digital minidv

I bought this camera just a day before my trip to Alaska and it worked out great. Since there was not much time to read the thick manual, the controls were intuitive enough to operate. The video quality was great.
Pros:
- Great size. Very compact
- Great video quality with 2 Mega Pixals
- Easy to operate.

Cons:
- Still pictures come better in light. Not good if the light is less
- Red eye reduction does not seem to work well for still pictures
- In the video, the sound recording seem to pick up wind and other noises more than you actually hear.
- Some times still pictures are not in focus.

I would highly recommend this camera to anyone who is in the market for a camcorder. I purchased the optura 300 several months ago and have been utilizing it heavily ever since. The camera takes excellent movies of both indoor and outdoor events. I could not be happier with my choice. I did purchase a longer-lived battery which has worked out well. I keep the standard battery charged as a backup, but the larger battery has never died on me even during days that I shot a significant amount of footage.

I would like to point out of few issues I have had with it:
1) The instruction manual leaves much to the imagination, especially with how to download the recorded motion pictures onto a PC. There are many other gaps in the manual.

2) This camera is not for the technologically challenged. I would guess that this is not limited to this specific camera, but is an issue with the entire class of cameras. To burn DVDs and do any kind of editing, the user must have a video capture card & firewire installed on their PC. In addition, downloading movies onto a PC requires LOTS of hard drive space. I installed a 2nd hard drive for this purpose. In addition I needed to install a DVD RW drive so I could burn DVDs. I also upgraded my RAM. Although all of these are easy installs in newer PC's, it can be a daunting task just for a person to figure out what is actually needed not to mention knowing how to actually install it. Combined with shortcomings in the manual, I could see this being fatal for some users. If you are technologically challenged, I would recommend the cameras that burn directly to DVD.

3) At the extreme end of the zoom, the camera seems to have trouble focusing and is very shaky. This is not that big of an issue as long as the user keeps this in mind while framing the video.

4) I am not really happy with the quality of the still images captured by this camera. These images can be saved onto a flash card or onto the digital tape. With perfect lighting, the images are good, but I have found that when the flash is needed, the images are completely over exposed. The red-eye reduction feature does not work at all to reduce red eye.

Please do not let these negatives taint my review. I love this camera but I wanted to put all the issues that I have found with it out there.

I bought this goodie for less than $700 bucks from onecall.com, an authorized canon dealer so this qualifies me to a get a free 128MB SD card.
PROS: Really compact compared to lot of other cameras i compared with that had the same features, it really fits in my jacket pocket. Out door videos are amazingly great, had to be with 1.3MP of video quality, the other option i was looking at was sony 330 but that was way too pricey for me.
Still shots are exceptional although you cannot compare it with a stand alone digital still.
Menus are not complicated, even my wife can use it without hassels.
I had read reviews about the motor noise from the tape but i found that it had absolutely no noise when you record at the desired sound level in a quite atmosphere.
I know lot of reviews state that the microphone placement is bad as it sits right on top of the view finder but i didn't find this to be a serious problem as it picks up the subjects sound very well. The only problem with the mic placement is the sound variation when you speak vs. the subject speaking.
Zooming capability is amazing, the zoom is really smooth when compared to sony.
Image stability is excellent as long as you stay with in the optical zoom, once you hit the digital zoom(beyond 40X) you need to be really still, the manual provides you with few tips to increase the stability. Also, i rarely go to the digital zoom as 10X optical is more than enough for my use.
lots of predefined shooting modes.
This goodie provides a lot of digital effects.
The previous review said that s/he acciendtly recorded MPEGs instead of DV, but the on screen icons give you a clear indication of the media you are recording on, so no problem their as long as you see the on screen info.
LCD resolution is fantastic and i liked the fact that it is not too big, there by minimizing my battery drain.
The best feature i personally like compared with sony pc101/105/109 is that this one has all its control on the body, sony has a touch screen menu option and you could mess up your screen if you are not really careful.
Cons: The most outstanding problem i found with optura 300 is the low light recording. This provides 3 various low light recording but in the dark the super night shot mode any moving images create a drag effect and the recording resoultion is also grainy. Having said that the indoor + low light mode is adequate when shooting inside a home with no day light. The only problem is when it is pitch dark sony seems to be doing better.
Battery life is terrible, the battery provided with canon lasts 30-40 minutes, so i had to go in for an upgrade on the battery.
but i guess all camcorders have the same problem.
Overall it is a great camcorder for indoor and outdoor use.