Canon Elura 100 MiniDV Camcorder (Discontinued by Manufacturer)

The camera is fine for the money you pay, but I'm not that happy with it over all. The motor noise in the recording is ridiculously loud. The picture is not nearly as good as the Sony I had before this though. If your looking for a camera under $400, this has some nice features, but if your looking for quality picture, you could do better.

I used the camera on a trip to Hawaii and was quite impressed with the results. I did not notice the camera motor noise as others have noted. Even though I purchased an external mike to eliminate the reported noise concern, I never used it. Since most of the photos were outdoors and the pictures were more important to me than hearing other tourists make their ignorant comments, I never hooked up the external mike.In terms of the battery, I experienced 2 hours out of the standard battery if you use the viewfinder rather than the display screen. Power 2000 sells an extnded life battery for this camera (from 850 mah standard to 1,000 mah). Unfortunately, my Power 2000 battery arrived at home after I had left on my trip so I could not test its added horsepower. Since the mini DV tapes only last an hour anyway, changing batteries with every other tape was not a problem.I would recommend purchasing a back-up battery and an external battery charger, rather than using the camera to re-charge batteries. Perhaps even better might be a charger with a an optional auto lighter cord so one battery can be replenished in the car while driving. Still two hours is pretty long for a single battery.Although there is an internal lens cover, I used a UV filter and although this protected the camera lens, shooting ocean photos meant cleaning the filter frequently from the spray. It was easy to remove the filter and clean it rather than touching the camera lens.The small joystick could be slghtly larger, but it is manageable.I found that in some cases to steady the camera from rocking or movement, I would use my left hand to block the camera and in this case it was almost more comfortable to operate the zoom with my index finger on the left hand. Again I am using the viewfinder rather than the screen to shoot photos.In terms of the zoom 20X is just fine; any more and an individual can not hold the camera still enough for reasonably clear photos and a tri-pod is required. If you want more there is a 2X telephoto lens available pushing this camera to a 40X zoom. Similarly there are .5X wide angle lenses available.I am pleased with the camera and its overall performance for the price. [I was able through Amazon to purchase it for less than $300 with the deals being offered. This left room in the wallet for a camera case, filters, lenses, battery charger, external mic, etc.] I have an older Nikon digital still camera, so the Canon was purchased for the express purrpose of taking videos especially outdoor views and met my expectations. I created a mount on my tri-pod where the Nikon and Elura could share the same three legs with the Nikon having a manual shutter release to minimize bumping the tripod. I was able to capture sunrises and sunsets in both video and still images.The compact size of the Elura was convenient in that it could be stowed in a pocket in my shorts leaving my hands free when not in picture taking mode.Each camera has its features and disadvantages; I suggest you give the Elura 100 a test drive and see if it works for you compared to others on the market.

What is the story with the motor noise on the Elura 100?! I just don't understand how this product made it through the design/production process with such an obvious defect. Perhaps the annoying noise is louder in some units than others - that's the only explanation I can come up with for how many 5 star reviews are posted here.I love the features, size and image quality of the Elura 100 and am a huge Canon fan. But, like the people who posted negative reviews here, I just don't think I can live with such a loud hum as background noise to all my videos. Some reviewers say the noise is only audible if you film in a quiet room, but that's not my experience at all. I just made a short video on the sidewalk by a busy street and the noise is too annoying to ignore.Like another reviewer here, I was impressed by the # of positive reviews and ignored the warnings about the motor noise. If I could find the exact same camera, minus the noise, I'd buy it. But this one's no good.

