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Canon FS10 Flash Memory Camcorder with 8GB Internal Flash Memory and 48x Advanced Zoom
From Canon
List Price: $499.99
Price: $340.74 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25 Details

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29 new or used available from $322.00

Average customer review:

Customer Reviews

Little Camcorder with Big Features
This is simply an awesome camcorder. It is extremely small and lightweight making it easy to take along anywhere. I love the fact that it uses reusable SD flash cards so there are no tapes or dvds to buy. And with the 8GB internal memory, you can start using this camcorder right out of the box even if you don’t have any SD cards. By the way, it is compatible with SD and SDHC cards. I don’t have any SDHC cards yet but I used a Kingston 2GB microSD card (with adaptor) and it works great.

It has an Easy Mode which simplifies the camcorder’s functions so that virtually anyone can use it. For more advanced users, it allows you to manually adjust settings such as shutter speed and aperture. You can even override the autofocus and manually adjust the focus. It’s got a few built-in special effect filters such as black and white, sepia, mosaic, and art. The camcorder can also take digital still photos, although the resolution is only about 1MP. But the great thing is that the 48x zoom and widescreen features work when taking still photos as well as videos. Those are things my digital still camera can’t do. Also, you can get extremely close to your subject with this camcorder as the minimum focusing distance is a mere 1cm. This being my first digital camcorder, I had no previous experience, but in less than a day I was importing video clips to my computer and editing my own movies! I now have a flood of movie ideas that I want to do with this camcorder.

This camcorder saves photos in .jpg format so there’s no compatability issues there. Video files are a bit trickier. It saves videos in .mod format. Each video will also have a second file with a .moi extension. This file contains the date/time info as well as the aspect ratio info. I had problems when trying to play the .mod file in Windows Media Player. The audio plays fine, but the video shows up as just a bunch of squiggly horizontal lines. I even tried renaming the extension to .avi and .mpg as some people have suggested but that didn’t work for me. I was able to import the .mod files into Windows Movie Maker (WMM) but videos I took in 16:9 format were all squashed into 4:3 format. This occurs even when I set the WMM option to display in 16:9 ratio. Apparently, this is because the aspect ratio information is stored in that .moi file rather than in the video file itself and so WMM is unable to detect that it’s widescreen. To get around these issues, I installed the Pixela ImageMixer 3 software that came with the camcorder. With this software, I can convert the videos from .mod to .mpg format. After the conversion, the videos play fine in Windows Media Player and the widescreen format is correctly recognized by WMM.
Picture quality is a serious issue
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.

Awesome Value!!
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.
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.
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!!