Canon ZR45MC MiniDV Digital Camcorder with 2.5" LCD, Digital Still Mode und MMC Card Slot

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Manufacturer: Canon Video
Price at amazon.com: Used from $397.89

List price $698.00



Product Features:

• MiniDV camcorder
• 18x optical, 360x digital, zoom with image stabilization
• 2.5-inch color LCD and color EVF
• Digital photo mode records onto included 8 MB MMC card
• Analog pass-through ports for direct connection to computer

Product Description:

Improving on an original can be a daunting task. Canon has succeeded quite well, thank you. The ZR45MC is the successor to the ZR25MC. Canon increased the optical zoom to 18x--the digital now sits at 360x--and added an analog pass-through port. Although the ZR line featured analog-in for dubbing your movies to MiniDV, the new pass-through port allows you to go straight to the computer, eliminating a possibly cumbersome step. The ZR45MC also has a lot of the same features that made the original a lot of fun. A 2.5-inch LCD is swivel-mounted, permitting the shooter to use the camera at odd angles. Various digital effects and autoexposure modes help ensure your footage turns out well. The digital still mode makes a return, letting you capture 640 x 480 stills onto an included 8 MB MMC. Finally, Canon threw in a low-light color-shooting mode that makes the ZR45MC that much more attractive.

Description from Manufacturer:Improving on an original can be a daunting task. Canon has succeeded quite well, thank you. The ZR45MC is the successor to the ZR25MC. Canon increased the optical zoom to 18x--the digital now sits at 360x--and added an analog pass-through port. Although the ZR line featured analog-in for dubbing your movies to MiniDV, the new pass-through port allows you to go straight to the computer, eliminating a possibly cumbersome step.

The ZR45MC also has a lot of the same features that made the original a lot of fun. A 2.5-inch LCD is swivel-mounted, permitting the shooter to use the camera at odd angles. Various digital effects and autoexposure modes help ensure your footage turns out well. The digital still mode makes a return, letting you capture 640 x 480 stills onto an included 8 MB MMC.

Finally, Canon threw in a low-light color-shooting mode that makes the ZR45MC that much more attractive.Average Customer Rating:

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Comment: Nice but.... Rating:
After an extensive market review, I decided to buy this one. Recording quality is excellent when you have appropriate light conditions, and it works ok with poor light. Excellent zoom, and very good stabilization features. The digital still camera feature takes average pictures (640*480), good enough if you are just sending them to friends/family and the software included is quite easy to use. In order to download your movies, you must have a firewire connection in your PC. Consider to buy an extra battery.

The major problem I found is the fact that the microphone records the camera noises, making your movies have an annoying background sound. This is really unacceptable if you want to have good quality audio. If you are concerned about the sound, I would suggest you either to try another camcorder or wait until Canon fix this model or release a new one. Or, if you have the expertise (I don't have it) edit the film with your PC.

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Comment: The good, the bad, and the ugly Rating:
The good: Compact, easy to carry, lots of good features (too many to list; read the specifications), excellent playback picture, works great with my iMac, excellent sound reproduction, and straightforward instructions.

The bad (kind of): Yes, in an absolutely silent environment you can hear the motor running, but in our first two hours of taping there was only one time, and that was only for less than a minute, where you could hear the motor running. So, I wouldn't call that bad because there is usually enough ambient noise to cancel it out. The wide angle isn't very wide angle, but you do get a lot of great non-digital zoom. The digital zoom gets pixelated pretty quickly but would you expect otherwise? You can only access some of the features with the viewing screen open and in bright outside light the picture is washed out and you can't really see the menus very easily. The fade in and out features were fun but somewhat cumbersome to use.
The ugly: Do not buy this camera if you intend on using it to take still pictures to the MMC. There are two problems. Check out the specifications and you will see that the CCD chip has only about 250,000 or so effective pixels. But, the real killer is the 8-bit color. There are two resolution modes, fine and normal. The instruction manual says the fine mode can be used for taking pictures for printing out and the normal for sending over the Internet. In the fine mode, a perfectly blue sky comes out mottled shades of blue, pink, and purple. For other, less uniform colors, the effect is worse. With the low number of pixels and 8-bit color, this feature is pretty much useless if you are used to using a good film SLR camera or a high pixel digital camera.

Overall: I gave it four stars because it's a really good minicam with great Canon optics, many useful features, and ease of use, but I was really disappointed with the still picture feature. I can't believe Canon would even include such a poor quality feature. If you want both good digital video and pictures, you probably need to look at different brands with megapixel CCDs, which are available for a comparable price.

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Comment: All was well until the "safety mechanism" went berserk. Rating:
This is not a high-end camera, but was good enough for me. I have recorded 12 tapes on it. Beginning with tapes 11 and 12 a problem has developed with rewinding the cartridge. After about 1 minute (recording time) worth of rewinding, it stops and displays "Remove Cartridge" on the screen. I take out the tape, put it back and get another minute rewound before it happens again. These have all been brand new tapes. A visit to Canon's website only reveals that I have to take it to be serviced. Another review here says their estimate to fix the camera was $160. I hope that is wrong :(

Posted at November 11, 2003 07:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)