The Filmmaker’s Dream – Canon Vixia HF200 HD

Back in the day, around the year two thousand, if you wanted to make an independent film, you had two options. First, you could film the whole thing on a crummy camcorder and make something that would look cheap and ugly. Second, you could get investors, you could finance it and shoot it on film or on an incredibly pricey HD video camera, and wind up with a movie that, while it looks just fine, it’s really not YOUR movie anymore, it’s really just another movie made by a committee. Today, those HD cameras like the Canon Vixia HF200 HD cost about as much as a toy camera with a picture of the Ninja Turtles printed on it.

The hf200 is the evolution of the earlier Canon hf100, and a potential revolution to indie film. If you haven’t done much research on the HF line, the HF10 is essentially the same camera as the HF100, except with internal memory, and they used it for the film Crank: High Voltage. So if they can make a big action film on it and release it around the world, it should be sufficient for your project.

The internal memory is really the only difference between the HF10 and the HF100. Otherwise, they’re the same camera, and the HF200 is just an upgrade on it. When they made Crank: High Voltage, they spent a thousand dollars USD on each HF10, and the price on the technology has only gone down since.

The HF200 records directly onto SDHC cards. If you put it at the highest quality settings, you can get two hours of footage on a sixteen gig card, which means that for your debut feature film, you really only need a few cards, or if you want to shoot in shorter bursts, just one.

The camera is truly an indie filmmaker’s dream. Never before has so much power been available for so little cost, and this isn’t hyperbole. This camera puts the art of film making back into the hands of the artists rather than the business people. It comes with a boom mic jack, it has a headphone jack for playback, an accessory shoe, and most importantly, a threaded lens barrel, so you can switch up the look of your film whenever you please.

If we’re making it sound too perfect, we’ll come clean: The lack of a focus ring and a view finder is a little strange, but hardly a major issue when you consider the pros to the camera.

Let’s get into the specs real quick: 3.2 megapixel CMOS sensor, F/1. 8-3.0 lens speed, thirty seven mm filter diameter, twelve x optical zoom, two point seven inch LCD screen, optical image stabilizer, and with no battery, it weighs three hundred eight g, which is about as much as a tuna sandwich.

The camera films at 1080p, so, knowing that they made Crank: High Voltage on that, you should know that it can give you nice, clean, crisp video quality. Heck, if it works on the big screen, it’ll work on your big screen. There’s no better time than today to be an indie filmmaker with the affordable software, the fact that you can edit and do special effects on a used laptop, and of course, affordable, “Hollywood quality” cameras like the Canon Vixia HF200 HD that you can buy for about as much as a single car payment.