On Test: Budget DV cameras

It's a fair bet that at almost every christening, wedding or major get-together you've attended this year there will have been one guest lurking around the edges of the action capturing the event for posterity on a digital video (DV) camera.

It used to be true that video cameras, and DV cameras in particular, were toys reserved for those with deep pockets, but things have changed. These days, DV cameras are getting cheaper and cheaper and what would once have cost thousands of pounds and was the size of a large shoebox can now almost fit into a pocket and can be picked up for just a few hundred pounds.

Cost and dimensions aside, DV cameras are also popular because the digital information they record can easily be transferred to a PC for editing. Just hook up the camera to a PC's FireWire port (owners of older PCs may need to buy a FireWire add-on card) and fire up some movie-editing software, such as Windows Movie Maker, which comes free with Windows XP, and you're in business.

We covered DV editing and DVD creation in previous features, and if these inspired you to dip a toe in the digital video waters, now is a good time to invest in a camera.

With the Christmas season looming, a digital camera will allow you to record festive family moments, embarrassing dancing at the office Christmas party and the fun you'll be having when Big Ben strikes midnight on New Year's Eve.

In this feature, we'll round up five of the most affordable digital video cameras on the market so you can capture and commit those memories to video. All tape-based contenders will run continuously for about two hours, or sit in standby mode for up to six hours. Those that use memory cards will conserve energy for longer but, as the largest type of card will hold only 40 minutes of footage at good quality, it's a moot point.

Please note that the prices quoted in our group tests are recommended retail prices. While we base our assessment of the models we review on these prices, it is usually possible, often online, to find the same model available on sale for less.

We would always recommend shopping around before you buy to ensure you get the best deal. If you are shopping online, our Active Prices comparison tool will round-up the best deals on the web for you, taking a lot of the hard work out of your buying research.

Canon MV700 £350
www.canon.co.uk
The MV700 looks very much like a compact version of a traditional video camera, which in fact is what it is. It takes standard MiniDV tapes, has an 18x zoom lens and a 2.5in colour screen, as well as a viewfinder at the back.

The screen can be tilted and rotated, as well as swivelled right round and pushed back into the cavity that houses the screen on the unit, so that you have a flat screen on the side of the camera.

Overall image quality is good, although colours appeared slightly muted. It's easy to use, with a switch at the back to turn it on and select between camera and player mode, depending on whether you are recording footage or playing it back. The zoom button is also located at the back and both of these switches are designed to be operated using your thumb, with your right hand in the grip-strap attached to the camera.

In addition to simply capturing video on its default settings (and audio, using the built-in microphone), the Canon has an attachment for a flash or lamp, an image stabiliser, various digital effects such as sepia tinting, and a still image mode for taking photos. The camera will save the still image it records to the MiniDV tape, rather than to a memory card as a standard digital still image camera would.

The camera connects to a PC via FireWire or to a TV using an AV cable; both are easy to use and you can easily transfer video to the computer using Windows Movie Maker or a similar program.

The camera is supplied with a strap, battery pack, power adapter and AV cable, as well as an adapter so you can plug it in to the Scart socket on a TV or VHS video recorder. You will have to buy a FireWire cable separately if you want to edit your footage on a PC, however.

You might see this camera, and others advertised as having a "360x digital zoom". This refers to a technique called interpolation where images are stretched, substituting actual detail with coloured pixels. Always judge by the optical zoom figure.

Sharp VL-Z100 £350
www.sharp.co.uk
This device marks a departure from the traditional design of digital video cameras by effectively splitting the body of the camera in two. The right-hand side houses the tape, main controls (including power and zoom switches) and the carrying strap. The other half houses the lens, screen and viewfinder, as well as the battery and playback controls.

The two halves swivel around each other (although not in a full circle) so that you can tilt the camera without having to move the hand that's actually holding it. The benefit of this is unclear, given that you could just move your right hand to achieve the same effect.

The 2.5in screen swivels separately as well and, like the Canon's, it can be pushed backwards into the camera body so you can view images on it without it sticking out. The viewfinder at the back of the camera is small and its position can't be adjusted, although it does extend slightly for ease of use.

The lack of buttons on the body of the unit might seem intimidating at first (there are only two and a cursor pad on the screen side), but the menu system is well designed and intuitive so it's not hard to get to grips with.

Settings and effects are accessible through the menu system but there is a separate button to switch to still image shooting mode. As with the Canon, still images are saved on the MiniDV tape, as the VL-Z100 has no memory card slot.

It connects using an AV cable to a TV or VHS video recorder, or you can use the FireWire cable to connect to a PC; transferring video for editing in this way is a simple affair. Video quality was good overall, and the camera is supplied with a battery, power adapter and AV cable.

JVC GR-D23 £400
www.jvc.co.uk
JVC GR-D24 £300 (Dixons special)
www.dixons.co.uk
The GR-D23 is a camcorder in the traditional mould. It's about the same size as the Canon, although slightly more squat in design. It comes with a 16x optical zoom lens and a standard 2.5in screen. There is a viewfinder at the rear but, like that of the Sharp, it doesn't swivel up and down.

In common with the other cameras here, the main controls (power and zoom) are near the back, as is the main menu button. The menu system can be accessed using the menu dial and gives you a whole host of options, which include digital effects such as colour filters and exposure and focus settings, among others.

It does have some other, perhaps more useful features as well: the lamp on the front is powerful enough to illuminate nearby objects and people, although not much more. Another useful feature, the 'blank search' button, will look for the next piece of unrecorded tape for you.

