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Let's face it, when it comes to capturing special occasions such as your vacation abroad, a wedding or a birthday, the digital camera is no match to a camcorder. The analog camcorder is pass, this is the era of the digital camcorder and that's what this review is all about. There are a large number of digital camcorders available in the market today and we are going to review them one by one. Canon - one of the companies that manufacture digital cameras also manufacturers a large range of camcorders - non HD and HD. The one we are reviewing today is the non-HD model, FS10. It supports the PAL video system, which is standard in India. This Flash memory-based camcorder looks sleek and slim. This particular model uses dual Flash memory - inbuilt 8 GB as well as an additional 4 GB SD HC card. It boasts of 37x optical zoom and also 45x advanced zoom, which can extend to a digital zoom of 2000x. Since there are no moving parts apart from the zoom lens motor, the battery life is expected to be considerably longer than conventional digital camcorders with DV Tape or DVD. We shall see in our review today how well this camera performs and whether what is shown on paper does indeed hold true. 
Bundle Canon FS10 Warranty card ImageMixer software disk 2 Instruction manuals 4 GB SDHC memory card Power cable and adapter USB cable A/V cable Rechargeable Li-Ion battery Remote controller (with battery) Wrist strap Battery charger 
The Canon FS10 comes with a complete bundle and you will not need to purchase anything extra. The FS10 has better compatibility with most PCs as it has a USB 2.0 interface rather than FireWire, which, though faster, is a lot less common. Canon had not sent us the A/V cable and that's the reason why you don't see it in the bundle picture. However, it will be available when you buy this product. We wished Canon would have provided some kind of a carry pouch to carry this camcorder around. 
The small lithium button-cell powered remote controller that comes with the FS10 is a good addition and it is actually useful. You can attach the cam to a tripod or just place it anywhere and start shooting - a good application for those who like spying. You can do just about everything - start/stop recording, zoom in and out etc - except change the mode of the camcorder with the remote. The remote controller supplied with this camcorder can only be used when you enable remote control in the camera. This is an IR remote, so the IR sensor besides the LCD on the cam needs to be in the line of sight. We tried to use the remote controller from over 20 feet and it worked without a problem. We didn't try any farther since it is not practical and the LCD is hardly visible from such a distance. Specifications 
The Camcorder The Canon FS10 is a super-slim and sleek camcorder with a size so small that it can hide behind an opened hand. The stylish and sexy looks are guaranteed to steal your heart. The small size is due to the fact that it does not have any moving parts -it is based on internal Flash memory and SD memory card rather than DV tape or DVD. It has a glittering look, with aluminum and plastic body that seems to be quite sturdy. 
Weighing just 260 grams, the FS10 is easy to hold on for long durations without suffering from fatigue. The attached grip belt makes it not only comfortable and easier to hold the cam, but also makes it feel more secure. Left-handed people are left in the lurch as this is aimed solely at the right-handed. To carry it around while not shooting, you can attach the provided wrist strap. 
While holding it, your thumb can be used to change the mode with the help of a conveniently placed large thumbwheel at the back of the cam. You can choose between still and movie capture and still review and movie playback. There is a button at the center of this thumbwheel that lets you start and stop recording. 
On the top in a steel panel are more controls for operating the camera while operating it hand-held. The first one at the rear is the On/Off button that is recessed into the body of the camera. Next to it is a button to click still shots when the cam is in that mode. Finally, there is the zoom rocker key that lets you zoom in or out. The zoom rocker feels very responsive and springs into action at the slight flick of a finger. All these keys are placed in such a way that they are accessible using your index finger. 
The battery compartment is present at the bottom of the cam and you can access the Li-Ion battery by opening the sliding hinged flap. The SD card slot is also present inside the flap, just besides the battery. A good thing is that, opening the flap is possible even while the camera is switched on as the battery is still locked in and can be removed by the battery release latch. Moving towards the front on the underside, there is a threaded tripod socket to mount the camcorder on a tripod. This is especially useful when you use zoom and need to keep the cam steady. The tripod socket is meant to last and is made of metal. 
The battery is a proprietary design 7.4V 890 mAh and the specs state that it can last for 5 hours of movie recording. 
Coming to the front of the camcorder, you can see that the lens is covered while the cam is not in use. The cover is automatic rather than manual and it opens when you open the LCD and the thumbwheel is set to recording mode. The coated zoom lens has a focal length varying from f2.0 - 5.2. Left and right stereo microphones are visible just below the lens to record sound in stereo. On the right-hand side (as seen from the front), the yellow thing you see in the picture is the LED light that lets you capture movies or click still images in the dark. 
