Canon ZR850 1MP MiniDV Camcorder with 35x Optical Zoom

Canon's ZR850 is a quality product. It's user friendly. It takes great pictures and videos. I bought it from Amazon.Com who gave me a great deal.

I just got this camera today and have already decided to return it. My first problem was the graininess of the photos. Even on the highest quality setting in good lighting, the photos were grainy. I was willing to overlook that since I bought this as a camcorder and not as a camera. But I was stunned by how loud the motor is on this thing. When I played back my video, it sounded like I recorded it standing next to an airplane that was about to take off. I was hoping to use this camera to record a seminar, but the video would be useless with all that noise from the camera drowning out the speaker. I got a really good deal on it and thought it would be a shame to have to return it, but there's no point in having a video camera that requires you to dub over all the videos you record because of noisy playback. It also doesn't make sense to me that you have to go into the camera's menus to get the LCD light to turn on. I think an on/off switch somewhere on the camera would have made more sense and would have been easier to use. Personally, I do not like what's available on the market for ANY digital camcorders I've seen that are in the home-user price range. I think I'm going to downgrade back to Hi8 and just take my chances that I'll be able to find a place that stills sells the tapes.

It is a gift for my dad , but before sending it out I did test it and seems to be working just fine.I cannot give any other details about its performance!YET!

We purchased this camcorder for our wedding and honeymoon. The camera is great: small size, easy to use, good quality. However, toward the end of the honeymoon, the camera stopped working. We contacted the seller, and they were very nice and asked us to return it for an exchange. We have not received our new camera yet, (I can update this review once we do) but we're looking forward to having it back. The cons of buying this camera were obviously that we did not have it for part of our honeymoon, so we have no footage of my husband parasailing or us swimming with dolphins -- which was the reason for purchasing the camera -- and we had to pay shipping to return the camera only two weeks after purchase.

This is damn good camera, and for the price it really is a deal. I've shot my first short film with this camera, and am going to buy two more for my first feature film next year. I love it!