I can with my Canon (Canon MV600i)

Member Name: stephen_logan

Product:	Canon MV600i
Date:	18/11/04 (607 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy To Use, Good for its price, Compact

Disadvantages: Usual Image and sound problems, May need to buy extras

This is the first camera I have had the wherewithal to buy, whilst I had been searching a little higher in the canon range I decided on a safety first item. This camera in all the reviews seemed like a nice cheap but effective utility to practice on before stepping up to the semi-professional market. As a film student I use larger and far more expensive professional equipment, where the lens is worth considerably more than the entire cost of my little MV 600i. Playing around with cameras at the top end of the market has shown me what kind of image can be captured and its similarity to broadcast quality film. When buying this camera I had a few small demands; firstly it had to be mini DV not just a digital card, the quality of image and sound is far higher, secondly it had to be upgradeable, all cameras in this price range have a very low quality of zoom/width, they usually have poor microphones and little or no lighting. The MV 600i has the ability to incorporate numerous add-ons including lenses (30.5mm), lights can be bought and most importantly it is able to record from a standard external condenser microphone. This makes it perfect, unfortunately however these things need to be bought and with lenses being around £80 a piece microphones anywhere from £35 – 150 and lights being an extra £40 things get a little pricey. But wait, this camera as I have discovered in its brief life with me has so far defied my expectations, the telescopic zoom in the camera is surprisingly good, and the sound despite being as tinny as most digital recorders are isn’t to sloppy either. The start up package is actually very good for any first time user, everything is very automatic, in fact so automatic it even has an option where it decides everything for you, all you have to do is point in the right direction and press the little red button. For those expecting very little of it, the camera can hold a lot of surprises; as I've never had a small digital camcorder I didn’t expect it to have a white balance feature, but this does, I didn’t expect to be able to change the shutter speed, but you can. This camera a fairly technical piece of equipment and surprises me every day with it’s array of different features.

This camera is a good stepping-stone to some higher cost semi-professional mini dv devices like the canon XL1SE, learning the fundamentals of film capturing is so simple on this camera that it almost seems too cheap. But always remember that all cameras of this type have a very low quality rate to what can be filmed on a more technical device. The image is good, don’t get me wrong, from what I've seen of small camcorders this is a pretty high standard, but your not going to be able to re-create gone with the wind on this. The auto-focus is a very irritating feature, manual focus allows you to experiment with zoom effects, but the one speed zoom and focus really doesn’t afford you much opportunity to do that, as it won’t on all cameras in this price range. Mini DV is the best, economically viable output source so there is no real problem with this, and with the camera being a canon mv i the editing of films couldn’t be simpler. Just buy yourself a nice bit of software, buy a fire wire card and cable (incidentally Pinnacle 9 comes with it’s own firwire card at the moment in PC world, just a tip for cheap skates like me), plug it in and it captures straight of the camera, you can also transfer films back to the camera and plug them into your television or video. The battery with the camera is ok it lasts about 50 minutes at best, but if you know your going to be doing a lot of filming I recommend buying a new one, there are a number of upgrades with the BP535 being the best. I bought this through e-bay for £20, but it retails at around £100 give or take, the bonus of this is that you can film for around 6 hours giving you lots more time if you need to get something extra. There is another problem with cameras of this size and that is keeping a steady shot, there size means that it is difficult to pan or zoom in without wobbling the entire shot, tripods are available and are useful for anyone who is going to be taking shots in a single location for a long period of time but are a little impractical for dragging around on your holidays.

I have come to this camera with no expectations and with no real experience of this type of product. But the Canon Mv 600i has surprised me, it’s features, image quality, ease of editing even it’s little output screen; it all comes at a surprisingly high level of quality. This camera is perfect for anyone who wants an easy but high quality transportable camera, it’s size and weight are such that it can easily be taken anywhere without any problems. If your like me and want a camera to practice on before stepping up and making expensive mistakes rather than just small ones this camera is perfect, it has many of the manual features that you might expect on a higher quality camera, and it leaves a lot of room to experiment with. I recommend to everybody that you consider buying the extra features available for the camera; you will be surprised by the instant leap up in quality whether it’s a telescopic lens or a microphone the difference is noticeable. But most of all I recommend this camera to anyone whether they’ve bought one before or not, it doesn’t matter how much experience you’ve got, this camera can accommodate anyone. It’s simplicity and quality is not something I would expect from a hand held camera, but this is something that comes as close as any mid priced camcorder to a complete package; buy and enjoy.

Summary: