4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Nice camera for lighted scenes
Date of Review: Aug 10, 2006
The Bottom Line: The camera met my expectations and I'm happy with it, although it did not impress me. For the cost is a reasonable buy.
This is the first video camera I personally own.
We bought it for the birth of our first child and that was indeed the first time we used it besides the tests I made to be sure it was working.
The camera is easy to use from the very beginning. I spent about 10 minutes reading the manual, but only the sections of features that were not intuitive, and then started to record my first videos. 30minutes in a DVD is plenty of a single event, and changing dvd-roms is quick. If you plan to use DVD-RW they need to be preformatted, otherwise it takes two or three minutes to format the disk to be usable.
The quality of the video is very good in Normal recording setting, given that enough light is provided. When I test it at night in our home with only the regular lights on the video was a bit grainy. This model has no extra light like the next model up DC20.
The camara does not allow to connect and external microphone so if the person recording speaks it will appear louder that other people unless they are very close.
The size of the camera fits well in hand and the position of most buttons is adequate.
One of the reasons I chose this model instead of the Canon more basic DVD models was the fact that the sensor is larger and therefore less succeptible to noise and its capability to take 1.3MP pictures. Turns out that the pictures are not that great so I wouldn't use it as a picture camera if my regular digital camera (Canon A510) is available. Pictures are similar to those of the cheapest digital cameras, far from Canon's quality in regular Digital cameras. Other disadvantage of the picture feature is the lack of a flash. Another thing to be aware is that the memory used for pictures is mini-SD not regular SD so I had to buy the card before I could test it. I paid $25 for a 128MB card which is enough for over 100 pictures.
Another accessory that I'm considering is a wide angle lense. If I'm in my daughter's bedroom is hard to film a scene with two or three people and the baby from inside the room. The wide angle zoom setting is short from allowing close by recording. I'm force to go out the door to have a complete scene.
So if you are interested in this camera, rate it base in the video only, the picture feature is only of situations where you have no other option.
Another thing to be aware is that before you can take your recorded DVD out of the camera and play it in a regular DVD play the camera needs to be connected to the AC adapter and the disk needs then to be "finalized" which takes 2 or 3 minutes.