The LCD display at the side flips open to expose the different ports and buttons as shown in the above photo. This camera connects to the PC by means of the miniUSB port. Positioning the USB port at such an awkward position, making you to open the LCD each time to connect the camera to the PC is a serious design flaw in our opinion. The DISP./BATT. INFO button is pressed to toggle displaying the battery information on the LCD. The EASY button provides you with an easy mode to shoot, with the cam handling most of the functions such as focus, white balance, exposure, etc. This mode is especially useful for someone who is handling the camcorder for the first time. This button is also used to issue the print command in the Pictbridge mode. When active, the center of this button glows blue. There are the microphone in and AV out ports for the intended functions. If for some reason the camcorder hangs, the RESET button will reset it to factory default settings and you can start using it again. The sieve seen on the lower left is the speaker, which plays sound during the review. Strangely, Canon has left out the headphone jack, which could have easily been accommodated here. 
The 2.7-inch widescreen LCD viewfinder has to be flipped open at right angles to the optical axis of the cam. Since it lacks any other viewfinder, this is the only way to review what you are shooting. It can be rotated 180 degrees anticlockwise and 90 degrees clockwise, so that you can shoot at awkward angles. When flipped 180 degrees, the image is automatically flipped 180 degrees as well, to keep it upright from the user's point of view. The screen looks a bit grainy, though the colors it displays are vivid. It is a good thing that it is easily viewable even outdoors, since the FS10 doesn't have any other viewfinder. Sadly, this is not touchscreen as is seen with some of the products from competitors such as Sony. The controls such as functions (FUNC), playback controls, start/stop recording and backlight compensation are present in the form of membrane buttons on the bevel of the LCD. When the shoot is in progress, the forward and rewind buttons work as zoom in and zoom out. A small joystick present on the left of the LCD allows you to not only navigate through the menus pulled up by the FUNC button, but also to navigate through the recorded movies and stills. The joystick can also be used for other controls such as setting exposure compensation, shutter speed, manual focus and switching on/off the video light. Just above this joystick is the remote sensor that lets the remote controller communicate with the FS10. Something that is not usually found in camcorders can be found in the FS10 - shutter-priority (TV) mode, in addition to the program exposure and different scene modes. But that's just about all the shooting functions that you will find and you should not expect to be able to tweak a lot. The safest bet that we found is to use the Safe button, which usually yields better results. You can shoot movies at three different quality settings: 9 Mbps, 6 Mbps and 3 Mbps; you can choose any one depending on your requirements. The zoom speed can be set to slow, fast or variable, the latter being the one that you would like since it accelerates as you hold the zoom button longer. You can select from 16:9 widescreen and 4:3 formats. The wind filter can also be turned on to reduce audio disturbance caused by wind. However, during testing this did not make any difference at all and it was found to be ineffective. The FS10 features an amazing 37x optical zoom, and then there is 45x that Canon calls as Advanced zoom (AZ). To achieve AZ beyond the optical zoom, the lens elements are moved to change the area of the sensor focused on by the lens. Thus, the 16:9 video sensor resolution is about 550,000 pixels with AZ off and when it is turned on, it is approximately 710,000 pixels (which is the full effective CCD resolution) at minimum zoom, while at 45x, it becomes 410,000. Technically speaking, it is therefore not digital zoom, yet it cannot be just the simple optical zoom as the sensor resolution decreases as the zoom increases. Though we must say that the results are almost similar to what you would expect from optical zoom. The CCD resolution is 1.07 MP and this camcorder features the DIGIC DV II imaging processor, which is actually capable of processing at HD resolution of 1080p and is the same that is featured in Canon's higher-end HD camcorders. While the FS10 looks great on paper, we shall see how good it performs in reality. Performance On opening the LCD, and after pressing the power button, it takes around 2.8 seconds for the camera to become operational, which is quite good. We found that the cam goes into a standby mode when the LCD is closed without shutting the cam down; this is to eliminate even the 2.8 seconds delay - a smart move. The Canon FS10 performs as well as some of the lower-end models we have tested. In fact, the capture resolution is similar and so are the optics and the processor, so we are not surprised with the result. But it feels a bit disappointing as you tend to expect more for the considerably high price you are paying. Though you may choose the widescreen option, the movies are always captured at a resolution of 720x576 at 25 fps in the highest quality mode regardless of what aspect ratio you choose. So if you have chosen a widescreen aspect ratio, the video will fill up your widescreen monitor and if it is 4:3 aspect ratio, you will see dark vertical bands on the left and right hand sides. As stated earlier, the CCD has a resolution of 1.07 MP and the DIGIC DV II processor is HD 1080p capable, yet the movies are downsized to 720x576 or 414,720 pixels, which is less than half the possible CCD resolution. This is probably Canon's way of holding back the capture resolution in the FS10 and making the consumers purchase the more expensive HD series camcorders if they desire to record at a higher resolution. The image quality is good in general while shooting well-illuminated subjects, but becomes noisy in darker conditions or when the zoom level increases. A weird thing about the images is that you can't help but notice a slight shroud of translucency over the images at all times; thus even a black object doesn't look as black. There is a noticeable under-saturation in the movie recording mode, whereas