However, now Ive been working on doing some video capture with my PC and it just ate my daughters 6 month old tape. I figured Id better not put any of her other tapes in until I tried it out with a new tape. That was a good decision. Now the camera wont play or record and just gives me a "remove tape" message.

I checked with the store where we purchased the camcorder and they say it starts at $199 to get it repaired.

From reading other reviews.... its probably not worth it!!!!

At first, I was impressed by how light it was and compact but between the instruction manual and what seemed liked 200 small switches, hidden doors and gadgets, it got confusing.

Last week was my birthday and I took it along figuring why not? Everybody who saw it was more than impressed by how small it was. But it began to show its true colors when they also finally figured out how to use it (some of those switches are too small for even the smallest fingers). It did not do too well under low light conditions (even though the restaurant had patio windows and the sun was pouring in) but it picked up EVERY word and acted like a pro.

When I got home, I discovered how ultra-easy it was to put the recording onto my home computer (with the IEEE 1394 cable which really should have been included. Come on Canon!) I had to zip the file but it has impressed the daylights out of everybody who has gotten it. More impressed by this were the people who were at the party as they could not believe how something that small could do so many tricks.

So, if you want something that is easy to tote about and reliable, this is the one for you!

BTW: When I say low light, Im talking indoors in my living room like some other reviewers. I was not shooting in a dark environment, which is what the low light feature is for.

Its a real shame, because it is a nice design and was relatively intuitive to use. And the price was certainly right...

Id give it 2.5 stars but I dont have that option here. I will say that if you plan on doing all of your filming outdoors in great light (sporting events, etc.) then you may want to consider the ZR series based on price, but for well rounded performance, look elsewhere.

A lot of other reviewers have commented on the poor low-light performance of this unit, claiming that its not even as good as their old Hi8 machines. The mistake here is that Hi8 doesnt suffer from the black crushing* that DVs high compression codec imposes on the picture to be recovered from tape. Any DV machine will have this problem, except for three chip units, which will be slightly less compromised. The only way around this is to make sure that the scene to be captured is reasonably evenly and brightly lit.

*Black crushing occurs when a scene has many details tending towards dark grey to black, the DV process causing nearly black tones to be treated as black.

* Low-light. The low-light recording of this camera is not bad, but its not great either. I primarily use the camera in the Auto mode, though there are manual settings for shutter speed and white balance. The "Low-Light" mode is pretty effective, but it slows down the shutter speed which gives the video a pseudo slow-motion effect. This may not always be suitable for what youre filming. The auto-focus sometimes has trouble if things really get dark, but once it gets dialed in at a certain distance, its ok. I have gotten acceptable recordings in a dimly lit church and on a city street at night. They looked a little dark the first time I viewed them through the LCD, but after I dubbed over to a VHS tape the picture was pretty good. Nevertheless, if low-light quality is critical, youll want to look elsewhere (or at least invest in a light).

* Image stabilization. This has always worked pretty good for me. Ive had it on the back of a motorcycle zipping through downtown Hanoi and cruising over the waves of Lake Minnetonka in a 15 foot boat. Both videos turned out great.

* Zoom. My brothers Sony Digital8 has a 450x zoom that really seemed to work good. The ZR25MC gets pixelized bad past about 80x. Ive locked the zoom at 40x max and I have not yet had a reason to go past that. If you KNOW that the zoom is a critical feature, look elsewhere.

* Stills. The ZR25MC takes e-mail quality stills (I got a free MMC reader with my camera). They also look good in slideshow mode when the cameras hooked up to a TV. This is typical of all camcorders Ive looked at. If you need hi-res stills, youll need a dedicated digital camera.

* Battery life. Youll get more than a tapes worth if youre using the viewfinder. Constant use of the LCD will suck the standard battery dry in about 30-40 minutes.

* Portability! As I mentioned earlier, this was the main reason I purchased this camera. I had hefted around the companys Floppy Disk Mavica on several business trips to take stills. Now I can get digital video and sound, PLUS decent-quality stills in about the same footprint. In fact, I carry it with me in a regular camera bag. My opinion is.. what good is a camera with a million features if its so big you dont want to take it anywhere?

BOTTOM LINE: If youre an average Joe looking for a compact camera that you can record good quality video, sound, and stills, you will not be disappointed with the ZR25MC.

I looked long and hard at many digital camcorders. I did a couple weeks research and narrowed it down to about six choices, then my wife and I spent an entire day going to all the local camera shops and playing with the cameras and we narrowed it down to three, the Canon ZR-25, the Sony DRC-PC9, and the Sony DCR-TRV30.

