Canon MV830i MiniDV Digital Camcorder [0.8Mp, 20 x Optical Zoom, 2.5" LCD] Camcorder Best Buys

Canon MV830 - 30 Dec 2005

15 out of 16 found this review helpful.

I purchased this camera on Boxing day and I was going to originaly get a Sony handycam but whan I saw that this a Canon I was well chuffed with the price.

I am very pleased with it, great straight forward insruction manuel and Picture Quality is great as well as an excellent sound stereo mic pick up when I attached the cables to my DVD recorder and recorded it on DVD.

My wife was recording me doing a song on my guitar and it picked up my vocals and guitar playing with crystal clarity.The Widescreen feature is great too.

The only snag I have is the battery suplied does'nt have much long life , you will need a few battery packs to take out with you but other then that an excellent value for money and Canon are a great make.

Dave

Unbeatable for the money - 25 Dec 2005

8 out of 9 found this review helpful.

I have had this camera for about 4 months now and I used it continuously for one month in Turkey. It’s well designed, compact, beautiful and functional. Other reviewers have covered it in a lot of detail so I will keep to the important points. I found the quality in LP mode brilliant, some cameras produce very poor video in LP mode and thankfully this didn’t. Also the major plus is having DVD IN/OUT which allows you to edit the digital video on a computer and then send it back to the camera/tape. I have to say while this was one of the main reasons I bought the camera I haven’t actually made use of this function yet!

The lens cap is a separate thing you have to always put back on which is annoying as the previous camera had a built-in one which I think is far better. The screen is clear and a very good size, as is the viewfinder with the exception of it being monochrome. The battery runs out very quickly. I think it runs out between 45 minutes to 1 hour 15 depending on how constant your use it. This can be really annoying. Lastly, the software is really appalling and I haven’t used it at all. Its about one quarter of a gig and totally useless.

Overall, Canon is a very high quality brand and this camera is definitely the best you will find for the money.

Impressive package - 06 Sep 2005

100 out of 101 found this review helpful.

This is the first camcorder I've ever owned. Being new to camcorders I wanted something that was affordable, Firewire compatible, simple to operate, had enough features to keep things interesting without getting too involved but would give good results. The Canon MV8XX series seemed like a good bet.

My first surprise when opening the packaging was just how small this camcorder was. I knew it would be small but I wasn't expecting it to be quite this compact! Being new to all this I went straight to the manual to find out what was what. This was easy to follow & setting up the camcorder was a doddle. The manual is very well laid out & I found it refreshingly simple to follow & the instructions were well written & clear. Most instructions also featured useful diagrams as well.

In use the camera feels very comfortable & basic operation almost instantly becomes second nature. Even the more advanced functions are simple to use & it shouldn't be long before most people only require the manual for reference purposes. There's not much else to say about operation - the camcorder does what it's supposed to & everything is well laid out & intuitive to use.

After taking some footage I hooked the camcorder up to the PC (You'll need to buy a Firewire cable for this although why one is not included I've no idea!). Switching the camera to 'play' mode resulted in it being instantly recognised by Windows XP. I was using Sony Vegas video editing software to stream the movies from the camera. This software has it's own tool for this complete with transport controls which take over the camera's! Basically, once hooked up you don't have to touch the camcorder! Software is not supplied with the camcorder for streaming video, which to me (as with the lack of a supplied Firewire cable) seems a bit daft for a camcorder! I'm not sure if you can stream using a Windows XP application like Movie maker? Never tried this myself but if you can't you will need to buy some sort of video editing software if you intend to stream your footage onto a PC.

The quality of the video from this camera was very good. Colours seemed bright, images were sharp & colour balance was well handled. It's my first camcorder so I can't compare to other cameras but I was extremely pleased with the results. Especially when shooting in the 16:9 widescreen mode. This looked impressive when played back on a widescreen TV. Apparently some camcorders stretch the video to achieve the 16:9 ratio but it seems this one has a proper 16:9 mode so images will not be distorted. Night mode seems to work well but the frame rate was reduced with this footage. Maybe this would work better as a low light/indoor mode more than a night mode? I could do with experimenting more with this mode but to be honest I've not had much call to film at night as of yet. You can also add a variety of FX but I find these a bit naff & cheesy! I was pleased to find I could manually adjust the focus whilst filming in order to manually set-up depth of field. This worked well for Macro shots. The 20X zoom was very impressive & the zoom control worked well & was easy to control slow zoom shots with a little practice. I've not tried the 400X digital zoom yet! I've read that digital zooms are not much good & I can't think of a practical use unless you were a peeping tom or wanted to do a bit of long distance video surveillance!

The still image feature is a nice bonus but if you already have a half-decent digital camera (as I do) then your not going to be too impressed with the resolution of the images you can take. It's a handy feature if you want images for computer use/display but print quality from this resolution would only be of decent quality with quite small size prints I would imagine.

Another great feature of this model is the analogue input. Very useful if you want to record some valuable old VHS footage onto DV tape. I tried recording several minutes of a video straight from a VCR (via the SCART output) into the analogue input onto DV tape. I was pleased very pleased with the results. Obviously the quality is only going to be as good as the VHS tape but it's very useful to be able to 'back-up' old analogue tapes in this way. A word of warning though - The SCART adapter that comes with the package is for INPUT ONLY! Thus you will need to buy an INPUT/OUTPUT SCART adapter in order to do what I just described. You can also hook up an analogue camcorder & record onto DV tape directly from the older analogue format tapes! I'm also hoping I'll be able to hook up a mini lipstick/sports camera for when I go mountain biking in order to get some on trail, rider view footage!
On the downside the battery life is pretty short! You can buy a larger capacity battery but you can also drastically increase the life of the supplied battery by NOT using the LCD display screen & instead using the viewfinder. In bright sunny conditions it's not always easy to see the LCD display anyway so using the viewfinder seems like good practice. The other negatives I've already described - No video editing software of any kind (though you do get software for streaming still images captured with the camcorer!), no Firewire cable, SCART adapter is INPUT only when an INPUT/OUTPUT adapter would have been much more useful!

Apart from these minor niggles about the package this camcorder has been superb & I've no hesitation in given it the full 5 stars! As I said originally, It's my first camcorder so it's impossible to give comparison's but I've been more than happy with the results & the camera itself. As a beginner I can certainly say buy with confidence!

A Good Camera But! - 14 Jul 2005

32 out of 40 found this review helpful.

Bought this camera so I could use the firewire link to my Mac.
The camera works fine, easy to use, and picture quality excellent.
Would have given 5 Stars, but for the problem of using with a Lacie Firwire external HardDrive, unfortunately this camera does not like the Lacie drive and if you want to use IMovie, the camera is not recognized when a Lacie External drive is connected. Other DV cameras work fine, but not this Canon .