-200 just has a slot. The Canon HF200 is one of a pair of identical twins. I opted for the Canon Legria HF-200 HD Camcorder, partly because as an underwater fiend I was attracted by the dive housing which is available for it, but also because this range has had rave reviews ever since it surfaced.
#Moving avchd collection on vixia to hard drive pro
This season's models add higher quality modes, which may use cards faster, but really narrow the gap between home movies and pro TV. The format used, AVCHD, was new tech last year but now it's proven and refined. All have a history of tape based HD but are now well into their stride with a range of models which use memory cards. The big names in HD camcorders are the Japanese trio Canon, Sony and Panasonic. Widescreen stills let you fit the whole family in Hustle Brand