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Canon Optura S1 MiniDV Camcorder

Tue, Dec 25, 2007

Canon Optura S1 Review:

With the Canon Optura S1, you get the perfect fusion of today’s style with uncompromising performance. The Canon Optura S1’s sleek, compact design makes a fashion statement and looks right at home with the rest of your gear. Plus, Canon Optura S1’s advanced digital features, superior optics and 2.2 Megapixel CCD performance deliver brilliant video and photos. It’s the camcorder you’ve always wanted with the cool you crave.

I’m not a professional videographer. Still I might well be the pickiest man in the world when it comes to video quality. I’m the one who keeps noticing MPEG artifacts in TV transmissions all the time, because I’ve been doing my own DVDs for 5 years. In short, I can judge video quality at first sight.

This said, you’ll never see me with a big professional camera over my shoulder, because I don’t film for a living in the first place and also because I already had many experiences where I had to leave my camcorder behind because it was too bulky to carry. And I’m not talking about big VHS cams, I’m referring to the “small” Hi-8 cameras from Sony: great image, excellent sound, yet too bulky to carry to many wild adventures or long trekkings.

At this point in my life, I came to the conclusion that comfortableness proved to be more important than top-notch quality, especially for a backpacker like me who can’t afford to choose between carrying a camcorder or two extra bottles of water. Canon Optura S1 mini DV camera the size of a digital still camera was worth a try.

So this is the reason why I bought the Canon Optura S1 in the first place: the smaller available camcorder in the market in October 2005 ( FBI/CIA gadgets don’t count here and manufactured by my favorite still camera brand. So I bought it with all this in mind. As you will see (and I really knew this before purchasing, so I’m not complaining) such small size has its trade-offs limitations, and it’s up to you to decide whether it’s worth to buy it or not. What follows is my personal opinion on the camera.

Canon Optura S1 Pro:

* Small as hell, that’s my baby!!! Can fit in a still-photo case and attach to the belt.

* Colors are *in-cre-di-bly* accurate. Now, this is a tough one when dealing with NTSC!! By far the best color-matching camcorder that I ever owned.

* Excellent image quality in daylight, and I mean it.

These 3 things said, the camera paid itself and that’s enough to make me happy with my purchase. But for the sake of this review, let’s move on:

Could be improved’s:

* The Canon Optura S1 can act as a 2 Megapixel still camera as well, but do not expect “Canon quality” at all (and this has nothing to do with the 2 Mpx limitation). The still shots are maybe acceptable for the occasional user, probably could compete side by side with many generic brand 2 Mpx still cameras, but nowhere near a 2 Mpx Canon point&shot still cam.

* There’s an included light for night filming. This certainly isn’t an halogen lamp, but for something that looks pretty much like a “led”, it gives a decent ammount of light, useful to illuminate faces no farther than 1.5 meters (45 feet) and that’s about it.

* 10x Zoom: Actually, it’s a miracle that such a small device can accommodate as much zoom as 10x. Sure, that’s low compared to today’s standards, but each of us knows the weight (importance) that assigns to this feature. My Hi-8 Sony TRV-66 has 20x and unless you put it on a tripod it’s quite a challenge to obtain a steady frame at the full 20x. For the few occasions that you may be using the full zoom, 10x is fairly enough.

Canon Optura S1 Con:

* Quality degradation is too noticeable when light gets dimmer. I’m not speaking about a dark room illuminated by a birthday candle, I’m referring to an average room at night illuminated by regular bulbs: The picture won’t necessarily be dark, but the noise (video noise, for those who dominate the matter) is more noticeable than I would like.

* The “wide” angle is too narrow. Again, a consequence of the small size and lens diameter. To capture an entire scenario in the frame I would have to walk a couple of meters back that otherwise wouldn’t be necessary with other camcorders.

* And this last one is really unforgivable: Canon Optura S1 doesn’t include an option to stamp date/time in the frame during recording time. So you either do this during edition time in your PC (most people don’t edit their videos BTW) or you have to keep saying e.g. “today is November 29th…” if you want your videos to keep some historical reference 10 years from now.

Well, I tried to be fair enough in my review. As I said, I’m very happy with this purchase because it exceeded what I expected in some aspects, but I also added the not-so-good things for you to judge objectively if this is the right camera for you.
Happy filming!

—– By Matteo