Home > Consumer Reviews > Canon ZR70MC MiniDV Digital Camcorder with 2.5" LCD, 22x Optical Zoom, Digital Still Mode, MMC Slot, Image Stabilization and Wide Angle Attachment

As many others have reported, mine too has lost the ability to record. Its been used for maybe 50 hours of recording in the past 1 1/2 years and is now completely worthless. Don't buy it! It'll work great for a bit, then fail on you when you most want it to work :(

I have purchased several Canon products in the past but never owned a video camera before. I did some research and with Canon quality in mind I purchased this camera just before a trip to Maine. I was rewarded with great pictures as well as video! Since I had no experience with video of any kind I was so pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to learn. I am in my mid 50's and my children are shocked that Mom could learn to take great video (It's the camera)! It is so user friendly and fun to learn. I highly recommend this to any shutter-bug just getting started.

I've had this camcorder for about 2 years now and have used it for everything from backyard footage to filming corporate events. My kit included the wide angle lens attachment, a standard life battery, software CD and an 8 MB SD card. It performs great. It has great sound through the regular microphone. I even recorded a fireworks display and the fireworks did not overdrive the sound. You could still hear nearby voices even while the fireworks were going off. It has a hot shoe for connecting accessories. Although I always intended to add a microphone to the hot shoe, I never did get around to it. I think the standard mic is sifficient for my needs.

When I recorded for corporate events, I ran the soundboard right into the A/V on the camera using a standard RCA to Headphone jack. This was a handy feature since we were in a warehouse environment and the sound system mixed all the audio. I could film from a long distance and still patch in the audio to make it sound great. The recorded video turned out really superb and my customers were quite pleased. I used the included Studio 8 to edit the video and record onto the DVD.

The still camera is around a megapixel. Not great as far as quality unless you're shooting in good outdoor light. Dark lighting definitely looks grainy on the stills, even with the night shot mode enabled.

The camera model, along with some other Canon DV cameras are affected by a recall. It will freak you out when you don't see any video on your viewfinder or LCD. It just goes black. In short, the cable that connects the CCD (which digitizes the video) gets disconnected. Canon will repair the defect (they will also pay shipping both ways) regardless of warranty status. The process was easy and did not take very long.

I presume people had problems with this product (ZR70MC).I guess most of them are CCD related.I owned ZR70MC since 2004 and I noticied CCD problem recently (Camcorder LCD went blank even when lens cap is removed) and one year warranty on product had already expired.Canon customer service was efficient and they repaired it free of cost (they even provided shipping label).When I received camcorder I noticied that record button is not working. Canon customer service or repair center again came to my rescue and they repaired it free of cost (they even provided shipping label).
I rate their customer service as best.But as some one noted earleir this camcorder doesn't perform well in low light conditions.

I picked this up new at a great close-out price as the 2004 models were moving in and am very impressed. Outdoor shots are great - just point and shoot. Indoor requires a little work to get decent results and the user manual isn't much help. Surf the web to find how to use Spotlight mode, AE tweaks, and setting shutter speed to get pretty good results. Don't expect indoor quality to beat a big lens Hi-8, but most DVs don't. Controls and connectivity are very good. Some bells and whistles are a little excessive (picking different colors for the illuminated buttons during record and during play), but the important stuff is all there too.