A great camcorder for the price.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Affordable, great picture and sound, easy to use.

Cons: No LCD screen, No image stabilizer, but can't really complain at this price.

The Bottom Line: 
If you’re a beginner or just want a basic camcorder that does the job and gives you good quality at a low price, this is the one you want.

Author's Review
When our daughter turned eight months old my husband and I decided it was about time we got a camcorder. We didn’t want to spend too much; we just wanted something simple to operate that would make good quality films to capture her precious first words and steps and so on.

Why Hi8?
The first thing we had to decide on was what kind of format to get, and we thought Hi8 was perfect since it offered the best picture quality after digital at a fraction of the price of a digital camcorder. The other feature that we liked about Hi8 or 8mm camcorders is how easy it is to transfer your film to a normal VHS tape, when I tried it I just plugged the camcorder to the video, put a blank tape in the VCR, played the tape I had just recorded and pressed record…that’s it!! So I get to keep the original Hi8 tape like a master tape and I can make as many VHS copies as I want to, so all the grandparents and aunts and uncles get to watch her grow.

What I like about this particular camcorder:

1.Affordable: I was amazed to find that this camcorder was one of the cheapest ones you could get if not the cheapest one. For a Canon Hi8 I really consider this a bargain.

2.Great Audio, Great Video: As soon as I shot the first five minutes of tape I played them back to check how they looked like. You can play back and watch through the color viewfinder but you won’t be that happy with the picture since the view finder tends to give the colors a yellowish tint. So I played it back on the TV screen and I was very happy with the picture and sound quality.

3.Simplicity, Simplicity: Really easy to operate, you get six preset setting including auto, sports and portrait, so you basically just point and shoot. The zoom button is positioned so that you can just operate it with your index finger without having to look away from what you are shooting.

4.Good battery life: I used it with the battery for over an hour of film time and it was still half full so I guess it can go on up to the 2 hours they mention in the manual.

5.The “Extra fun stuff”: Like shooting in black and white, sepia, art, mosaic, mirror, cinema, 16:9 or negative modes, fade-in and fade-out (very nice instead of an abrupt change of scenes) and the ability to fast forward or rewind to the exact spot where left off and pick up from there.

What I don’t like:

At this price I really feel guilty complaining about anything, but if you have a couple of extra bucks to spare you might consider a camcorder with a couple of options this one doesn’t have:

1.No Image Stabilizer: I never used a camcorder that has one of those so I can’t really tell how much of a difference it would make but the first couple of shots I took were really shaky. Afterward my shooting got better but you have to keep a very steady hand otherwise you feel every single shake when you replay it on TV. I’m guessing the image stabilizer would reduce that but I’m not really sure.

2.No LCD screen: I wish it had a viewfinder you can just flip open to the side so that you don’t have to shoot with one eye closed the whole time, but that’s almost always an extra $100 or so.

So this camcorder pretty much delivers what it promises to, the couple of things I don't like about are just options I wish it had, so it's not like it has poor performance.