Taken from a review of the Elura 20MC on Camcorderinfo.com
"The camcorder has a 10x optical 40x digital zoom. Lately, the minimum optical zoom being put on a camcorder is 10x. You often can find larger zooms on horizontal camcorders but the matchbox style camcorders typically have small zooms. Matchbox camcorders are camcorders that stand up vertically, instead of normal, horizontal camcorders. The advantage of a matchbox camcorder is that it's small. However, in handling the Elura and other matchbox camcorders I find that they are hard to handle. It's very important that you can hold the camcorder stable and it's hard to do that with the Elura. The Elura 20MC is an upgraded version of the Elura 10, which does not have the digital photography capabilities of the 20MC. "
"The nice thing about the Elura 20MC is all the manual features and great picture quality, however you don't have to purchase the 20MC to get these benefits. The lower model, the Elura 10 is the same camcorder just with out still imaging capabilities. Considering that the still image capabilities of the Elura 20 MC are weak at best, I would recommend going with the Elura 10 instead and buying a sub $500 digital still camera. Also, before you purchase an Elura, see how it feels in your hands. If your not comfortable with it, look at the ZR line of camcorders, they pack almost identical features but they are horizontal, normal camcorders."
I think from alot of the things I have read that you have made a good choice in a Canon camcorder, now you just need to be sure this is the right model for you.