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1. 

   User
   April 30th, 2010 - 22:33

   Have this brand new Canon ZR85 for about 3 weeks. All satisfaction so far except 1 serious mechanical feature. Explain below:

   This camcorder is for making movie, that means “move” (not still). The tape is for 1 hour, that means need to mount on something that move rather than to hold steady by hand and move arround to capture movie for that whole hour.

   I mount the camcorder on a swivel head from Bogen-Manfrotto, and the swivel head mount on my bicycle. I ride the bike on fairly good pave road with little road vibration to record scenery for several hours.

   Turn out that the camcorder mounting base is made out of non-metal (plastic) can not take vibration and the thread become damage. Is this considered that user’s abusing or manufacturer false to not design carefully for the “mov”ie device?

   I have to turn myself to become a “tripod” now since my ZR85 has no longer usable mounting base.
   Rating: 3 / 5
2. 

   Sophia
   April 30th, 2010 - 23:09

   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.
   
   Rating: 2 / 5
3. 

   Anonymous
   May 1st, 2010 - 01:20

   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: 2 / 5
4. 

   Brad Hutchinson
   May 1st, 2010 - 02:22

   I was looking to upgrade from my VHS-C to the Mini DV format since it is supposed to be much better, but believe that it was a big mistake getting this camcorder. To me the quality isn’t much better than older formats and nothing to gawk about in awe as some may have you think. I will probably be using my VHS-C until it breaks now that I have seen this Mini DV format in action and how horrible it can be. In this review I would like to talk about why this camcorder is so bad.

   PROBLEM #1: VIDEO QUALITY IN LOW LIGHT AND INDOORS

   This camcorder records video that is absolutely horrendous in low light and indoors. My 3 year old Panasonic VHS-C is absolutely leaps and bounds above this camcorder indoors and outside at night time as far as quality is concerned. The picture quality is so bad that it is not even worth trying to watch unless you want a headache. The night mode that the camcorder has does absolutely nothing except slow the shutter speed down to the point where everything looks like distorted robot movement. As another reviewer stated I can not stress how bad the quality of low light and indoor video is on this camcorder but heres some comparisons. Old 8mm camcorders (the kind you view with a projector remember these) look 100 times better than the ZR85 as far as quality is concerned in these situations. My digital camera and VHS-C camcorder look like a Hollywood film production compared to the ZR85. Basically think in you’re worst imagination what it can look like and then multiply those bad thoughts by 1000 to get a clear picture of how bad it is. This was not the fault of the lighting in my house or outdoors where I was recording, I tried using streetlights, LED flashlights, a 2.25million candlepower spotlight, halogen flashlights, my backyard 500 watt floodlight, all the lights in the house on, all the lights in the house off, etc and in every situation the video quality was pure garbage. I tried changing settings on the camcorder to improve it such as the low light setting, night mode, changing the white balance, shutter speed, etc, no improvement there either. I even went to the store and bought the light that mounts to the top of the camcorder and tried with that on and no improvement there either. The picture is so dark that even under any of these lighting conditions you can’t see anything with clarity. I did have two other people with me at the same time recording with my digital camera and VHS-C and both of those were hugely better than the ZR85.

   PROBLEM #2: OUTDOOR PICTURE QUALITY

   I wasn’t too impressed with the outdoor picture quality of this camcorder either. This was my first attempt at a Mini DV camcorder and I was expecting a big improvement over VHS-C but as it turns out they look about the same to me on a 36″ tv. The outdoor quality is much much better than indoor however.

   PROBLEM #3: BATTERY LIFE

   I’m not sure how canon rates it’s battery life or how others got more than me but the battery life is unacceptable on this camcorder. Using the LCD I got around 30 minutes before the thing was dead, with the viewfinder about 40 minutes, that is ridiculous.
   RECOMMENDATION

   As far as good things there really were none that I can think of about this camcorder compared to others I looked at in the store, and I’m hoping the store I bought it from will let me return it or exchange it even if I have to pay a restocking fee it’s worth it to me. If you are looking for a Mini DV camcorder and want to occasionally shoot video indoors or at night I would recommend straying far away from this POS. I haven’t tried any other models yet but I don’t believe that any of them can be as bad as this thing. I may try one of the other brands with night vision before sticking to VHS-C but as of yet I haven’t been convinced that Mini DV is worth changing to.
   Rating: 1 / 5
5. 

   X. Lu
   May 1st, 2010 - 05:06

   I got this as christmas gift, and used it mostly indoors, sometime at night, for the past month. The still pictures came out very bad. That doesn’t bother me much since I have digital cameras. However, this camera is very poor indoors, even with the night mode, the video came with very high background, color granules everywhere. it is much worse than the old miniDV I have, a Sharp model I got in 2001, which is very bulky but has been very reliable. I made two DVD side by side, and the one with Canon looks horrible. Outdoor shots are fair, but many occasions I have to take shots indoor or at night. I would go with other models if possible.
   Rating: 2 / 5

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