Customer Reviews

Canon ZR200 MiniDV Camcorder w/20x Optical Zoom (High Metal)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Great Camera, Battery Sucks

I bought this camera to replace an old Panasonic VHS-C camera. After reading many reviews over at www.camcorderinfo.com (a great site BTW), I decided to save a few bucks and get the ZR 200 instead of the 300. The light seemed useless to me and I already had a SD card.

The ZR 200 outperforms our old Panasonic in every way. Very happy with this camera. I've been using it mostly in "easy" mode. I did try out the wide-screen feature, and MAN was it cool! I filmed a concert band at a local community college, in low light, on a ti-pod with lots of panning and zooming. It really did a great job. It looked like a freakin' documentary!

You will read lots of reviews complaining about motor noise. These are greatly exaggerated. I've used it to tape the audio of my wife's sonogram (fetal doppler sounds) in a very quiet doctor's office and it worked perfectly, no motor noise.

This is a consumer level camera, and as such performs very well for casual capturing. Kicks butt for home movies, low light concerts. Real pros might want to consider spending more.

One bummer, the battery really sucks. It lasts about one hour, so you'll want to get another one, or do what I do and plug it in whenever you can.

One little tip: You must hold the focus button down! You will read complaints of slow manual focus times, and I noticed the same thing, until I HELD DOWN THE FOCUS BUTTON. Manual focus is very snappy.

Amount Paid (US$):
239.99 (www.dell.com, w/ 2 coupons from www.dealmac..com)

Ease of Use:
Excellent; operates with the touch of a button

Durability:
Good; solid it will last until new technology develops

Battery Life:
Average; lasts 45-90 minutes

Movie Quality:
Good; stable and crisp image, very good sound

Recommended for:
Home and Families - Keep Memories of Family Vacations

Pros:
Great Images, Very Small, Easy to use

Cons:
Batteries only last one hour.

The Bottom Line:
Highly recommend it for home, family buyers AND budget buyers.

Overall Product Rating:Above Average

Recommended: Yes

This camera replaced Canon's ZR85, which was another lightweight, no-frills camera. This one is even lighter, and a fair bit smaller. It fits just right in the palm of my hand. If it was any smaller or lighter it would be awkward -- I like there to be a little bit of weight to a camera, since that gives it a litle bit of stability due to inertia; as it is it is just right.

It has more functions than you'd really want in such a camera -- if you are ever going to do something with the footage you will be using a computer and an editing program, so you don't really need the editing modes on the camera. Still, there's no complaint here, and it's flexible enough for most non-professional, home users.

My only complaints are: when they "upgraded" to the ZR200 from the ZR85, they got rid of the neck strap. So this unit is totally free floating and you have to be more careful about dropping it. I suppose you could rig a neck strap but it isn't included and it would be a little more awkward, since the slots they give you to fasten a strap are very close together. I ended putting one on there but rarely use it, because it makes the camera twist around a bit. I really liked the neck strap on my ZR85 as a way of stabilizing the camera: I could put the camera down near my waist, and look through the LCD monitor, and the tension from the neck strap would help me keep the camera steady as I walked, usually while filming my children ahead of me. The other complaint is that the viewfinder on this one no longer swivels up and down, but is fixed in place. This makes it much less usable for me -- because it means that the camera has to swivel with your head if you are using the viewfinder. It means that I use the LCD screen much more often than I used to, and that runs the battery down much more quickly. Still, for simplicity and convenience and ease of use, you'd be hard pressed to find a better camera at this price.

I purchased this camera to replace my Panasonic VHS-C camcorder. I was very surprised at how much smaller the camcorders are as compared to when I had my VHS-C. This camera is great. Its small, compact design makes it easy to fit into the palm of your hand, and the mini screen is perfect for viewing images while recording. The feature that really sold me on this camera, aside from its low price, was the image stabilization. With the stabilization on, there is no image bouncing, and you'll be sure to get clear, sharp images every time. I was disappointed in the short charge that the battery holds, so I recommend purchasing another battery or plugging the camera in whenever possible. The tapes the camera uses are very small, and you can easily store several in a camera bag.

I highly recommend this camcorder. It was ranked the best camcorder in its price range by Consumer Reports magazine. You'll be sure to get many hours of enjoyment using this teriffic camcorder from Canon.

I imagine most people who buy this camera will be using it to make home movies and so far I've found it to be very easy to use and the video quality to be excellent.

A few words of warning, the provided USB cable is only good for tranferring still images to your PC. If you want to transfer video you need and IEEE394 cable (I think that's what it's called). This does not come with the camera. However if you do some looking online you can get one very cheap (I got one for $1.95). Most brick and mortar stores sell them for a much higher price, as much as $30.

