The Elura’s Allure
Written: Oct 15 '01 (Updated Oct 15 '01)
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Pros: Extremely portable, excellent low-light performance and picture quality, numerous features
Cons: Subpar battery life, obtuse physical interface
The Bottom Line: While not perfect, the Elura is a satisfying compromise between power, usability and price.
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| theladyophelia's Full Review: Canon Elura MiniDV Camcorder w/ LCD |
Growing up, camcorders were horrendous, frightening beasts about the size of my father, boasting blinking lights and buttons in every corner...
Now, we’ve got sexy creatures about the size of my father’s palm that STILL boast blinking lights and buttons in every corner.
If you’re still fussing with a VHS camcorder – or even a more advanced model from a few years ago – it may be time to move up in the world. MiniDV camcorders are capable of delivering ease of portability, excellent picture quality, and the bragging rights of a modern digital gadget – all in a sleek, sexy package.
My personal experience with camcorders is tied to my current position as President of my college’s student theatre troupe. As is the case with many troupes, we record many events and original performances for archival purposes. However, performance conditions are perhaps the least ideal videotaping conditions, and our old VHS camcorder dutifully provided us with blurry, unintelligible records of each production. After 2 years with our VHS camcorder, we gave up, and began shopping for a new model.
We evaluated models on their compromise between price and features – but especially expandability. A variety of inputs and outputs were necessary to ensure flexibility if we were to edit our tapes or dub the sound operator’s feed over the camera’s microphone input. After a great deal of searching, we agreed on the Canon Elura, and placed an order in September of 2000.
After evaluating a year’s worth of performance recordings, I can say that my organization is extremely pleased with the performance our little Elura has given us. There are shortcomings – most notably with the sound quality and interface – but I shall cover these in detail in a moment.
Image Quality
The Elura’s image quality (to my admittedly non-professional eyes) is excellent. Crisp, clear pictures in a variety of lighting situations. Notably, the Elura has excelled at our low-light conditions – it manages to very reasonably preserve the subtle lighting changes between shows and scenes without losing any detail. Colors are also preserved – the actors in our tapes are not washed-out, even under bright spotlights. The built-in image stabilization is a welcome addition.
Unsurprisingly, the digital zoom is horribly pixellated – but the 12x built-in optical zoom has proved enough for us to get tight chest shots from the back of ballroom or theatre. (If you’re unfamiliar with digital cameras, optical zoom is obtained using physical lenses, but digital zooms are obtained via built-in software on the camera: it’s “guessing” what the shot would look like with a more powerful lens.) If you require extremely close shots, I’d advise perhaps considering a unit with a more powerful optical zoom – but the Elura’s zooms should prove more than adequate for most users.
Sound Quality
Our largest problem with the Elura is the sound quality. One must be realistic about the sound capability of any unit this size- there’s simply not room for a powerful built-in microphone. To compound matters, the microphone is facing the *top* of the unit – a bizarre choice that several other reviewers have lamented. When possible, we use the sound feed for the theatre sound system as a soundtrack which we dub over the video in post-production. If you’re a home user, you won’t be doing this – but if you’re within a reasonable range of the camera, this shouldn’t be too much a problem. Usually, the microphone positioning simply causes a bit more white noise and echo on the tape than would be obtained with a traditional microphone placement.
Portability
This unit is absolutely adorable, sexy, etc. It’s extremely lightweight, and fairly durable. Still, you’ll want a tripod for long videos.
The biggest portability problem is battery life – with the LCD panel open, you’ll drain the battery in about 30 minutes. Very frustrating. Use the included AC adapter whenever possible. (One related problem: You can’t charge the battery and use the camera on AC power at the same time.)
Interface
So many features, so little space. The Elura is a forest of small silver buttons and cryptic dials that somehow operate in concert to work the unit. There’s a learning curve – I embarrassed myself a few days ago, trying to show our photographer how to use the camera. I couldn’t get the darn thing to turn on! We eventually got it running… Be careful NOT to press the red button in ANY mode unless you’re prepared to tape immediately – we’ve lost a few snippets here and there while learning the system.
The two most frustrating parts of the interface are the mode dial and the eject mechanism. The ejection mechanism is a multi-step process: open hatch, remove tape, insert new tape, push on tape bay, wait for insertion to stop, push bay door closed. If you wait too long and miss a step, the Elura gets fussy. The mode dial simply requires a simultaneous push of two elements – a bit like driving a stick shift.
The LCD screen is very useful, and has more than adequate resolution for our purposes. However, it’s a power drain – and all of the camera’s modes, settings, etc. are communicated solely on the LCD screen. (Hence the battery problems above.)
Technology
MiniDV is an excellent format for photographers on a mid-range budget. Crisp image quality, good shelf life, flexibility in editing … the only problem is, tapes are at most 90 minutes long. If you wish to do digital editing on the tapes you’ve recorded, you’ll need a Firewire enabled computer system (e.g. a Mac G4 or VAIO) and *lots* of disk space. We ended up paying around $150 for a firewire expansion card for our 400MHz PC, since it was not already Firewire enabled.
There are many additional features not mentioned here – most notably, the digital-camera mode which may be of great interest to amateur photographers. It can’t produce high-resolution stills, but it’s a nice bit of icing on the cake.
Overall, the Elura gets excellent marks for the quality of the videos you’ll produce. As with any purchase in this category, do your research. Look for the number of inputs and outputs, optical/digital zoom levels, and the like. For many people, the Elura will prove to be attractive, versatile and durable – you’ll find yourself making excuses to make use of it. Bulky beasts of the camcorder past, begone!
Happy filmmaking…
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1000
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Epinions.com ID:
theladyophelia
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Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me:
Computer Scientist, Interaction Designer, Actress, Artist and Former Teenage Muppet
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