images have a fair amount of color saturation in the still image mode. Still images can be shot at a resolution of 1152x864. The autofocus works very well, though focusing from one object to another is not as fast as one would like to have; you may lose the chance of capturing some precious moments due to this fact. Audio is recorded as Dolby AC3 48 KHz Stereo at a bitrate of 256 Kbps. We found that it is better to use the highest quality mode as the other two modes produced compression artifacts that cannot be ignored and the resultant video quality is anything but satisfactory. The zoom works delightfully well as long as you use the optical or advanced zoom, but we expressly forbid you from using the digital zoom. Do not fall for the number - 2000x, you will be in for a huge disappointment as the FS10 becomes unusable here due to a heavy drop in image quality as well as focus. The zoom rocker key is very responsive and a slight flick is enough to get it started, zooming very smoothly. We must tell you that the zoom motor is so silent that we could not hear it even in dead silence. Also, the zoom button is smooth and doesn't cause any disturbing noise when used. While there is no optical image stabilization, the FS10 offers electronic stabilization, and this works quite well to our surprise. At one point of our test, we zoomed onto an airplane flying at the highest altitude using the handheld FS10 and when we played back the recording, it was quite good and we could actually see the airlines logo on the tail as well as the row of windows on the side. Motion blur is visible especially while capturing fast moving objects using zoom, but it is not really a problem when you do not use zoom, as long as the object doesn't move too fast. As an example, while it is not a problem to shoot from a moving car or to shoot a moving car, motion blur will certainly be seen if you are trying to shoot close objects from a moving train. Shooting using the LED light in pitch darkness yielded good results and the LED light is therefore not just a gimmick. We noticed one problem after the test while connecting the cam to the PC to retrieve the movies and snaps - you also need to connect the power cable to the FS10 and only then can you access the contents. This is a major disadvantage as you will find yourself in a tight spot if you are carrying the cam outdoors with your laptop, hoping to transfer or edit some captured footage while on the move. After connecting to the PC, you are prompted whether you wish to burn the content directly to a DVD burner or whether you wish to transfer the files to the PC. If you happen to have a stand-alone DVD burner such as the Canon DW-100, you can connect it directly to the FS10 and burn the contents to a DVD, without a PC. If you choose the PC mode, you can view the internal memory and external memory card as two separate drives and directly copy the contents to your hard drive to edit. The images are stored as JPG, while the movies are stored with an MOD extension, which can be played directly using a software DVD player such as Nero Showtime or CyberLink PowerDVD. Canon bundles along the ImageMixer 3 software video-editing suite that lets you easily play, edit and manage these movies. It has file conversion capabilities to let you optimize the movies for internet, as Quicktime movies for playback in PMPs or as MPEG-2 files to play on the computer or a standalone player. The files transfer at a slow speed; it took 2 minutes 41 seconds to transfer 1 GB, which translates to 6.63 MB/s. We recommend a card reader such as Kingston Media Reader FCR-HS219/1, which can do it three times as fast. Shooting for just over 14 minutes will create a movie file of 1 GB at highest quality i.e. 9 Mbps. You can therefore record just less than 2 hours before the internal memory fills up, and then an extra hour when you run out of the 4 GB memory card. The battery outlasts the recording capacity (which is the case with most camcorders) and it lasts for around 5 hours, thanks to the limited number of moving parts. The files can also be converted into a DVD using Nero Vision or Nero Recode, which is most likely to be installed on your PC if you have these bundled with your DVD writer. The Verdict The Canon FS10 is an ultra-compact camcorder that will probably steal your heart at first looks. It is a good camcorder, though it does not perform any better than any of the DV cams or the miniDVD cams from Canon with similar specs, as the optics and sensor are similar. The colors seemed to be a bit washed-out and it had problems focusing on distant objects at the highest optical zoom. However, I must add that even though it lacks optical image stabilization, the electronic image stabilization is not really bad and does a good job at keeping the image steady while shooting at high zoom levels. The image quality is decent and you would not be disappointed to take this with you on a holiday. Canon should provide a carry pouch with the FS10 to make it easy to carry it around, as that's how it is meant to be used - outdoors, not indoors. There are three different models with similar specifications and form factors from Canon; the only difference is the storage capacity. While all the models come with an SD card slot and include a 4 GB SDHC card, the FS10, which we tested, comes with 8 MB inbuilt memory, the FS11 comes with 16 GB, while the FS100 comes with none. The FS10 comes in silver, the FS11 is dark gray, while the FS100 comes in three colors - silver, blue and red. With a 2-year warranty, the FS10 is priced rather expensive at Rs.30,995, the FS11 is insanely expensive at Rs.39,995, while the FS100 is a little within reach at Rs.25,995. What we have quoted above is the MRP; the street price of the FS10 is much lower as expected - Rs.28,500. Since the rest of the specifications and performance are the same for these three, we feel that the FS100 is a better deal, as memory prices are so low, you can get an 8 GB SDHC card for just Rs.1,999. Considering the fact that you can get a Canon product with almost similar specifications for less than 14k, except that it has a disadvantage that it uses Mini DV tape, makes this product less attractive even with the small form factor and considerably longer battery life. Test unit sourced from 20:20 Media
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