Pros: Great point and shoot camera for the lazy. Can do widescreen recording. USB & Firewire.
Cons: Weak for low light, SD support is good, but not well integrated to menu system.
The Bottom Line: An inexpensive, reasonably featured, point and shoot camera with some nice options. Good for vacation or family events. It's small, and light. You may need other software to edit movies.
pilchard's Full Review: Canon ZR300 Mini DV Camcorder
Over the past few years, I've become spoiled by various technologies. My cell phone surfs internet, has a digital and video camera (which holds only about 20 second clips) and is smaller than a pack of cigarettes (used for size comparison only, I don't smoke). For a while now, I've been snipping up short clips, and avoided buying a camcorder.
However, of late, I've been wanting more and decided to pick up a true camcorder. It's been a while. My older unit was analog and used analog tape. Everything is of course digital now.
My goals were point and shoot, decent optical zoom (the ZR300 has an optical zoom of about x22). I've had it with not so great digital zoom from my various digital cameras, picture stabilization of some sort, and connections for USB AND firewire (my laptop lacks firewire and on trips, I want to upload to the laptop if desired).
Upon review of the various product lines, one was of interest (among others) these were the Canon ZR models, at the time of this writing they range from the ZR100 to ZR400. The ZR300 is the 2nd from the top of the line, however it has some features the ZR400 doesn't have (better optical zoom for example). The ZR300 is related to and appears to be a variant of the ZR200, thus while 2nd from the top in the current Canon ZR line, the ZR200 and ZR300 appear related (they share the same users manual as an example). The ZR400 is about $50 more expensive, it's somewhat disabled optical zoom ruled it out for me, when standing in the back of an event to record the kids, I wanted 20x or better optical, the ZR400 didn't support this. The ZR300 / ZR400 do support true widescreen recording, thus if you have a HD set and want something which really fills the screen these are the models to consider. As I'm migrating from 4x3 (slowly) having the option to do 4:3 or 16:9 is a nice extra.
A recent sale at Dell helped spur me along a bit, I was able to get a new Canon ZR300 for about $265 (actually $272 as I had to add a small toss away item to get the total to $500 to get the lower price, Dell always runs ludicrous offers which require you to squirm about a bit, in this case it was 25% off the list, then a $60 off stackable coupon on a $500 or more purchase, on a $499 ZR300 camcorder I had to add a $8.60 camcorder bag which was just junk to get the $60 discount, plus there is a $50 mail in rebate, if you do the multiplication, and subtractions it works out at about $272 for the purchase with no sales tax and free shipping from a safe online seller).
The camcorder is nice and small, designed to easily fit in the palm of your hand, the hand strap is intuitive and easy to use making secure connection while shooting. While not fitting in a shirt pocket as my cell phone does, the ZR300 fits easily in a jacket pocket. It's small and light, about a pound. It has the advantage of looking ordinary, not a high value object. I prefer to not be flashing tech bling when in public. This will draw no attention, if anything it appears sub-ordinary.
It can record to mini DV tape, or to a SD card (that is you can store video or pictures to a SD card without the need to have a mini-DV tape loaded). Recording can be from live events, or older recordings, even programs from TV (those sources without macrovision protection) can be easily digitized into the SD card and become a file for easy processing / email on a PC. The conversion of older video to digital files is a breeze with this camera.
Performance is good, movement of video from DV to SD within the unit is possible. DV resolution is wonderful, SD card resolution is somewhat limited.
Some reviewers elsewhere may critique the smaller than many would like CCD size of about 680,000 pixels, we do live in a pixel obsessed world. In DV mode it gets worse it only uses 340,000 pixels for SD card it uses 480,000 pixels. However card resolution is limited to a maximum of 320x240. Overall the resolution has been acceptable. Pixel use may be higher when recording in widescreen mode, I can't figure it out from the manuals or anywhere online.
In practice, I don't use the digital video tape, most everything goes right to SD card. It's good enough for the recordings I routinely make. There is some small noise from the mini DV tape motor when using tape, and when running from SD card only the ZR300 is absolutely quiet. My use of mini DV is about nil, though maybe for a wedding or graduation I'll use it.
This is not a great low light camera, despite claims by Canon to the contrary. If you are say in candlelight or even indoors and it's not well lit, the recordings appear grainy. The various work arounds provided (of which there are several, night, night , supernight) all come at cost of slow shutter speed, artifacts, loss of color or definition in the image. Thus while indoor and well lit night viewing do work, this is not a camera to have for serious low light functions. Canons specs state recording works down to 2 LUX, I'd suggest that this is optimistic. You can take it out of point and shoot mode and try various overrides to get a better picture, however I want to focus on the event, not play with the camera.
Connections for PC's and Mac's include USB (this doesn't appear to be USB 2) and Firewire, Canon says it'll work with PC's or Mac's. My experience is with Windows XP PC's only. Generally I pull the SD card from the camera and just read it into my PC as a file off a card reader.