Like the other cameras, the viewfinder tilts and swivels through 180 degrees so you can fit it backwards into the camera shell, and there is a snapshot button, which again stores the images on the tape rather than on a memory card.

Like the Canon and Sharp, it has both an AV port to connect it to a TV or VHS video recorder and a FireWire port to transfer video to a PC for editing. In addition to the DV port, it sports an S-video connection, so you don't need a specialist cable to connect it to a TV or video recorder.

The quality of the video footage we recorded using the JVC was good overall. It comes with a remote control, battery and charger, AV cable and a Scart adapter.

This same camera is also available as the GR-D24 exclusively from Dixons (until spring 2005) for £300 and is offered with Image Mixer video-editing software included, which you don't get with the D23. As these two cameras are otherwise identical, the D24 will produce the same results as the D23 and has all the same features.

At £300, the D24 represents great value for money but the £400 price tag of the D23 makes it a little too pricey to recommend.

Pentax Optio MX4 £380
www.pentax.co.uk
You may associate the Pentax brand with digital still cameras rather than video cameras and the Optio MX4 certainly doesn't look like a conventional video camera. This is primarily because it records moving images to a memory card similar to that found in digital still cameras.

This in turn means that, because there are fewer moving parts and no tape to house within the camera, the Optio MX4 is much smaller than its tape-based counterparts. The flip side to this, however, is that the quality of captured video won't be as good as that of tape-based devices.

In addition, bear in mind that the amount of video you can record is limited to the capacity of the memory card you are using. With a 32Mb card, you will get under two minutes of video at the best quality setting which, while not up to television standard, is actually pretty good for general home use.

Using the lowest quality settings you should be able to capture around 20 minutes of footage, although video captured using these settings probably won't be good for much. Your best bet is to invest in a 1Gb SD card, which can be picked up online for around £70 and will allow you to record 40 minutes of best-quality video (compared with 60 minutes from a standard DV tape).

The MX4 has been designed primarily for recording video clips to be viewed on a PC; there's no viewfinder and the tilt-and-swivel screen is small at 1.8in. It does have a 10x optical zoom and can act as a 4-megapixel stills camera (the built-in flash will actually only work in still shooting mode).

The grip section swivels down so you hold the camera like a gun, with the zoom control located on the section in your hand. It's certainly an eye catching design.

One of the big advantages with memory card-based digital video cameras is that you can simply remove the memory card and plug it straight in to a PC (if you have a built-in memory card reader) or use an external card reader, and view the video without having to transfer it over a cable.

You can also connect the camera to a PC using a USB cable, which is supplied in addition to the AV cable, software CD, charger and battery and 32Mb memory card. TV playback quality through the AV cable is poor, however, as the images will be enlarged to fit on the TV screen, which adversely affects image resolution.

Sanyo Xacti VPC-C1 £500
www.sanyo.co.uk
The first thing you notice about Sanyo's Xacti is that it is tiny, even by today's standards. Like the Pentax, it uses a memory card to store recorded video rather than a tape. Again, this means that image quality is lower than you would achieve with a tape-based camera, and the amount of video you can capture depends on how big a memory card you can afford.

However, like the Pentax, the results from the Sanyo are impressive considering how small it is; transfer it to a computer and the footage looks very good indeed. Image quality on a TV is less impressive, because it is displayed at the resolution of the tiny built-in screen but enlarged to fit on the screen of the TV, so everything looks distorted.

It's simple to use and the buttons and menus are intuitive but the screen is small, although that's to be expected from such a small camera.

It comes with a docking station, which doubles as a charger and is an easy way to connect the camera to a PC or TV. It also comes with separate cables for the same task. In addition, there is a rechargeable battery pack, a mains adapter, remote control and software CD.

It's a stylish, smart and, above all, tiny camcorder that produces good results for its size but as the most expensive product in our test, it represents poor value for money.

The bigger picture
Although the tape-based devices we have looked at aren't as good quality as high-end models that cost far more, there is still a difference in quality between these models and the memory card-based cameras.

The Pentax is an excellent, if oddly-shaped, stills camera, but for anything more than recording short clips, its video recording capabilities leave a little to be desired, particularly if you can't afford to splash out on a large memory card.

The Sanyo is better, with sharper pictures but, again, image quality and the length of the clips you can store will depend on the kind of money you can put into buying a memory card.

The main advantage these two cameras have over the competition here is that they are much smaller (the Sanyo in particular is tiny) and look much more stylish than their tape-based counterparts.

The JVC is a good camera with a wide set of features for a budget model, but its recommended retail price puts it out of reach of a Buy It award. Admittedly, you can pick up what is an identical camera at Dixons for £100 cheaper, and of course it's worth remembering that you'll probably find most of these cameras on sale for less than the recommended retail prices we've quoted if you shop around.

Like the JVC, Canon's MV700 is a good camera, but doesn't really set itself apart in any significant way from the rest of the models reviewed here.

So it is the Sharp that wins our Buy It award on account of its interesting design and compact frame, into which it squeezes a reasonable set of features for a price that most of its rivals can't match.

See also:

Don't let megapixel envy distract you

There's more to digital cameras than higher resolutions, so don't be fooled by the marketing hype  22 Dec 2004

Secure online payments: In safe hands

If you don't feel safe flashing your plastic online, there's a range of secure payment services you can use to pay for goods instead. We investigate  11 Nov 2004

Convert your records to CD - Part 1

Don't let your beloved records and cassettes degrade to silence. We show you how to use your PC to save them to CD  11 Nov 2004

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