I have a Canon ZR70 and am very pleased with it.

Image quality and battery life are excellent.

Also, it has great connectivity with regard to computers.

If you'd consider a used or refurb'd consumer Canon, you might try to find a Canon Optura PI or an original Canon Elura. Canon used to put pro features in those cameras. Things like, Progressive Scan CCD, Optical Image Stabilization and RGB Primary Color Filter. These features are gone from the newer Canon Consumer DV's. These features produce superior video. There is a REAL difference.

I second the Canon PI. Even though it is an older model it holds its own with todays Canons. Personally i think that you can attain better images because you can manually adjust a lot of its features. White balance being one of these features.

I've had a borrowed ZR60 for about a month, it has the same basic features as the ZR70. Check on epinions.com, cnet.com, and camcorderinfo.com for reviews and user comments.

I found the reviews and user comments were accurate in pointing out that the ZR series has two flaws. It has poor low-light performance (grainy noisy images), and the internal microphone picks up noticeable motor noise when you tape in a quiet location. So this camcorder IMO is not good for shooting quiet indoor situations unless you have extra lights and an external mic. You can compensate when in low light if you set the camera to low-light mode, this runs the shutter at a lowered frames/sec rate, but fast motion becomes blurry.

The ZR series has a 1/6" CCD. More expensive cameras like the Canon Optura 10 and the Sony DCRTRV22 have a 1/4" CCD sensor that makes them more sensitive and work better in low light. The Sonys don't seem to have a motor noise problem.

The optical zoom on the ZR lenses goes higher than the Sony, and I found the ZR60 at full 18X optical zoom is still very good, and useful but with reduced image quality to 70X. Most people say the Sony lens is sharper and you won't really need to zoom more than 10X for real-world video-shooting. The ZR60 lens is sharp enough that I was able to put the camera on a tripod and zoom in on a business card 35' away and read the fine print. The color looks acceptably good quality, to me, but some review writers aren't impressed.

The ZR series has analog video (composite and S) input and output through the same pair of jacks, and can be used to convert DV video to analog and vice versa. I've used the ZR with 3 editors: Windows Movie Maker 2, Video Factory 2 demo, and Vegas 4 demo, and all these programs work well with the camera to capture DV. Also I've captured S-video from a satellite box onto the ZR tape and used the ZR without a tape to convert the signal into DV to be captured by my PC. One thing that impressed me was that that a sharp signal such as a pay-per-view movie from a satellite box can taped onto DV with the camcorder, with no significant loss of quality, DV recording is much better than a VHS VCR.

The ZR microphone when used fairly close to people talking, produces good audio. I used it last week to tape helicopters taking off nearby, and then later I played back the audio on my stereo system, and the sound was great. Wind noise can be a problem.

If you are going to use the camera mostly outdoors or in bright locations and in non-quiet locations the ZR series would be OK and save you some money. But if indoor shooting in quiet locations is important, you might want to check other camcorders.

That was one reason I liked the zr70 because it has a wind filter on the boom mic that you can attach to the accesory shoe.

As far as the CCD chip what is the sifnificance of that? is size an issue? what is th edifference in 1/6" vs 1/4" if they both produce at 520 horizontal lines of resolution?
680,000 CCD vs 1.3 Megapized CCD is there a significance there in terms of video?
I know the differnce in photoshop terms but what about in video?

The zr70 also has manual white balance adjusment.

One other question which is better digital or non-digital stabalization?
what IS the difference between the two?

Thanks a ton!!

ps here's a site to check out canon authorized dealer - 150 less on average for canon products than best buy etc:

http://ww3.onecall.com/About_00001000_3_20_0_1_0_0.htm

Your camera's CCD (charge coupled device) is the heart of your camera's electronics. The larger the number the more light gathering ability it has, somewhat similar to a 200 inch telescope being far more powerful than a 100 inch one. The more light gathered, the more detail possible. More expensive cameras have multiple CCD's. AFAIK the size itself of the chip 1/4 inch, 1/6 inch, whatever is secondary. Its simply how big the chip is to fit the sensors into its matrix. Light falls on the sensors and they store a electrical charge. The grids are arranged in a grid which in turn fires the camera's other electronics depending on which sensors are receiving light at such and such waveform.