So far so good. I like my new Elura 100 MiniDV camcorder. It has a lot of options and is within a good price range. Most of the reviews below covered the important aspects of the camera. I bought this to replace my old RCA, analog camera. In general the quality of the picture is much better on the Elura. This was something I was worried about in switching to the digital format, but the pictures from the Elura have been incredibly crisp and show up well on a large (standard resolution) TV set. The only exception is low light recording, where the RCA seemed to do a little better. I'll break it down to pros and cons:PROS:1. Small size--a true palm sized camcorder. By the way, there were some reviews that were critical of the 'small controls.' I have at least average sized hands and the controls, including the joystick, were easy to operate. They do take some getting used to, but they are very straight forward.2. WIDE SCREEN FORMAT: 16:9 and 4:3 formats are available. One caveat, is you will need capture software for your computer that can handle the 16:9 format to make DVDs from this. The software supplied with the camcorder is barely adequate and very clunky. But it is usable.3. ZOOM: 20x Optical Zoom--some have larger zooms but stabilization becomes a real problem after 15x or so. This camcorder has electronic stabilization which seems to work well. I've turned off the digital zoom option. Digital zoom just makes for a grainy and unstable picture. Theoretically, the camera can go up to 800x. This is, of course, completely at the expense of the picture. 20x is a fine Zoom range. The highest zoom range in this class appears to be 30x. As I said before, above 15x it can be a chore to keep the image stable and probably requires a tripod.4. LOTS OF MANUAL CONTROL if you want it. You can either control Nevertheless there's an automatic mode which most of us will use 99% of the time. Exposure can be totally automatic, you can use pre-determined 9 scene modes, or manually control the exposure. Very nice. Focusing can be done automatically (two different algorhythms to choose from)or manually using the joystick. I'm not a fan of the the effects but you have 9 different fading effects and 9 different digital effects to choose from. (This is fine if you like it, but most of this is better done post production on your computer.) Interestingly, the manual makes all of these features appear incredibly complex. In practice I have found the camera to be quite intuitive, and it is far easier to use out of the box than it would appear to be if you look at the manual.5. ANALOG VIDEO TRANSFER: You can transfer video tapes or old analog video to digital through the camera. You can even record right off your TV. This has been a nice feature to transfer my old Hi8 videos to digital video.6. LONG BATTERY LIFE: I'm getting about two hours from a battery so far. This depends on usage, but is generally good. Others have stated that battery life is poor, but I think about 2 hours is great. I wonder if there is variability in the quality of the batteries supplied.7. INTEGRATES WELL WITH WINDOWS XP: no problems with firewire capture of the mini-DV. The ease of capture may depend on your software. Mine is pretty straightforward. Windows recognized the camera instantly. (I have a fairly neanderthal set up--right now I am using a 900 mhz Athlon powered laptop. So if my computer can find the camera, I imagine yours can too...)8. COMES WITH A REMOTE CONTROL: not necessary, but a nice feature.CONS:1. NO TRUE USB CONNECTIVITY: One of the reasons I bought this camera was because the hype stated that it has USB connectivity. Well it does. But then again, it doesn't. Being a MiniDV/digital video virgin, I didn't realize that the USB connectivity only works only for images on the SD card. It DOES NOT work for standard MiniDV capture to a computer. For this you need a firewire connection. Once you have the firewire, there's no problem with connectivity.Some reviews thought there was something wrong with their computer connectivity. Nope. YOU NEED FIREWIRE TO GET VIDEO TO YOUR COMPUTER. So you will have to invest in a firewire cable if you don't have one and make sure you have a firewire port on your computer (or buy a card).The funny people at Cannon only supply you with a USB cable as if that is all you need. This only suffices to transfer the 1 megapixel and the 320 x 240 (76,800 pixels) video on the SD card. Even if the thing took great still pictures, they would only be 1 megapixel. This is less than most cell phone/cameras nowadays. The video recorded on the card is a joke. It might be 'fun' for a website, but it looks small and grainy even on the flip-out screen on the camera itself. It will look more ridiculous on your computer. Skip the SD Card. Use the MiniDV tape and record at 690,000 pixels or greater depending on the mode. This may not seem like a lot compared to a standard still camera, but this represents far more pixels than can be displayed on a conventional TV and translates into a great picture.2. "MEGA VIDEO LIGHT": These twin LEDs are supposed to help with illumination indoors. You turn them on using a separeate switch. If you do not manually correct the light balance, however, you will find that all your subjects have an eerie bluish cast. Additionally, these small LEDs don't provide the 'mega' illumination needed for subjects that are beyond a few feet away from you. They're better than nothing and a nice try, but not very effective and so they really don't enhance the low light perfromance in a real, palpable way.3. LOW LIGHT PERFORMANCE IS NOT SO GOOD: One area that my old RCA analog recorder did better than this one is in low light performance department. This probably was due to the lens being three times larger in diameter. It was less compact, but captured more light. Still, in this price range, low light performance appears to be universally poor. At times, you have to manually override the automatic exposure as the shutter speed is set so slow that moving objects have small tails like comets flashing through the night. Also subjects become more mono-chromatic and grainy. Once again, this kind of poor low light performance seems to be a 'class' feature. Reading the reviews, the Elura 100 may be one of the better cameras in its class.4. STILL PICTURES ARE SMALL: Not great still picture capability. This is standard for these kinds of camaras. I guess it would do in pinch, but is absolutely no substitute for a digital still camera. There are a number of features you can use for the pictures, including a 'burst' mode, but given the size of the image, none of this is worth the worry. Given the lack of megapixels, I'm not sure why Canon spent a lot of time on a wide feature set here. I played with stills initially, but given the low megapixel count, I don't really use it any more.5. NOISE: Canon may not be the only camera to have this problem, but the camera generates a soft but significant hum while operating. This IS picked up by the microphone. You can set the camera to eliminate wind noise, and this effectively blocks out the hum. I have my camera set to this and never touch the setting. This is a significant problem with this camcorder (and looking at the reviews) other Canon camcorders. One would think Canon would have thought this through better and made the thing more silent.CONCLUSION:All in all, you get a lot of bang for the buck. If you have an extra $200-$300 to spend you might want to try a 3 CCD type camera. But in the under $350 budget range, MiniDV category this one is well worth it. This camera may not be for the amateur cinematographer, but is a great, easy to use, and portable family camera. The picture quality is excellent for a camera in this range and it has a broad feature set as well.