Canon makes a bit of a deal about this being a true widescreen (16:9) recorder. This is true in terms of the recording it makes, however, it's also limited by the intrinsic 4:3 nature of the supporting camera. The LCD is 4:3, and it cannot convert using analog to digital (AV-DV) in anything but 4:3. Thus your 16:9 stuff cannot be sent to the unit for digitizing in a true 16:9 format. Only optically recorded (camcorded) live events can be put in 16:9 format. There is some utility in the widesceen capability, however it is limited, think of it as something Canon added on for marketing after making a decent 4:3 system.
Now a few notes about the ZR300 menus. As I like to record using SD card without mini-DV, the Canon menu system is problematic. There is a mode slider switch for SD or mini-DV easily accessable on the right side of the camera body, but when in SD mode not all menus are available. The result is somewhat unreal, you must move the slider to mini-DV to get to the menus which permit say analog to digital conversion into the SD, or to get the extended menu options for camera setup. It would appear the engineers at Canon designed a mini-DV camcorder then slapped on a SD subsystem without fully integrating the menus. However the instruction book does not explain this, you'll see it referring say on recording analog video to SD showing menu's you'll not see if you have the camera in SD mode (the SD slider). You need to flip the slider to mini-DV to have digital conversion capability enabled to the SD even if there is no mini-DV in the camera. This is counter intuitive, and not documented well in the instruction manual. Thus to record into SD from video, you must be in mini DV mode. How's that for odd?
The ability to move things off DVR / Tivo / VCR / DVC devices to SD and then edit the SD .AVI files on a computer is very slick. I use this to download from my DVR regularly. Indeed if anything this was the greatest surprise, conversion of my older 8mm and VCR family tapes to SD files was a breeze. Downloading analog converted into a digital file on the SD card is very easy. One of the greatest yet unappreciated features of this camera is as a digitizer of older video or 4:3 video from various sources (Canon does advertise this feature, but it is very well implemented as opposed to other things they advertise which are not). The ZR300 comes with a remote control, though it's of little use as you really need to check the small LCD screen to see what is really happening (there is no feedback to the video output when connected to the ZR300), thus as you need to see the darned small LCD screen to be sure the remote commands are processed, it's easier generally to scroll through the menu. The menus are easy to navigate, a menu button activates them, and a slider scrolls up and down, submenus and items are selected by pushing the slider instead of moving it up and down.
Conventional video in and out is supported by an adapter cable which comes with the unit. A usb cable is also provided, but no firewire cable.
The camera supports various resolution and format (4:3 or 16:9) modes, for the SD I use high which would be low for the mini DV, for the mini-DV I use high. The bundled battery runs a bit less than an hour, however replacement batteries can almost triple this. Charging is done by the camera with a plug in, there is no separate charger. Much like a cell phone, you plug it in at night to charge it back up for the next use. It's operating life is much shorter of course.
There are advanced options to make the ZR300 less point and shoot, I don't use them. Transition effects are supported only with mini-DV, but as I never use them, it isn't an issue (I use effects sparingly with editing on my PC after clips are uploaded if that helps).
Generally, if you want a small, inexpensive, easy to use point and shoot camera for daylight, or reasonably well lit indoor / outdoor events, this is great. The camera can also take still pictures, however they're a bit grainy in my experience. They are a step up from the pictures taken from my Treo 600 cell phone.
Digital stabilization is a bit weak at long telephoto ranges. This does come bundled with a cheap wide angle lens, which is wonderful for my purposes. Lens covers are provided. I use the wide angle lens almost all the time, and while cheap it works great. This saves between $50-$85 depending on what wide angle you buy elsewhere and where. The camera can accept various lens additions which screw on. I don't use anything but the bundled wide angle lens, thus this is not a concern to me generally.
The software bundled with the ZR300, stinks. For movie editing, I really couldn't get it to do much. Do not buy this if you want to edit movies with the bundled software, it really is inadequate. Also it assumes you will capture from your camera somehow connected to the PC. Using a SD card in a reader can be made to work, but it is slightly problematic. I guess this is to prevent users of other cameras from using the bundled software, though why anyone sane would want to do this is beyond me.
The ZR300 has a camera to printer bridge of some sort, I never use it, however people who have printers unconnected to PC's and like connecting cables may enjoy this picture bridge feature. Once again my overall attitude is to be lazy. Pulling and inserting a SD card is just so darned easy and does so much that I avoid attaching cables between the camera and PC.
The LCD on the camera is small (2.5") but reasonaby clear, it has a backlight option when viewing at night. It's easy to read day or night, and does fold out and move up or down. There is also a viewfinder, which I never use. Overall the LCD is adaquate, while I'd like a 3.5", it really wouldn't work with the form factor of the camera.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 272 Recommended for: Home and Families - Keep Memories of Family Vacations
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