Well I'm a believer in that you 'get what your pay for'. I was very hesitant to get one of the Canon ZR models myself - mostly because of the motor noise issue seemingly with many people. There are many who believe that this whole thing was blown out of proportion, bottom line it's a relative thing. It's not an issue for me. All I know is that I have a nice light, easy to use MiniDV that has acceptable video quality for what I use it for and I didn't burn a hole in my pocket.
Some reviewers also noted that they thought some of the video was a bit 'grainy', dark picture, ect. - I was also aware of this before I purchased it. At first some of the indoor stuff I was shooting was indeed a the grainy side and/or dark. This was an easy fix for me, and it makes me wonder if these same people that are making these assumptions did not try to figure out the problem first? The camera has great manual over-ride functions. In low light situations, I usually turn on an additional room light or two - which helps immensely. If i'm still not happy with the results I can manually lower the shutter speed down to 1/60th and/or adjust white balance and exposure which makes a huge difference - it's not like i'm filming race cars inside my living room so the slower/blurry motion effect is not even an issue - just better exposure for me. There is also a built in night-time/low light mode you can turn on which people may not know about before making judgements on the camera.
All in all, it's no $1,500 top of the line MiniDV but then again it was never suppose to be, so you have to be realistic. I don't settle for the minimum quality/features in the consumer items I buy, I don't usually spend top dollar on highest quality, feature-rich items either. My Canon ZR-40 for me represented a great performance/feature/financial balance.
Pick a model, surf online, find users of that model then e-mail them and ask them what they like/dislike/change about the camera.
-VTrider
Some reviewers also noted that they thought some of the video was a bit 'grainy', dark picture, ect. - I was also aware of this before I purchased it. At first some of the indoor stuff I was shooting was indeed a the grainy side and/or dark. This was an easy fix for me, and it makes me wonder if these same people that are making these assumptions did not try to figure out the problem first? The camera has great manual over-ride functions. In low light situations, I usually turn on an additional room light or two - which helps immensely. If i'm still not happy with the results I can manually lower the shutter speed down to 1/60th and/or adjust white balance and exposure which makes a huge difference - it's not like i'm filming race cars inside my living room so the slower/blurry motion effect is not even an issue - just better exposure for me. There is also a built in night-time/low light mode you can turn on which people may not know about before making judgements on the camera.
All in all, it's no $1,500 top of the line MiniDV but then again it was never suppose to be, so you have to be realistic. I don't settle for the minimum quality/features in the consumer items I buy, I don't usually spend top dollar on highest quality, feature-rich items either. My Canon ZR-40 for me represented a great performance/feature/financial balance.
Pick a model, surf online, find users of that model then e-mail them and ask them what they like/dislike/change about the camera.
-VTrider
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