Digital image stabilization is an electronic process that tries to compensate or correct for camera shake before the image is saved to dv tape. I guess it tries to adjust the pixels or something. Optical image stabilization is a mechanical process that corrects for camera movement, AT THE LENS. Optical stabilization does the best job by far. I call it my "extra hand." If you will be shooting things that will require a lot of hand-held camera movement, such as your kids soccer match, or whatever, you will be much better off with a Mini DV that has optical image stabilization.

Also helps to drink decaf. LOL!

I've been using the Canon Elura for about 5 years. I bought the Elura new over other brands based on Canon's reputation for high quality lenses. The Elura also has optical stabilization which in my opinion should be a requirement for any DV Cam. It works great!

The camera had 1 problem which was covered under waranty. The LCD Screen quit while I was taping in France! Fortunately, the viewfinder still worked and I was able to finish.

I really like the Elura. For me, it's the ideal size. Some newer DV Cams are smaller, but smaller is not necessarily better. Too small makes it too difficult to use the controls and hold the unit steady. The LCD display also becomes very small.

I also like my Elura. Got it three years ago and it's still running fine. Great size, and I can wear it on a beltpack instead of having it dangling from my neck. The picture quality is good, and I always shoot using its progressive mode. The only two drawbacks I can think of are no external mic jack and no pass-through (AFAIK).

Q: Has Canon fixed its firewire implementation in recent models? There were reports of occasional single-frame "blue screens" and dropped frames when capturing or printing to tape to a Canon DV camera. I used to use Canopus products, and they published a registry fix to take care of this. Don't know if this is true for OHCI products, or just the proprietary DV hardware.

I had an original Canon ZR that at first I really liked for its small size and inconspicuous design (it looks like a digital still camera). Unfortunately, it developed firewire port problems (had the port replaced by Canon under warranty) and later, a bizarre CCD problem where objects in the foreground of video was surrounded by off-color, pixelated blotches. The resulting video looked like some kind of digital effect, but no amount of menu tweaking, factory resets, etc. could turn it off. Canon support was baffled, too, and eventually chalked it up to a bad CCD. By this point, it was past its warranty, so I retired it in favor of a Sony TRV-18, which I unequivocably love as a backup/second camera/home move camera. (My main cam is a Sony PD-150).

The ZR was a first-generation Canon DV product, so they've undoubtably improved since. Your mileage may vary.

Zeiss lenses used to be known as highest quality but they have gone to producing consumer level lenses too. Just because it says 'Zeiss' does not make it the best. Same with Canon, they have different levels of lenses that they put on different cameras. In general, the price point dictates the level of lense used.

DECAF - thats what my problem is I'll have to give that a shot!! HAA HAA
Okay let me ask another question then -
If you had your choice of 22X optical zoom with a 680K 1/6" CCD
(http://www.onecall.com/PID_18437.htm?FEID=190&PMNID=365)
or 10 X optical zoom with 1/4 Inch, 680K Gross Pixels Advanced HAD™ CCD
(http://ww3.onecall.com/PID_18200.htm)
Does gross pixels mean anything in terms of video of is this the same as above - in which case I would opt for the 22X zoom over the 10X

Then for a third option what about: 1/4 CCD approx. 1,330,000 pixels with 16X optical zoom (http://ww1.onecall.com/PID_19155.htm)

Which would you pick and why?

P_I,

Interesting comment you made regarding shooting in Progressive Scan mode. Don't you run into jagged line issues in scenes with motion? I've stayed away from it for that reason.

Progressive scan mode takes 30 pictures per second and then outputs it as 60interlaced.

I used progressive frame mode exclusively with the Optura and it produced very movie-like video, no problems at all.

The solution I have come to like the best, however, is to take regular 60i with any camera then have DVFilmMaker process it. It's probably as good or better than progressive scan in the final output. (I started using it because my TRV50 didn't have progressive scan. If you've got the Optura Pi or a higher-end Canon progressive scan works great).