Canon FS11

Pros: Lightweight, Small, Solid State Flash Drive

Cons: Awful unnatural light performance (worse than my $175 still camera on video mode), No thread to attach filters, LED light is useless

Summary: Do NOT buy this camera if you intend to use it in unnatural light conditions (anything other than sunlight with the exception of maybe studio lighting).

I recently got this camera as a replacement for a Panasonic Mini DV GS-230 that was stolen from me. Although I had not had it long the idea of carrying tapes had started to bug me and I thought this would be a good opportunity to upgrade to something with a HDD. I was offered a few options from my insurer, one of which was the Canon FS11. I must admit the idea of a solid-state flash memory camera excited me as I intended to use it for snowboarding and vibration can trigger HDD cameras to power down to protect the drive. I searched in vain for a review on the FS11 with no luck so I decided to take the gamble and boy was it a bad one. Upon receiving the camera the first thing I did was charge it up to have a play, as it was night time I just did the basic walk around the house filming random stuff. While filming I noticed that in rooms that had light fittings over the globes that the picture looked very grainy with purple and green pixels appearing of which my first assumption was that maybe it was just the quality of the LCD. I copied the footage to my PC and in horror found that it looked just as bad. As I had not had my other camera for long I only had limited footage to compare it to which included some footage shot at night in my study, I decided to replicate the footage as I knew the light would be the same. I shot some footage of me standing in the study and the new footage was awful, I could hardly see the details of my face, I compared it to the footage shot on the GS-230 which looked flawless in comparison. The first thing I did was to call the insurer and organized to exchange it ASAP and fortunately I was able to. To be honest I imagine the FS11 would have probably performed a lot better in daylight but as an amateur/hobbyist I was looking for a good all rounder and the FS11 seemed far from it. I ended up paying an extra $100 and got the Panasonic SDR-H280 and so far I am really impressed with the performance, funnily enough both of the Panasonics I have had are 3CCD cameras which are noted as having excellent colour definition at the expense of poorer quality in low light, from what I have seen they both perform 100 times better than the FS11 did. As an amateur I, like most am restricted to a relatively low budget and as a result cannot expect to have the best of the best however, considering the price I would expect much better performance, Canon should be ashamed and I hope that anyone who buys one still has the ability to exchange/return it.