Canon ZR10 Digital Camcorder

The Canon ZR10 excels at providing quality digital video footage in a small form factor. The 10x optical zoom Canon lens gets you right in the action, while image stabilization helps prevent unwanted shakes and jitters from creeping into your important footage. The ZR10 has been designed for point-and-shoot simplicity, making it easy for even beginners to shoot great videos. A number of different programmed auto-exposure modes (including sand and snow, sports, portrait, and low light) automatically adjust settings to take the worry out of shooting in challenging conditions.

Besides the different programmed auto-exposure modes, the ZR10 also offers three different shooting modes. You'll probably leave the camera set to normal movie mode a majority of the time. Digital photo mode lets you use the ZR10 as a digital camera, recording a still image for six seconds on the miniDV tape, and allowing audio commentary. There's a lot of flexibility here: you can switch between movie and digital photo modes and create a unique collage of stills and video. Finally, the digital motor drive mode uses the progressive-scan CCD to capture a full noninterlaced 30 frames per second. This means you can use the footage as a series of independent photographs.

As a DV camcorder, the ZR10 has an IEEE 1394 port for digital editing, or for transferring footage between IEEE 1394-compliant devices, such as computers or other DV camcorders. The ZR10 also features S-Video input and output. Analog inputs allow you to transfer old footage to DV for archiving. Digital effects include art, black and white, mosaic, and sepia; built-in faders help ease scene transitions.