Canon ZR950 1.07MP MiniDV Camcorder with 48x Optical Zoom

First off, two things you should be aware of before you buy this camera. One, if you don't have a firewire port, or don't intend on getting one for your computer (fireware cards aren't difficult to install and are fairly cheap), DO NOT buy this camera. Since most cameras record on harddrives nowadays anyways, this camera is definitely a little dated. However, if you have a firewire port this is a non issue since getting the video onto your computer is a painless process. Second, if sound is very important to you, DO NOT buy this camera. Now I'm talking more production quality sound, not your average home video sound. The microphone on this camera is very poor and does a terrible job at isolating important noise from background noise.

With that said, image quality with this camera is incredible considering its price. Also, you can't beat the zoom on this camera! If you're looking for a camera to make web videos with this is definitely a camera I would consider buying. If you're at all considering making anything on the professional end I would avoid this camera at all costs as it does not measure up with today's HD cameras. Great budget camera!

Everything worked OK except you cannot have the camera plugged into your Apple computer via firewire at the same time anything else is plugged into your firewire.

So when I wanted to log footage into Final Cut Pro, I'd have to unplug my media drive, change my Final Cut settings to capture back to the computer, and then capture footage, unplug the camera, replug in the hard drive, and transfer the footage to the external, delete it from my computer, and proceed as normal.

Any other brand of camera I would just plug the camera in and capture the footage to the external drive.

The only reason I bought this was to use it as a deck to get footage on the computer which it does not do well, so I returned it today and will get a Panasonic or something.

Book of directions that comes with the camera/camcorder is fairly good and describe the options for focusing and aperature and other features. I learned to use the camera within a few days. The software for downloading images to the computer is self explanatory. Having that range for the zoom is wonderful. The resolution is not as high as a regular digital camera but the pictures are nice quality anyway.

I just bought this and am going to return it to Amazon. I bought this to replace ZR200. This is really noisy. There is just too much noise with the soccer game and piano recital. The price is good. Now I have to shop for another one.

This is a perfect cameracorder for someone that wants a small lightweight camera. The picture option is exeptional especially for long distance pictures. No negitives. GREAT CAMERA