Shop For Canon ZR600 MiniDV Camcorder with 25x Optical Zoom

This Review is from a previous owner of this Camera

I purchased the Canon ZR600 from Best buy back in late 2006 early 2007 originally looking for a camera to do video notes for class then ended up having this camera be my first personal camera used for television broadcast training and practice at home.

A bit of Background:
I am a legally blind individual I don't have full vision loss, I have more like half the vision of a fully sighted person. E.g. distance and the ability to read small print etc are the greatest challenges for me, however I have had a natural ability to get good results from cameras, even if it's taken extra practice to build skills.

The basics:
The canon ZR600 is a consumer level miniDV camcorder which means the camera has a VTR built in that records to a miniDV Cassette. Many consumer level camcorders are a single CCD e.g. many pro cameras or prosumer cameras are 3 CCDS. This simply affects how they deal with color and lighting. (but no camera) will ever be as good as the human eye, This brings me to my usage with the product.

The zr800 has a wide range of manual settings and automatic settings such as: manual focus manual white balance the option to shoot in 4:3 or 16:9 wide or in this case (anamorphic widescreen)

I strongly recommend any camera operator to learn how to manually white balance and light your set and adjust manual focus etc. Many reviewers who give cameras one star because they say picture sucks is more then likely due to the fact they have no concept of how to professionally set up a shoot, and yes, even for a non professional, knowing the basics a professional would use still apply to getting the best results, remember, the camera's auto settings take a best guess which is usually wrong, and is intended for people who lack camera skills to manually set up the camera. Manual is in most cases the best Especially on lower end cameras. With this in Mind:
The ZR600 does an excellent Job for it's price. Unfortunately, mine met it's death when the tripod fell over. So really i was just learning the manual settings on this camera right when it died. I now have the sony DCR-HC52 MiniDV which has newer technology and does in many aspects produce a closer to professional quality picture if set up correctly. I will review that product as well.

In closing MiniDV is a safe non HD format that is still very reliable to use and get great results.

For those who complain about firewire Most professional video editors have a mac around for that purpose, firewire has been and will be an apple standard though PCs adopted it as well by the name IEEEE1394. If you don't understand the technical requirements for MiniDV don't use it as your format for video. You won't be happy and will unnecessarily be giving a good product bad reviews If you are stuck with usb I'd personally recommend a solid state camcorder that takes flash memory.Get more detail about Canon ZR600 MiniDV Camcorder with 25x Optical Zoom.