Canon HF200The HF 200 is a video camera designed for amateurs but equipped with many professional features such as a mike input, adjustable audio attenuator and exposure settings. This makes it a good choice for serious enthusiasts and semi-professionals. We armed our amateur, who had previously never shot video, with just the camcorder and SAcamera’s ProHints and Tips article on holiday video. The rules were simple – she had to use the highest quality settings, and as an added test, she could only shoot footage using Canon’s unique video snapshot feature. She field tested the camcorder as a holiday-maker at Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve near Cape Town. This is her review and her video.

New in Canon’s Legria Series, is the Video Snapshot feature, which allows users to shoot video clips that are only 4 seconds long. The selected clips can then be added to a playlist, shuffled and paired with a soundtrack in-camera. The intention is to encourage videographers to capture the meaty highlights of an event or trip instead of filming hours of continuous video that you need to wade through to find the really good bits.

Sounds good in theory, but how does the Video Snap Shot mode hold up in application? I used the Canon HF200 in a wildlife shoot at Inverdoorn’s Game Reserve because it was a great scenario to test out not only the Video Snap Shot mode, but also the 15x optical zoom, high definition video and audio quality. Footage was captured at 24Mbs to achieve the highest quality HD video. Exposure, white balance and focus were set to automatic and I filmed all the clips in 25p Cine Mode.

Body and Controls

Since I had no control over my subject (the wildlife), it was obvious to me that it would be best to keep the camcorder ready to shoot any at given moment. Thankfully the HF200 is compact and light enough for long duration shooting without it feeling flimsy or as if it might slip out of my hand. The build is quite solid and my hand could wrap quite easily around most of the body, giving me a really excellent grip on the camcorder and easy access to the stop/start recording , photo and zoom keys. The only button that was a little more troublesome to get to was the Video Snap Shot key sitting on the left side of the body, where the LCD folds in. So when switching into Snap Shot mode you would need to use your left hand to select the mode, then press the stop/start record button with your right, which can be a little confusing especially when trying to quickly capture a fleeting, unexpected moment. But as with any camcorder or camera, as one becomes more accustomed to the new controls, shooting eventually became more natural and fluid.

Zooming in and out is easy and fairly smooth with the zoom rocker, which offers just enough resistance to prevent shaky zooming when filming. The LCD remained bright and comfortable to view, even in strong sunlight and can swivel up to 180 degrees for shooting from awkward angles. The menu system is simple enough for any amateur to understand and Canon’s user manual is comprehensive and provides good explanations of the more advanced controls.

When filming in a setting where you’ll have no access to power, ensure you have an extra battery with you. I took two fully charged batteries with me to the reserve, and the second one just saw me through editing the playlist on the drive home.

I found the HF200 to be classic and stylish in design - attractive without being flashy.

Video and Audio Quality and Zoom

The HF200 produced impressive footage, particularly for an entry level HD camcorder. Even at full zoom, the video was clear, sharp and had good colour contrast, capturing subtle details in the different hues of blue in the sky and shades of brown in the ground. The rhino scenes are testament to the HD capability of the HF200 where the leathery texture and folds of the rhino are very apparent and in the dining scenes colour remains bright and similar shades aren’t reproduced as the same. (e.g. There is a clear definition of shades of orange and red)

As an amateur I was very concerned with shooting steadily, but as you can see from the clip, the optical image stabilisation really pulled through for me and performed superbly. When shooting the baby giraffe at full zoom the stabilisation struggled a bit, but considering the terrain, and of course that this is an entry level HD camcorder, it is easy to forgive marginal camera shake.

The built-in microphone did quite a good job, considering we were in a noisy jeep, on picking up sound and conversation from people sitting within a meter radius of me and slightly further in more quiet areas. You can also turn the microphone attenuator on which allows you to adjust the volume of the mic. This is fine for everyday shooting, but for shooting scenes where there is a lot of unwanted sound or your subject is a fair distance away, like when shooting wildlife and you want to capture the grunts of the wildebeest or the lapping sound of a rhino drinking from the waterhole, it is advisable to use an external mic.

Video Snap Shot Mode

Initially I thought that 4 seconds would simply not be enough time to capture anything substantial or even anything worth watching, when in fact just the opposite is true with the Video Snap Shot feature. When I knew that I had limited time to work with I felt a bit more precious about what I chose to shoot, taking careful consideration to select only interesting highlights. On the other hand, should you be more careless about what you shoot and fill your entire SD card with only 4 second clips, you can more easily identify scenes from the thumbnail strip and then delete similar or unwanted scenes without watching the entire clip. And if you do want to watch the clip first before decididing to keep or delete it, its only 4 seconds long which cuts down the editing process dramatically.

When you’re in the video snap shot mode, a blue outline appears on the LCD. When you press the start/stop record function the outline begins to disappear, acting as a 4 second timer. After 4 seconds the camcorder automatically stops recording and you would have to press the record button again to start recording a new 4 second clip. It’s as simple as that.

From the thumbnail strip you can add videos, including ones that are not snap shot clips, into a playlist. It is important to remember that you can only have one playlist at any given time on each SD card, so if you want to create another playlist you would need to insert a different SD card. Once all the selected videos are in the playlist, you can move individual scenes into different positions in the playlist and add a song from your PC to it using the Image Mixer 3 software that comes with the camcorder. Canon provides you with a selection of music that you can use in your playlist, but if you want to use something else, keep in mind that the tracks need to be in .WAV format, so I’d recommend downloading a converter from the internet if you do not already have one.

From here your playlist is ready for viewing, either in-camera or on your television.

Editing Software

The Pixela Image Mixer 3 software packaged with the HF200 is an easy-to-use, simple video editing program with limited features and is quite honestly a little disappointing, even for an amateur like me.

The first problem I had was that it didn’t allow me to import the playlist which i had created in-camera, to my PC. I expected that users would have been able to save the playlist as a complete clip (as you view it in camera) with the software that comes standard with this camcorder and not in separate clips, as it had done. For the purpose of this review, I selected and stitched clips together and added a soundtrack to recreate the playlist.

The other let-down is that the software is extremely basic when it comes to creative editing, limited to inserting and fading music and text, so I’d definitely recommend purchasing third-party video-editing software if you do not own any.

The video is saved in .m2ts format, so unless you’re going to burn straight to blue-ray or DVD, I’d also advise that you invest in Pinnacle or Adobe video editing software.

Conclusion

I thought the Video Snap Shot was an easy and convenient way of creating a general “highlight” reel to supplement my longer videos, but it’s not the best way to record absolutely everything. There were longer scenes with conversations and explanations from tour guides that I could not capture in 4 seconds. When shooting I kept in mind that I would be adding a soundtrack to the video which would block out any incomplete sentences or unwanted sound.

I feel that when shooting and editing other videos, I’ll still take away from the Video Snap Shot feature the idea of filming only what is important in the scene and to try and keep the scenes crisp and interesting by cutting out unnecessary footage that could make the video too long or boring - a sense of “less is more”.