You get what you pay for and more... For a camera that is normally under 300 bucks, one can not really complain. If you expecting it to perform like a 2000 dollar camera then don't buy it. If you are looking for something simple to use (for me it was for the birth of my son etc...) It was perfect. Get another battery, an SD card for pictures, and a few DV cassettes and you are good to go. Amazon sells it for a bit high, I would go to Dell and purchase it with a few coupons, normally ends up to be like 240-270 free shipping + your local taxes, so under 300.

This is my very first camcorder and I'm 80% satisfied with its quality. It has sufficient features and functionality for a amateur cameraman like me. I will recommend it to anyone who wants to capture family moments.

I have noticed that the quality of shots showed by the camcorder LCD screen is more crisp and vivid than showed on TV using the provided component cable. I also downloaded the video clips into the computer (Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz and 1 Gb memory) and compared the image quality. The result is all color quality observed on the LCD screen disappeared. I wonder if this is common to all camcorders or just this one and hope to receive feedback from somebody on this issue.

Another negative thing is the noise not from the motor controlling for zooming action. I can hear it "clicks" every time I zoom in or out.

The battery life sucks as someone wrote and another pain is the battery pack costs a lot of money (over 80 bucks for a pack that lasts about 100 minutes).

By and large, it is a good camcorder.

Easy to use, extremely easy transfer videos and pictures to my Macintosh. Daytime video quality is excellent, especially when playing the finished DVD's on my High Definition TV. The widescreen capability looks as good as a Hollywood movie, at least to my eyes. Video shot inside is really good, too, just have some lights on in the house. This camera is much better than my old Sony 8mm. Good zoom, too. You just have to get used to using the camera, don't zoom to fast, handle the zoom control smoothly and with finesse, don't flick it up and down or it produces noise on the video.

You can learn how to use this camera in 10 minutes---and this is the first one I have ever purchased. Nothing fancy---it is a very reasonable palm size camera with the zoom and power buttons easily accessible to the person who is filming.

One excellent feature of the ZR200 camera which I have not seen discussed is its ability to transfer home video from VHS, V8, Hi8, or any other video format which has an RCA jack system (yellow, red, white), to digital video (DV) on Mini-DV tapes.

This feature is fabulous and dramatically easier to use than other methods I have tried. I did not discover it during nearly 1 1/2 years of camera ownership until I inadvertently came across a terse mention of such transfers in the owner's manual. (See Canon ZR200 owner's manual at page 79 for instructions, or page 72 for the Canon ZR700 unit with similar capabilities.)

Suffice it to say that the transfer process is very easy, assuming that one has kept the original cabling which came with the ZR200 (or ZR700) camera. It produces a video image which is superior to any other method I have tried. And I have tried a number of methods, including transferring video to a high-quality external video capture card to DV and ultimately to Mini-DV tape using iMovie on an Apple computer.

Upon careful comparison of like clips, this complex, multi-step approach produced good results, but only a nominally clearer image and it has tiny diagonal stripes running across it and a curling upper left edge from the video recorder heads; overall not as good. The color quality and image clarity that results from direct videotape to Mini-DV-tape method using the ZR200 built-in features is overall, smoother, cleaner and produces a full screen image without diagonal lines or the jagged tape-head artifact in the upper left corner. Direct transfer appears to eliminate this visual nuisance entirely, or at least it did so for me. This significantly improves the image appearance and eliminates an otherwise very distracting visual distortion.

In transferring 20-year old V8-tapes, I was stunned at the improved image clarity and vivid color, in some instances as if the tape had been shot the day before! It was a real pleasure to see clear images from the past - now I only wish I had had slightly better camera skills.

I also recommend buying a cleaner for the heads of any video source you might use; Sony makes a good head cleaner for V8/Hi8 and for Mini-DV. As I cleaned the heads of the video source, the image quality and clarity quality improved significantly.

Overall, the ZR200 is an excellent camera and has some delightful hidden features, including 16x9 widescreen and direct video to Mini-DV transfer.

Five stars.

Three weeks ago, I bought a Canon ZR200 camcorder to tape my son's wedding. I had a nine-year-old Sony 8mm camcorder, but I figured digital technology would outdo it in every category. I was wrong.

I chose the Canon because I had recently purchased a Canon digital Rebel XT which I am quite happy with, and the controls on both were similar, so I wouldn't have much of a learning curve. As it turned out, the learning curve was the least of my problems.

Thankfully, I tried out the ZR200 on the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner. The chapel where the wedding was to be held was not overly bright, so that may have contributed to the results I got. The video was extremely dark and muddy, and the audio was horribly garbled.

After viewing the tape I made at the rehearsal, I used my old Sony 8mm to tape the wedding, and I'm so glad I did. I results were better in every way.

When I took the ZR200 back to where I'd purchased it, it was pronounced normal, so I hadn't gotten a lemon.

The ZR200 may do a good job in broad daylight with the sound sources within a few feet of the camcorder (I didn't get a chance to try it in those circumstances, so I can't say for sure), but it didn't do what I needed it to. When I returned it, the salesman said that I'd have to spend $700 to get the results I was wanting. I wished someone had told me this up front.