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Canon ZR40 MiniDV Digital Camcorder with 2.5" LCD, & Digital Still Mode
See it at Amazon.com for $350.00Average Customer Rating
(3.5 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Works great!
(5 out of 5) by Amazon Customer on Mar 30, 2003I bought this camera after reading many reviews talking down the microphone and the battery life. I have not noticed a problem with either, yet. I am primarily using the camera to record middle school music performances with a tripod and AC adapter. It worked just fine to get the music, although I had a harder time hearing the adjudicator's comments at the solo & ensemble festival. I may invest in an external microphone, but for now I'm happy with the results.
OK for several years...then it got hungry.
(3 out of 5) by Tom Willett on Oct 7, 2006 (Tennessee)Yes it does eat tapes. I have the camera and I have owned it for about 3 years. It did some fine work. I have no complaints except if you need a camera that will never eat tapes, be very wary.
I posted my movies on a couple of websites. I make short movies. I used the Canon ZR40 and made movies with the Sonic Foundry Vegas 4 editing system. It made fine movies in the wmv or rm or mov for Quicktime web formats. My short films are at hollywoodscreams and myhollywoodstar and those are dot com, of course. They are family friendly.
Recently I tried to rewind a tape. It got mangled. I figured it was just the tape. I tried a second tape and another. Each time I would record something OK but the tape would get jammed during rewind. On the movie Hollywood Screams I rewound each scene by hand. That is very hard to do. I had to use two toothpicks to hold the cassette lid open so I could pull the tape out and then wind the spool by hand. It was very time consuming.
The video looks good and I never noticed noise. I am sure each brand of camcorder has some problem. Canon has a mechanism that mangles tapes in rewind after several years of use if my camcorder is typical.
Tom Willett
I posted my movies on a couple of websites. I make short movies. I used the Canon ZR40 and made movies with the Sonic Foundry Vegas 4 editing system. It made fine movies in the wmv or rm or mov for Quicktime web formats. My short films are at hollywoodscreams and myhollywoodstar and those are dot com, of course. They are family friendly.
Recently I tried to rewind a tape. It got mangled. I figured it was just the tape. I tried a second tape and another. Each time I would record something OK but the tape would get jammed during rewind. On the movie Hollywood Screams I rewound each scene by hand. That is very hard to do. I had to use two toothpicks to hold the cassette lid open so I could pull the tape out and then wind the spool by hand. It was very time consuming.
The video looks good and I never noticed noise. I am sure each brand of camcorder has some problem. Canon has a mechanism that mangles tapes in rewind after several years of use if my camcorder is typical.
Tom Willett
Fine until it started eating tapes
(1 out of 5) by Jack Baker on Jul 14, 2006 (Austin, TX)Like many of the other reviewers, my ZR40 is now giving me the infamous "Remove cassette" message and is mangling tapes. I have used it to record maybe 7 hours worth of video over the last two years. Search the web for "canon zr users group" and "eating tapes" to hear similar horror stories. Stay away from Canon camcorders.
Lights, lights, lights
(3 out of 5) by R. Debelen on Feb 23, 2003 (CA United States)Video gets grainy indoor. Other than that, i think everything is fine for the price i paid. 8/
Neat package but very grainy indoor quality
(2 out of 5) by Amazon Customer on Nov 3, 2002Things I like...
- price
- size
Thing I didn't like and made me return
- performance under regular indoor house lighting very grainy and considerably worse than my 8mm analog. Doing further research it appears this is likely not unique to Canon but common to DV camcorders. I am going to stick with my 8mm for a couple of years until DV tech improves since much of my use is indoors filming kids, etc.