Home > Consumer Reviews > Canon ZR40 MiniDV Digital Camcorder with 2.5" LCD, & Digital Still Mode

Unfortunately I had a very bad consumer experience buying this camera. I had borrowed a ZR20 from a friend the year before and liked it, so when the ZR40 came out I wanted to buy it. I read online that some people were complaining about motor noise with this camera, but I figured I try it anyways. I bought it at Best Buy (should be called Worst Buy), and when trying it out found that it does have super bad motor noise. You can't hear it while recording - it's when you are watching a tape you recorded playback on your TV etc that you hear it. The motor noise is recorded in with your audio, so you hear a loud hummmm in the background. It was too loud for me to live with. If I was recording something with no background noise (like my baby playing), then it was as loud as his voice! ... I have now ordered the Panasonic PVDC152 which is supposed to have good sound. We'll see...

We have had the camera a week and did some taping indoors in a quiet room. When we did the playback through our television the sound was awful. The noise of the motor on the tape is very loud and distracting. We have heard better sound on older VHS camcorders. Is it because the camera is so small? Is there a fix for it? This has yet to be determined as we plan on calling Canon about it. We have read other reviews of other Canon models and also similar Sony camcorders with the same complaint. Sorry, but for this much money the sound is totally unacceptable. If you buy it we recommend taping a short bit and hooking up to your TV to see how it sounds before it is too late to return.

I did extensive research on this model (the whole ZR series) and I must say, a lot of things are positive for this little camera.
* light weight, * small, * bright outdoor pictures, * PRICE.
And some negative points raised by many so far, which of course I have not been able to test as I have not bought this item, is the motor noise being recorded and the night shots being grainy.
I will not discuss anything about it as they have been beaten to death by now.
What I want to talk about is the smaller CCD resolution on the ZR series camcorders.
As we know, the US spec ZR series have the 460K pixels, out of which only 290K pixels are used for video (effective pixels). We need about 420K effective pixels to get a 500 line video resolution on the TV. Most of us know that, the VHS format (video tapes) allow upto 240lines of horizontal resolution. The S-VHS tapes allow upto 400 lines and the Digital Video format goes to 525 lines (really crisp and sharp pictures) on the TV/visual media.

So now, with mere 290K effective pixels of video resolution being recorded on the ZR40/45/50, the best lines of resolution would be around 300. Now, not everything is bad. If you intend to transfer your videos into VHS tapes for storage and future viewing, you will not have any complaints as VHS tapes store at 240 lines of resolution. But someone like me, who wants to store the video digitally, by burning them into DVDs or storing them in DV tapes, I would like to get the best resolution that I can, right?

In simple words, I want 500 lines of resolution for my video, full stop! Even though ZR40 is a DV camera, its resolution is very poor for real digital quality video.

By the way, the resolution has got everything to do with what we call SHARP, crisp and colorful pictures. It is the same difference you see between the movies played from the VHS tape and movies played from the DVD.

Oh by the way, if your TV doesn't have a 500 line horizontal resolution capability, you are not getting the money's worth by renting DVDs. The TV I bought about 4 yrs ago, a proscan 32 inch, has 700 lines of horizontal resolution. So I can assume most TVs in our houses have capable enough TVs. Going slightly off topic, do you know why the picture quality of HDTVs are so sharp? Bcoz their resolutions are almost double than the 500 lines I am talking about.

This is an excellent camera, and if you're going to be using this camera with a computer for edited purposes, you don't need the still shot feature that the more expensive cameras have, because you can just pull any still shot you want out of the footage once you have it uploaded. The picture quality is great, it's lightweight, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the audio quality, even out of the built-in microphone. It's one of the best deals in video cameras I think. I would recommend a spare rechargable battery though. It doesn't last very long.

I almost passed this by, because of the motor noise many people mention. But the price is unbeatable - do a good internet search and see for yourself. You do not pay for useless features, like magapixel stills - who needs 1MPix digital stills anyway - any digicam is at least 2 MPix? There is some noise; however I compared it with a friends Digital8 camera, and it also had some noise, although Canon's is more high pitched (but not noticeably louder). It might be that the noise is amplified during playback on the camcoder - I only import digital video on my computer for editing and I really have to look for noise in order to notice it.
I am totally happy with the camcoder.