Canon ZR 60 mini DV camcorder

In August 2003, I purchased the Canon ZR 60 Mini DV consumer camcorder from Wal-Mart for $684.83 CDN although I later found it on sale at Henries for $629.99 CDN. This is a normal size camcorder & takes pretty good pictures, but the microphone is awful & there are lots of minor shortcomings.

• Colour saturation & accuracy were pretty good, as was overall general picture quality in good lighting coming from the correct direction.
• Bright pinpoints of light caused significant vertical streaking in the picture.
• Very poor ability to handle highlights such as bright highlights on stage lighting.
• Auto focus was less than ideal & doesn't focus well on moving objects or up close.
• Data code shows f stop, shutter speed, time of day & date, which is separately recorded not in picture, but can be superimposed on picture during playback. Unfortunately this information is only available when played back on the same model camcorder.
• The auto iris reacted too slowly to changes in light levels.
• When checking the brightness luma levels on a waveform monitor, this camcorder output levels to about 105 IRE & made no attempt to keep levels down to legal 100 IRE levels.
• As with all consumer level camcorders, there was no highlight compression circuitry, so details in bright areas are easily clipped.
• Plenty of black levels went below the NTSC legal pedestal limit of 7.5 IRE, but there was an attempt to keep most blacks at the correct black level.
• The built in stereo microphone did not pick up very well a person talking at normal volume five feet or more away in a quite environment. Wind noise was excessive. There is an electronic wind filter in the menu which I did use, but it only filters out certain frequencies & is not an effective wind filter. A standard mechanical nonabridged foam wind filter would have done the job nicely but Canon failed to build one into the microphones.
• The built in stereo microphones are unfortunately Omni directional, meaning they pick up from all directions including the breathing noises of the camera operator (sounds like you have asthma). Canon should have installed unidirectional (front directional pick up) microphones. For the life of me I can't figure why Canon made such a bad choice of microphone. If you buy this camcorder, I would highly recommend that you also buy the optional DM-50 directional stereo mic that mounts on the hotshoe, since the built in mic sucks.
• Optical zoom is 18X which is more than sufficient.
• I turned off digital zoom since it only magnifies what isn't there to begin with once you zoom in beyond the extra screen raster of 680,000 pixels (twice what is required for NTSC). In my opinion, digital zooms are mostly a worthless feature (especially in the higher magnification range), thrown in to impress the consumer who doesn't realize the compromise in quality that comes with digital zoom.
• To view the LCD screen in proper contrast, you must tilt it up. Looking straight on doesn't give the correct contrast. Colour accuracy of LCD screen was pretty good.
• The time code on the tape resets each time there is a piece of unrecorded tape where you haven't QED it up to the last recorded piece. This makes it very difficult to locate a scene by time code later.
• The ELECTRONIC image stabilization worked quite well in most situations, but I far prefer OPTICAL image stabilization (not on this unit) that Canon is famous for having pioneered.
• There are in/out connections for S-Video, A/V (composite & stereo audio) & firewire IEEE 1394, but no USB connection because there is no memory card for still pictures. Comes with an A/V cable but no S-video or firewire cable.
• Battery charging is unfortunately done while the battery is on the camcorder, but you can purchase the optional charger cradle so that you can be charging a battery while shooting with another battery.
• The low light capability of 1.6 lux was only barely adequate & it looked very grainy (the Canon Optura is 0.5 lux).

By Doug Hembruff.
Last updated September 6, 2003