Canon ZR65MC MiniDV Digital Camcorder

My canon zr65 suddenly went black (No image detected). From what I found on the web (a lot of people have the same problem), the CCD may be the cause. It looks like there is a quality issue about this part. To replace a CCD is very costly. Take your chance.

(correction: i just noticed 12/3 i actually have a zr50mc..duhh...) guess i bought it around 3/2002 since my first tape is dated 3/18/02. (online for $580 or something like that...cant remember.) i've shot 12 90minute tapes since that time (60mins set at SP for 90min recording). like i said, i thought it was a great camera for video until recently. my main reason for getting it was to record my new kids, one now 4yo and one 2.5yo, becaue my vhsc panasonic camcorder began recording very warbly audio (video was/is still good) and i wanted to capture their early talking, etc. the zr65mc problems started recently while i've been converting those tapes to dvd to share selected clips with the grandparents, aunts, friends, etc. (i found ulead's products very good for this, by the way, after first using windows movie maker to import to dv-avi format. had to buy a new 120g hardisk though to add to my 60g since each imported tape took up to 19gigs each. i always wondered why people needed such big harddisks - now i know.) anyway on importing about the 7th tape, while rewinding, it jammed. i was able to eject the tape and used a pencil to wiggle and extricate the caught tape inside but it was chewed up pretty good and about 6inches was hanging out. after some scary tinkering with the cassette since i didnt want to loose the rest of the tape i was able to figure out that you you can manually rewind the tape. if the window side is up, operate the latch to open the tape cover on the right bottom. by using a hairpin or something small to depress the little latch on the bottom back middle and use the eraser of a lead pensil to either rewind or forward past the chewed up tape. sometimes i had to rewind or forward a bit more if it wouldn't work again after the first reloading. but i was able to convert all the tapes with only a few seconds of lost video. the problem is i thought it was only with the rewind, but yesterday (11/27/04) on a bart outing to the metreon with 12 of my family, after working at home, at the bart station i pulled it out to continue shooting on the same tape and it gave me the dreaded red eject tape message on the lcd blue screen of death. i put it back in the car and used my old reliable casio qv2300 digital camera the rest of the day. let me just say, i am a video, digital camera, computer and internet sorta guy...the rest of the family luvs it but the wife often hates it.

now, i'm researching the problem and found many postings for the zr10 of this problem. i suspect all these zr models are the same camera and canon just changes the model number each year...they're up to what zr95 or something and its still probably the zr10 inside. if i figure out a non expensive solution, i'll post it. at least it can be used still as a analog-digital av converte, since that doesn't require a tape...and i did use it with my panasonic to convert 18 vhsc tapes to dvd. all very time consuming tho.

by the way, i had another problem with a canon product before - a digital camera a70, that i bought for my workgroup in cupertino, early 2003 i think. out of the box new, one week later it stopped functioning completely! i sent it back east somewhere and two months later it came back working. but i didn't like that that camera didn't have the ability to choose whether you wanted to have the date stamp on the picture. when i called canon they said to use exifer for that. how lame i thought (after being used to the casio)! also the battery life indicator didn't work right. [thats why i like my casio (plus the swivel lens) and the casio software].

i'm thinking i shudda bought this tiny sony (forgot model) like i wanted to at the time, but i didn't like the $1k+ price then and the mic wasn't in a good spot. this one beat out the jvc's too for some reason i cant remember now. but its a whole new ballgame now with all the different stuff out there. maybe have to start the headache of trying to choose a replacement if i cant fix this one, and i doubt it worth paying to fix so....

anyway bottom line is i'm kinda thinking i'm not gonna buy cannon anymore or recommend it to people who ask me, and recently prior to this, i did recommend cannons to at least 4 of my friends.

I shot a feature film on this little baby. Works best under low light. For those who had problems with the camera, maybe you're just too dumb to make it work. Maybe you should go to film school like I did. No problemo. Great camera for the price. Only, i paid full price for it and now see Amazon.com had a much better deal! Ahhhh!

I used this camera to take close-up pictures easily at the US Grand Prix Pit Walkabout today and I found it outstanding. Even from distances as far as 100 feet, you can zoom in far enough to see very detailed parts of the cars, like small wires used for telemetry. I highly recommend it, although the battery life is incredibly short and there is next to no space (8MB) on the card I got with it. But this is to be expected.

As stated many times before by many people this camera does not do well in low light.

Knowing that the camera does very well in well lighted situations. Even turning on extra indoor light will produce acceptable results. I have had no problems with motor noise or audio/video problems.

What makes this camera attractive is the features it has for the price. The digital effects, the chroma keying with the SD card pictures and best of all the digital to analog and analog to digital converter.

The price of this camera puts it in the range of dedicated digital to analog and analog to digital converter. This allows you to transfer old VHS or VHS-C tapes to DV. Cable boxes or TiVos with RCA outputs can also be used. Once on DV they can be transferred to the computer for editing and then burned to CD or DVD. Since it has the onboard converter it can also be used to edit video on a TV screen if your video editor supports it.

The camera also acts as a digital camera but even on the best camcorders the output is not on par with stand-alone digital cameras and is added as an after thought.

If you can live with the cameras low light problems then this camera will do well. If not save your pennies and get a better camera. If your need to get old footage in to your computer to put on DVD then consider this camera. With a Mac it will also work as a web camera without any addition software. If you are shooting a lot of low light footage this is not the camera for you.