Canon Legria HF200 Firmware update - Canon Australia Service
 

I own two Canon Legria HF200's. These are now about 5 years old. I bought both second hand for around the $150 - $200 mark.

These are my B cameras. The have sufficient picture profile control that they cut nicely with my HD111E on Paolo's TC3 profile. These cameras have a hotshoe for a dedicated mic as well as a mic input (3.5mm stereo). They have a headphones socket for audio monitoring. The have manual control of audio levels. They have manual control of exposure and focus as well. Admittedly these controls are in menus, and not necessarily the fastest to access always, but I love these little jiggers.

I recently shot a friend's ordination with one of these and was distressed to find it would not recognise my Class 10 (30 Mbps) cards. I was 600km from home with no other cam. Eventually and somewhat miraculously it recognised one of the five cards I had with me. Everything was fine, but it left me rattled.

I have searched for the answer since then and finally got hints from the Sandisk and then Canon sites. It is a firmware issue. These cameras were made before Class 10 cards existed (did I mention they were five years old?). The particular model I own is not the only one affected by this issue, but it is one of the few that was not user upgradeable.

I called Canon Australia Service and got all the information about what I had to do to get the firmware upgrade done. I duly sent off my two cameras on January 22 to Sydney and received them back today from Canon via courier.

The cameras were away for about 15 days including transit and public holidays, which was a bit longer than I had been lead to believe, but not Canon's fault as the parcel waited over a long weekend before arriving at the Service centre. Canon had them for about six days, including a weekend.

It cost me $25 for the Express Post to Sydney. All the work by Canon, which was listed as check, clean and update firmware was done by Canon Australia Service at no charge to me. The cameras were then couriered back to Perth by StarTrack overnight and delivered to my PO Box, with tracking, by 1:30 p.m.

Canon Australia Service people where are you? Come out and take a bow. This is the best service I have ever had! A special thanks to Eric for being so helpful.