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Canon ZR85MC MiniDV Camcorder

Canon ZR85MC MiniDV Camcorder

List Price: $449.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Horrible indoor video quality
Review: We purchased this camcorder yesterday and have been extremely dissapointed in the quality of video. So much so, we will be returning it as soon as possible. When filming indoors, both at night with typical lighting in our living room, and during the day with typical lighting from the windows on a sunny day. The quality of the video is extremely bad, very grainy. It is so bad that it is not even worth watching. Had I received this camera for free, I would not waste my time filming anything inside. Maybe there are settings to improve this, or maybe our house has strange poor lights - but in any case - I do not have the time nor knowledge to mess with settings, nor am I going to buy a new house that has better lighting. Maybe my standards are too high. But I can not tell you how bad the indoor video was.

However, I went outside today in bright sunshine and made some recordings. I was very impressed with the quality of video in these circumstances. The optical zoom is very good, colors are great and sharp.

Knowing that I will be filming alot of video insdoors this camera is not acceptable. In fact, we also bought a regular Canon digital camera and the video it takes (only 30 seconds at a time) is actually much better than the ZR85. Not great, but alot better than the camcorder.

If you are looking for a home video camera, are not an expert videographer, looking for an inexpensive camera to film some videos indoors - than this is NOT the camera for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: All these other reviews are crap!!!!
Review: Why is everybody so upset that it doesnt make indoors look like outside???
It doesnt make anything darker on the video filmed inside, it just gives an accurate depiction of what the lighting is really like. Its not going to make the scene look like you have 1000 watt bulbs everywhere, but that is realistic. Those people claiming that having the the video resembling the actual envirenent that is was shot in is bad, is a bunch of crap. Film in a dark area and the footage will dark. Shouldnt that be obvious??

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Definitely Prefer ZR80 to ZR85!!
Review: ZR80 + (less than 1M camera(meaning useless)+USB cable) = ZR85

Don't pay for the poor camera in ZR85 that you'll never use!
Buy ZR80 instead of ZR85. Use a digicam more than 3.2M pixels to take good pictures, use ZR80 to take good video.

IEEE1394 (also called firewire cable) is the one to transfer video to PC or Mac.



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