Great Camcorder, December 31, 2008

By 

Erwin Pili (NY, USA) – See all my reviews

  

I’ve had this camera for a few months now and so far no problems. There have been many events captured in HD – recitals, ball games, birthdays, etc. I have been able to use cheap DVD’s (available here at Amazon). It records in HD. Recorded media (8cm. DVD-R’s) is encoded in AVCHD and can be played directly using a bluray player.

-ep

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Nice product, April 24, 2008

By 

M. Kurapati “Ram” (Fallschurch, VA United States) – See all my reviews

  

I got this at a cheaper price, but the quality is worth the price. It has features, that most other camcoders doesn’t have.

It uses a codec format, that stores HD media on non-HD media (like DVDs). Very Nice.

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Surprisingly good but a bit outdated., November 2, 2009

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Keith Dickens – See all my reviews

  

Actually, it probably is outdated. The DVD format is not the most efficient way to go. But the quality of the shots I’ve gotten with this camera are awesome for the price I paid. I’m willing at this point to get the quality and do a little extra work in the post-production phase to convert the video.

It took a bit a bit to figure out the best way to get the video, in either SD or HD format off the disks and onto our editing machine. We used Any Video Converter (Free) to convert the files to a more editable format.

The quality of the camera when used with proper lighting is amazing for a single CMOS camera. It does have issues with poor lighting. It will become grainy, especially when working under red lights (like what we had in our haunted house).

The limited time that can be captured (especially under HD) per disk can be a problem if you just want to shoot all day long and not worry about changing disks. If you want to make webisodes/independent movies its not really that big of a problem if you manage disk space adequately and use DL disks.

There are also plenty of 37mm lenses that can screw onto the front of this thing but once it is attached BE CAREFUL. Its not a solid mounting system like you’d get with a prosumer/professional camera and I could image a good wack on the lens breaking the camera threads, lens and camera housing quite easily.

The two biggest things that I don’t like are the lack of any support on Canon’s website. I would have liked to have seen a firmware update available by now that would make increase the battery life, add additional presets, or improve focus detection. Not that any of those things are terrible now, but firmware updates can always make those things better.

The other problem that I have with the camera is that to capture pictures you’ll need to buy a miniSD card. Not SD, SDHC, or even microSD…but miniSD. A dead format for cards. So if you buy this camera don’t think that the plethora of SD cards you have laying around will cover you. You’ll need to buy a miniSD card or two from Amazon at the same time.

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