We liked the size of the small Sony DRC-PC9, but it was too awkward to hold and the buttons were hard to reach while filming. The Sony DCR-TRV30 seems like an awesome camera, the resolution was obviously better than any of the others (we did a lot of A/B testing on video monitors), however its nearly as big as our 10 year old 8mm Sony (...).

The Canon was nifty to hold, ergonomically it felt the best in our hands (...). So as far as low light, we did some testing in a relatively dark store and aimed the cameras into a dark corner painted black and spent time focusing on some dark camera bags that were in the corners. All the cameras seemed to do just fine. Of course the night vision was cool on the Sonys, but we werent sure how useful that would be for us. And this was a dark store, a mellow upper end audio/video store, not a brightly lit super store. So for the cost and ergonomics, we bought the Canon ZR-25MC. We choose it over the ZR-10 for the multimedia card. We liked the idea of snapping quick low-res pictures of the kids that we could send as emails, plus the ZR-25MC hasprogressive scan.

OK, so we get it home and start to take pictures that night. It was in our living room and we had two bright lights on and a Christmas tree lit, also this room is painted white. So I took about 10 minutes of video and snapped a bunch of photos. First gripe, you have to switch between the video tape and the multimedia card via a toggle switch. So if you hit the picture button while you are using the video tape "mode" the camera will send the picture to the tape for 5 seconds, instead of just sending it to the card! How stupid! I bought the camera to send video to the video tape and pictures to the multimedia card. True, we should have noticed this before we bought it, but we didnt. There is no way to change this,it should at least be a set-up option. I could understand capturing pictures to the tape if the card was full, but I dont want to have to flip a toggle switch that I have to stop and look for when I want to snap picture. I think that was a poor design on Canons part. I dont know if the Sonys behave the same way. OK, second gripe, and the reason we returned the camera, the low light is terrible. I had read user reviews on every web site I could find (a lot of them) and had read about this issue, but some reviews said the low light was OK. So I figured it would be OK for taking pictures of my kids. But these indoor videos were shockingly grainy. Im not a resolution or quality freak, Im a casual video user and these indoor shoots were un-usable. I had expected this camera to do at least as well as our 10 year old Sony 8mm camcorder and it was no where near as good, the 10 year old Sony ROCKS side-by-side to this brand new digital camcorder in low light. OK, so we decided to reserve judgment until the daytime. I took about another 10 minutes of video in our house during the daytime. All the dark areas (not in direct light) had grain and even the shadowed areas in a room with four skylights had grain (at was a cloudy/rainy day - without direct sunlight). We were flabbergasted. This was exactly what we bought the camera for, to take pictures of our kids playing (at least 50% of the time indoors) and the camera was virtually useless. There arent many times we can film outside in the sunshine here in the Pacific Northwest! We decided to return the camera. Believe me, I hate returning things and it was a big deal for us to decide this. So after about an hour of badgering the salesman that we bought it from, he agreed to return our money without the restocking fee. He actually took me aside and said all the digital cameras did this. He picked up a three CCD (...) JVC camera and said it too was bad. He said that some of the three CCD Sonys (big $$) were pretty good, but basically that consumer digital cameras arent as good as they should be yet.

Wow, I was surprised by this. I guess they cant use that as a sales pitch before you buy the camera. Well thats our MiniDV camcorder tale. We are still using our 10 year Sony 8mm camcorder.

When the camera was brand new, I had recorded 15 minutes worth of tape when the recording and playback became distorted. While playing tapes back, four horizontal, pixelated lines would scroll down the screen and render the image unwatchable. The sound playback was also garbled beyond comprehension.

I called Canon and they said to try a head cleaner. A $16 head cleaning tape later, the problem persisted. I called back and Canon said to try a new tape. I bought two brand new tapes ($14) and neither made a difference.

Then I called Canon back and asked them if they would replace the camera and reimburse me for the cost of the head cleaning tape, which did not solve the problem. They refused on both counts. Though I had used it for a mere 15 minutes, Canon insisted I send the camera in for repair--and they would not reimburse me for the cost of shipping, thank you very much.

$25 worth of shipping and insurance (and related hassle) later, I got the camera back from Canon. For the first 6.5 minutes of recording, the problem seemed resolved...and then the garble came back. Once again, the images have pixelated distorted bars running across the screen. Canon says I have to send the camera back yet again--shipping at my expense--for a second round of "repairs."

