It was my birthday on the 21st, and my mommy bought be a pretty expensive present. Its a Canon ZR100 MiniDV... 350 bucks. I know its nothing like a GL2 but, for a beginner's camera, its damn good. Does anyone else have a video camera?

I've got a Canon ZR25 MC...one of the many predecessors to your camera. Back in the day it cost upward of $800 (ouch! ) but now you can get ZR65s (the new version) for less than $300. Ah, how technology marches forward.

Your mommy?!?! Are you sure you aren't like 6?

hahahaha nismo made a funnay

never too old for your mommy. i actually just turned 17.

Got a link or maybe a picture of the camera? I'm really interested in buying a video camera nowadays so I'd like to hear your thoughts on this thing maybe a few weeks after you manage to fiddle around with all the shits on it?

ZR100: http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controlle...4&modelid=11005

Well, i am a tech geek, so i have gotten into it quite a bit already. however i do have some nit picks about it. it has this mode called "night mode" and it doesnt do a thing, and when its on it makes everything awfully blurry. so i just dont use it. if you are going to be doing night shooting at speeds i would consider a different camera. the other thing i dont like is the battery, it runs out pretty fast. so i always make sure to turn off the LCD back light, and night mode. the zoom functions ergonomics are difficult to get used to, and the applicator is just plastic so somtimes your fingers slip, essentially fucking up that perfect focus or wide shot. other than that, this is the best camera i've ever had. it has a DigicDV chip in it so you can capture footage to your computer in digital quality and the hand strap is just about as nice as you can get aside from leather or carbon fibre. but i guess it is a type of leather, its suede (spelling) so it doesnt leave pressure marks and doesnt irritate your hand after long usage. the menu is really easy to read and understand and it has widescreen capabilities, however no software i have can make sense of it so when i capture onto the computer everything looks taller because it smooshes the widescreen to 4:3. however if you have a 16:9 tv when you burn the movie to a dvd or record to a VHS the tv will fix the distortion. the only thing that kept me from getting the ZR200 is that the only difference of the two, the 100 and 200, is that the 200 has a picture mode on it. i didnt spend the extra 50 bucks of birthday money for that because since its a video camera it doesnt even have 1 mega pixel of resolution, so the still pictures are terrible quality. plus even the most basic editing software, like windows movie maker, has the option to snap a still frame from a clip. so the picture mode is pretty usless in my opinion. there is also the problem with its compact size. since everything is so smooshed together on this truly baby sized camera, the sound of the DV tape rolling is picked up through the on camera mic. so i intend to get some other form of sound recording. then there is the issue of video quality. if you dont have firewire 1394 or 1934 whichever it is, get it. because trying to jam all that good digital quality video througha USB will cause you to get bad film quality. if you dont have a firewire port, i would suggest the "DazzleDV" it comes with the firewire card that has two external ports and one internal for a DVD-RW drive or somthing, plus it comes with a DV to Firewire cable and a really nice editing software. all for 49 bucks. a seperate cable alone costs 35 bucks, and the firewire card costs at least 25 so not only are you saving money but you get a sweet editing program. about the camera. one last negative, the eye veiw finder doesnt pivot up or down, it just telescopes out and it doesnt have rubber around it. i dont really use the eye finder i just use the LCD but when you are runnin low on battery a better eye finder would be nice. hope that helps.

god damn, learn to use paragraphs.
One thing I noticed on the website is the lack of XLR port. So your mic input options are extremely limited. Maybe something like a little lavalier mic or handheld would be your only option for the camera.

Also the DigicDV chip doesn't make it all special in the fact that it can connect to your computer. Most DV cameras connect to the computer anyways via a firewire port. Why they put USB ports on these cameras also is beyond me. I mean I guess its fine for people just looking to make silly little videos for the internet but even so I'd still recommend Firewire. Firewire doesn't have you stuck using certain programs and drivers either being that its serial.

The reason 16:9 gets crushed into 4:3 when being sent to the computer is its NOT real 16:9. This is something all consumer level cameras are doing now is fooling the user into thinking its really 16:9. I mean in a sense it is but really it's cutting the top and bototm of the images off and stretching the sides out in camera. The camera will output it like that and most widescreen hidef tv's will make it fit to screen which will make it look like true widescreen. However when pulling it from the camera directly to your computer as a digital file, it's all squished. I think most editing programs allow you to stretch the video out to size nowadays but a true widescreen setup is a camera with a widescreen lens.

Another thing, for gods sake dont call it FILM. Your camera does NOT USE FILM. So you're NOT FILMING, it doesnt produce BAD FILM QUALITY. Instead of filming, call it recording. Instead of bad FILM quality, call it video. Just for fucks sake don't call it FILM.

I took 2 years of video production in high school and learn some pretty valuable stuff. So really it makes me pretty anal when it comes to deciding what video cameras to buy. I bought a Sony consumer level miniDV camera awhile back and it was so damn basic and limited to what I learned on that I turned around and sold it.

In the class we were using these Sony miniDV cameras. This is the model thats right above it. I think they discontinued the one I learned on.
Also we had 3 JVC studio cameras which used the miniDV format but were full sized cameras. They cost around $8,000 a piece for just the camera then another $2,000 for the lens. They had monitors which mounted on top of the camera so use in the studio but also had mountable viewfinders so you could take it off the tripod and carry it around. I was the ONLY student she ever let take one of those cameras out of the class and still am the only student to ever do so. They had a bunch of different outputs on the side, the one we used was Firewire which ran directly into a video switch.

Blah i just went on rambbling heh

// cliffnotes
1. Don't really like most consumer level cameras. Your mic input options are very limited
2. DONT CALL TAPE "FILM!"
3. Why oh why did I choose a career path in computers and not video production?

yeah... i was tired and didnt feel the need to use paragraphs for such an informal review. also, that is the best camera i could get for my budget, and i am a beginner... so a GL2 wasnt really an option. any other nit picks you had.... suck it?