Canon MV5iMC

When it comes to cameras and camcorders, Canon believes that small is beautiful, and this definitely applies to the sumptuous MV5iMC, which is also a capable camcorder.

Aesthetically, the MV5iMC is pleasing - a tiny silver camcorder that could easily get lost in your coat pocket - and it neither comes with or even needs an additional base station. All A/V, DV and control sockets are located on the camcorder body itself. It sports a DV input as well as output, analog in and the ability to feed an incoming analog signal directly to a PC or DV deck via FireWire. There's also a USB port for stills transfer and a Lanc socket for external control. Mic and headphone sockets (so often neglected on small consumer camcorders) are present too.

Batteries are charged on a separate unit rather than the camcorder itself. In fact, the charger is separate from the mains power unit, allowing a battery to be charged while the camcorder is being powered from the mains. I'm also delighted to see that the MV5iMC loads its tapes from the back rather than the base. This is a tremendous bonus for anyone using a tripod.

There are some slight compromises, however. The small size necessitates a tiny 2in LCD panel. There's also no shoe attachment to connect an external microphone. The built-in mic is located on top of the viewfinder and, while it's angled slightly toward the subject, it's still better placed to catch the operator. The MV5iMC doubles as a stills camera too and allows them to be captured to an SD Card at resolutions of 640 x 480 or 1,024 x 768. The SD Card may also be used for the capture of highly compressed video in AVI format with PIM2 compression.

Automatic point-and-shoot operation is a breeze, and manual operation is straightforward but fiddly given the tiny controls. Autofocus is confident in well-lit conditions, but has a habit of hunting in low light. Its 40x digital zoom should be disabled immediately, but the 10x optical zoom is adequate for most situations. For a single-CCD camcorder, the MV5iMC delivers superb picture quality, only slightly marred by its electronic image stabiliser, which is ineffective when zooming and panning. Nevertheless, video is clear and well defined with excellent colour reproduction.

Sound is lacklustre, but this is a failing of almost all consumer camcorders, and nothing a good external mic won't resolve. Stills captured to the SD Card at 1,024 x 768 contain a little noise, but are good enough for the majority of web or multimedia projects. Video captured to the SD Card is of reasonable quality too, but at a data rate of around 350Kb/sec it's too bulky to be used as email attachments. The MV5iMC also integrated well via FireWire with a PC running Adobe Premiere 6 under Windows XP.

Home users looking for a well-featured point-and-shoot camcorder may well fall in love with the Canon. It's capable of excellent results, fits snugly into a coat pocket and doesn't skimp on features or connections.

Author: Peter Wells