Great family camcorder
Written: Sep 14 '02 (Updated Sep 14 '02)
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Pros: Small, lightweight, manual controls, good picture and sound, doubles as digital camera.
Cons: Microphone picks up camera noise.
The Bottom Line: As a family camcorder I really recommend the Elura 40 MC. It's small, lightweight and easy to use.
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| jutulen's Full Review: Canon Elura 40MC Mini DV Camcorder |
The Elura 40 MC is very compact, one of the smallest mini-dv camcorders on the market. Its small size makes it very easy to carry around, although the controls can take a little while to get used to.
The picture and sound quality is really good, and the unit comes with several different pre-set modes ranging from night to snow and sand that make it easy to get a good picture under most conditions. One nice feature is that it does allow the user to manually control focus and white balance.
The 40 MC also doubles as a digital camera. You can store the images on a memory card (one 8MB card was included), however the picture quality only goes up to 1024x768 so it does not really compare to a good digital camera.
It's also possible to save images onto tape.
While the sound quality is really clear, the built-in stereo microphone unfortunately picks up a little camera noise. There is an external microphone jack as well as a headphone jack if you're really concerned about sound.
The standard battery that's included only lasts about 30 minutes before it needs to be charged. Not much time, but I guess that's the compromise resulting from such a small camera. An optional battery supposedly offers more recording time, although I have not tried it.
There are several cables included that allow you to hook it up to TV, VCR, another camcorder, computers (USB), but no FireWire cable which I think is an oversight on Canon's part.
It was very easy to record from Mini-DV tape to VCR (VHS) tape.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 707
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Epinions.com ID:
jutulen
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Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 1 member
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