Canon DC201 review

Canon is one of a number of companies bringing out camcorders that trim back unnecessary features in favour of ease of use and value for money.

The DC201 is a no-frills model that records direct to 8cm recordable and rewritable DVDs. That's it. No memory card, no fancy inputs or outputs - not even a USB cable to connect it to your PC, because to transfer footage you can just pop the disc into your DVD drive. And at under £250, you've got a no-nonsense camcorder with the bonus of producing discs that you can play straight away.

Recording to smaller DVDs than those you buy your movies on, the DC201 will accept DVD-R, DVD-R Dual Layer and DVD-RW formats, the last being rewritable, so if you do copy off your footage to PC you can then re-use the disc. Switch on the DC201 and press the Quick Start button and you can point and shoot immediately. The fully automatic mode should handle everyday tasks, but you can take manual control of exposure, colour balance and focus if you want to.

The DC201's CCD (the chip that records the picture) can work in traditional 4:3 screen ratio or 16:9 widescreen. It's relatively small at 1/6 inch - larger chips give better quality - but gave us good pictures in a range of indoor and outdoor lighting conditions. As well as video you can take stills, stored on the same DVD. At 1024 x 768 pixels, they're comparable to a basic mobile phone camera. There's also a built-in facility to create a slideshow with music and titles.

You can shoot using the flip-out 2.7-inch colour LCD, whose frame sports movie playback controls, or a small and awkward colour viewfinder. There's an impressive 30x power zoom, with electronic image stabilisation to counter any camera shake. The neat colour menus are navigated using a mini-joystick on the rear. At the highest 'XP' quality you'll fit about 20 minutes of video on a single-sided DVD, or 8,000 stills.

The only cable connections are to a TV or video recorder in analogue mode. Since there's no data connector, you have to rely on your PC reading the camera's DVDs. Shooting in VR mode to a pre-initialised DVD-RW, we had problems persuading any DVD player or drive to recognise the finalised disc, but random media problems aren't uncommon.

At such a low price and with a sensible, if reduced, set of features, the DC201 offers an easy way into digital video.

Author: Chris Brennan