My wife and her friend recently went to a school parade for our children. My wife's friend had a video camera without a viewfinder and it was a bright sunny day. After all was said and done, when we went to look at the video that evening, we found out that half of the footage was missing -she couldn't tell that the camera wasn't recording because the light was too bright for the LCD and there was no viewfinder.
That incident sealed the deal for me. I didn't want to miss a video of my 3.5 year old because I didn't have a viewfinder. This Canon camcorder is the only one in their consumer line that has a viewfinder and that's important. The HF S200 or and HF S20 don't have viewfinders.
That said, this is the flagship Canon camcorder and comes with a 3.5" LCD touchscreen which is a very nice improvement from last year's model the HF S11 which has a 2.7" screen.
The other big improvement with this line is the 8Megapixel camera feature. Also, you get 6Megapixel pictures that you can capture straight from video -this is huge.
I've tried the IS feature and it's good, as good as last year's and the Powered IS features is very handy for when you're at max magnification --it really helps.
Least but not last is the 64MB internal memory, you get about 4 hours of super high quality HD recording or about 24hrs of low quality recording. You also get two SDHC slots that you can put two memory cards in there...and the camera switches from internal memory to the memory cards instantly so you don't lose any recordings. That's useful.
For those of you considering tape or CD camcorders, I highly recommend FLASH drive camcorders like this one. You get instant access to any part of your recoring and makes it real easy to transfer this to your computer. Flash memory is also very shock resistant to you don't have to worry as much about bumping.
Oh, this camera has the HD lens which is the same lens as on their higher end camcorders. If you're a student of film, this might very well be a good learning camcorder.
About the only the only thing I don't like about this is the lack of a good sized battery ... the batterly lasts about an hour. This is not very good. You should upgrade to the Canon BP-819 Lithium Ion Battery Pack for HF10, HF100 HF S & HF M Camcorders battery.
The other drawback is that it doesn't come with an HDMI cable nor with a carry pouch. Oh well.
I'm very sold on this camera. This is by no means a comprehensive review. There are several websites out there that put this camera through it's paces in a very comprehensive fashion. Just type Canon HF S21 review and several will pop up.
If you're looking to compare -try the Panasonic HDC-TM300 Twin Media HD Camcorder (Black) which is a fantastic camera and winner of many 2009 awards or you can save a few bucks and get Canon VIXIA HF S11 HD Dual Flash Memory Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom which is Canon's last year's flagship camcorder. If you're a sony lover try the Sony Handycam HDR-CX500V 32 GB Flash High-Definition Camcorder (Black) which is also very nice.
I'm a Canon loyalist so my choice was the HF S21.
This is just my short take on this wonderful camera and I hope it's useful to you.
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