Considering that I bought this camera when our child was born three months ago, and that the camera has not allowed me to record more than 10 minutes of our baby without 4 giant stripes perforating his body, Im not satisfied. The cameras low reliability, failure to serve me in recording my childs infancy, and Canons unwillingness to replace the camera or pick up shipping costs show a surprising Canon unwillingness to do right by their customers.

Id pass on this model and go with one of the other brands and models available on Amazon.

First, Ill have to say my impressions about the Image Stabilisation, as far as I can tell. Its not much to be desired. If I dont hold the camera very steady in my hands or use a tripod the "shakes" are very noticeable. I have been using the camera to take footage of rural Alaska, on trails and mountains, and as you can probably guess its rather hard to climb a rough trail without considerable shaking. Its not horrendous, but I really dont see any help from it. Again, I dont really know what to expect from it either, but so far, its not been what I expected. But, its also not the more desireable optical stabilisation as opposed to this cameras digital, and it is also better to just turn this feature completely off anyway when using zoom in extended ranges.

Also, the low light feature does work, but is very grainy when taking indoor shots especially. It seems the camera does best in bright outdoor light, and to take decent footage of indoor scenes your lighting better be good. The various options for lighting adjustment in the menu for outdoor/indoor lighting however work great, and adjust for the different conditions well.

The camera seems VERY well built. I have knocked it around considerably on the trails, thrown it in a bag and out without overdue care, and subjected it to high winds, mist, and rough handling. No problems. It feels very solid in the hands and doesnt give me any impression of fragileness. The LCD door clicks open and shut with certainty, as does the battery. The covers for the DC jack and S/DV in-out jacks arent though, they are made of rubber and do not seem to be very reliable, and hang by a thin rubber strip when open. They also dont seem to want to stay closed alot, and Im always afraid of ripping them off when opening them for access. Otherwise, the cam seems very solid and able to withstand abuse. The camera fits snugly and comfortably in the right hand using the supplied strap, and it also comes with a neck strap for additional security. The controls are easily accessible considering this cameras very small size, though the main power switch is hard to move due to its extremely small center lock button. The footage/shutter stop/start button is very nicely located and can be quickly found with the thumb. Same is true for the zoom rocker with the index finger.

The Optical zoom (10X) is superb. No degradation in image quality whatsoever either all the way up to 40X in the digital zoom. This thing is like a telescope, I can zoom in on things the naked eye could never pick up even past the 40X. However......past the 40X, the image gets grainy, and is practically worthless past 100X. It gets so pixelated past 100 that I turned the option off and only use the 40X digital zoom option. Again, it is best to turn stabilisation off when using zoom past 10X optical.

The image quality so far is excellent. Very clear, the colors are accurate and vibrant, and noticeably improved over Hi-8 when dubbed to a VHS tape. The zoom is smooth, and very fast/slow according to how much pressure you place on the rocker swith.

The DV out/in works flawlessly with my firewire terminal, and Ive been using MGI Videowave 3 for editing and compression. BTW, I can also highly recommend that program, very user friendly and works great. I may someday want to graduate to a more robust application, but for now its awesome. I also called their tech support for a question I had regarding capture (I was being an idiot, enough said of that!) and the support person was very friendly, patient and helpful.

The ZR25s battery life seems excellent. I have not yet ever completely depleted it using the included Li-ion BP-512 pack, even using the LCD constantly. Canon has available a higher capacity pack as an accessory, but I see no need for it for my uses.

The LCD quality is not what I expected. According to specs, its 2.5 inch LCD is approximately 112,000 pixels. Im not sure how that compares to other screens in its class but Im sure its low. I always have to keep in mind that my footage is going to look 3X better than what Im previewing on it. Its also terrible in sunlight (I imagine this may be common with most DVcams, but the LCD on my Kodak digicam spanks it big time). The viewfinder however is more than adequate. Nice color, and seems to be accurate according to the actual footage taken. It also swings up and away from the battery pack for easy replacement of the battery, and its angle is good for comfort of use when extended.

Overall, though the CCD is admittedly of lower resolution compared to the Alluras, (1/4 inch CCD, approx. 460,000 pixels, approx. 290,000 effective) but the quality of footage is so far excellent and more than satisfactory to me as long as the lighting is adequate. I have not yet tried the still image mode, but I did not buy this camera for that feature as I have two digital cameras for that purpose (Kodak DC-4800s, which, by the way, I can personally highly vouch for, they take superb images, have a full range of manual exposure settings, and offered with optional lenses with lens adapter accessory). Im pleased with it more than not.

Ill write more on this camera as I gain more experience with it, and I hope this somewhat helps others who might be considering purchasing this model.