I’m looking at either the Canon Elura 100 or the Canon ZR700. The Canon seems to have potential noise reduction issues but better in low lighting, whereas the Canon zr700 has a better zoom.
Any thoughts or another one in this price range I haven’t thought of?
Posted by By: lisa | 
2006/10/22 | Life - products | Trackback | Comments [RSS 2.0]
I’m a little surprised to hear that Canon’s camcorders have noise reduction issues. Their digital SLR cameras have better noise reduction than their competitors, including Nikon (who actually use a Sony sensor in their cameras). However, Canon’s cameras use a CMOS sensor whereas their camcorders use a CCD sensor, and that fact alone might contribute to the difference. Besides, I’m not familiar with camcorder technology so I might be a little off-base with my comments.
Regarding zoom - If that is a concern for you, I’d generally (see below) go with the model having the higher OPTICAL zoom. Digital zoom is achieved by cropping the image, which lowers the number of pixels available to create the image. But, since the image must still “appear” to be the same size (ie: to fit the screen or space allotted to it), the camera’s onboard computer enlarges the remaining pixels to fill the space. That’s why digitally zoomed images often appear chunky or blocky, especially at the higher zoom factors. “800x or 1000x digital zoom” may sound neat but if the resulting image is so optically degraded as to be unrecognizable, it really serves little purpose.
The other factor to keep in mind is the sensor size and quality. And you not only have to look at the number of megapixels, but also the pixel size. Manufacturers try to fool consumers into thinking a camera is better if it has more megapixels. However, a 4 megapixel camera with a small pixel will produce as good an image as an 8 megapixel camera that has an individual pixel that’s twice as big. Between the two models that you mention, based on sensor size, number of total pixels, and number of available recording pixels, the Elura 100 “should” offer better image quality, even though it has lower - 20x vs 25x - OPTICAL zoom than the ZR700.
Thanks Dan. I was leaning towards the Elura 100. This will be primarily for web video use, and not for still images at all, so I do have some flexibility. As to the Canon noise issue, it’s something that come up in several reviews. But with continued research it appears to be problem with most mini-dv camcorders in that price range, and is considered “normal”. Thanks for the input, it helps:)