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Review: Canon ZR-10 Camcorder
About a year ago Sony introduced its series of Digital8 digital video cameras. These cameras can record digital video on standard Hi8 tapes. A big feature of the Digital8 cameras was their price. They were cheaper than most of the entry level MiniDV digital video cameras from other manufactures. Sony's competitors responded by shipping stripped down versions of their MiniDV video cameras. Although these video cameras may have matched the price of their Digital8 counter parts they did so at the expense of many useful features. This year Canon has finally caught up with Sony by releasing the Canon ZR10 MiniDV digital video camera. The Canon ZR10 is aimed squarely at the consumer market yet it has enough features to keep the video enthusiast happy. With street prices for the ZR10 falling under $800, it's a digital video (DV) camera that will not bust your bank account. I've been using the ZR10 for the past couple of weeks and I must say I'm pretty impressed. FeaturesThe ZR10 is a feature rich DV camera. The English section of the included manual is 110 pages long. The manual is reasonably well written although it is poorly organized. The manual's poor organization is thankfully offset by its rather complete index. The viewfinderThe ZR10 has TFT color LCD viewfinder. The viewfinder's LCD display using approximately 113,000 pixels which I have found to be quite adequate. It's bright and sharp and the viewfinder's focus can be adjusted for those who wear glasses. The viewfinder can be tilted up for easy viewing when the camera is mounted on a tripod. The LCD screenIn addition to the viewfinder, the ZR10 has a 2.5" TFT color fold out LCD display which has approximately 112,000 pixels. This display functions the same as the viewfinder but allows you to hold the camera away from you while your subject remains clearly visible in the display. The display can be rotated, for example you could hold the camera above your head and tilt the display so you could still see it while aiming the camera straight ahead. Automatic settingsThe ZR10, like most consumer video cameras, has a fully automatic exposure setting. In full auto mode, the camera takes care of all of the settings and you just point and shoot. In addition to the fully automatic setting the ZR10 has five other automatic settings which customized for the certain situations, the names of the settings are descriptive of the situation in which they would be used.
In my testing, the fully automatic setting produced pleasing video in varied lighting conditions both indoor and outdoor. Many people will be satisfied with the results produced by the ZR10's fully auto mode. Manual ControlsUnlike many low cost digital video cameras, the ZR10 allows you to manually control most settings if you wish. You can manually control focus and exposure. In addition, you can manually set the shutter speed any where in the range from 1/60 of a second up to 1/8000 of a second. You can also manually set the white balance for the video. The manual controls work well, but the both manual white balance and manual shutter speed require navigation through on screen menus which makes these adjustments a bit more of chore then they should be. On the other hand, I found both the manual focus and the manual exposure controls convenient to use.
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Hiram Wilson© 2000 |