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Canon Optura Pi Mini DV CamcorderLight enough to become part of your hand, the Optura Pi will become your personal imaging companion. Built tough with Canon Know-How and...
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Light enough to become part of your hand, the Optura Pi will become your personal imaging companion. Built tough with Canon Know-How and Canon technology inside it, the Optura Pi gives you surprising features and unsurpassed digital video (DV) quality. The Optura Pi is easy to use and that makes it easy to get results you've never seen before from any camcorder. ??A genuine Canon 12x zoom lens with 48x digital zoom allows you to get clear closeups. It features three modes: Normal Movie (full-motion video) Mode, Digital Photo Mode and Digital Motor Drive Mode (takes 30 still frames a second). Optical image stabilization filters out the jitters and bumps to capture crisp, stable images every time. Look into the world that awaits you when you get into CANON DV, with the Optura Pi digital camcorder.
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22 Reviews from Shopping.com
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Best Single-CCD camcorder!
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Pros: Great video color, true color representation, excellent low-light capabilities, OPTICAL image stabilization
Cons: none
The Bottom Line:
Overall, for sheer image quality, versatility, and features, this is the best camera you can buy without getting into the considerably more expensive 3-CCD cams!
I purchased this camcorder a couple of months ago and have been extremely pleased with it. I have used it mostly for capturing social events so far, and while its outdoor capabilities are brilliant, its indoor performance is what really sets it apart from the other camcorders in its class (and above!)
When I began shopping for a miniDV camcorder, I was looking for vibrant color, good clarity (indoors as well as outdoors) and relatively compact size. I ended up narrowing it down to the Optura Pi and the similarly-priced Sony TRV-11. They are both great cameras, but it was the Optura Pi's superior low-light performance that swayed me most.
The Canon stores still photos to the same miniDV tape as your video, unlike Sony camcorders which store images to a memory stick, enabling higher-res stills that can be offloaded to a computer. This may be viewed as a disadvantage to some. It wasn't an issue for me, as I don't use that feature; the quality of any still photos taken with a camcorder are substandard compared to most of today's devoted digital still cameras.
Probably the best feature this camera includes is optical image stabilization, which enables a steadier shot and clearer image. Most cameras in and even above this price range feature digital image stabilization, which is not nearly as effective in producing clear footage and also uses a lot more of the CCD's resources. (The CCD is a "charged coupling device" and it is the element in a digital camera that actually captures the video and still images).
The functionality of the Optura Pi is very straightforward, with intuitive controls, and the camera fits well in the hand. It feels solid and well-constructed, and features like a side-loading tape door are nice, as opposed to bottom-loading, which requires the camera to be removed from the tripod when changing tapes.
You can see the footage you've shot (or actually shoot your footage) using the bright color LCD flip-out display. It is very crisp, and features video playback controls right on the LCD's frame, which is very convenient.
The Optura Pi also comes with a remote control, which can be useful when tripod-shooting and in playback when the camera is plugged into a TV.
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