I got my Optura 100MC last Friday June 7 from Profeel.com (Good company to work with. I’ll add my observations of them to the resellerratings.com site in the near future.) Let me say I am not a videographer but I have had a 8mm Sanyo camcorder for about 8 years so the Canon is an upgrade for me. I occasionally shoot some video at weddings at the church that I go to where I run the sound.
The camera is more comfortable to hold than you would think. When I held one a couple of months ago I thought, “This feels different that I am used to but I could get used to it.” When I got it out of the box and placed the strap over my hand it just felt very natural to grip. I hold the front of the camera with the last two fingers of my right hand and use the “bird” finger to operate the zoom and my forefinger for the still photo button. My wife who was very afraid that she would not like the upright orientation of it wraps 3 of her fingers around the front of it to grip it and operates the side-mounted controls with her forefinger. She was very impressed with how easy it is to hold and operate. (FWIW: Her way may be the better way because I have accidentally taken a still photo by pressing the button without meaning to. Doing it her way would reduce the possibility of that.) Friends who have held it though are not immediately aware that the strap rotates to allow you to actually grip it. You can see the discomfort on their face when they try to reach the zoom and photo buttons. When I show them though, they almost always exclaim “Wow, that’s really comfortable!”
I have begun shooting video and pictures with it and last night I played the video I have shot through my TV (A Sharp 27”, nothing special) I was extremely impressed with the quality of the video and audio. So far I have read through a lot of the manual and it does a very good job of explaining features and operations. Learning how to access the different program modes and setting the exposure has been very helpful. Shooting in my somewhat dark den with the camcorder in the Point & Shoot mode video came out very dark, almost as if the Sepia effect had been turned on which it had not. You could still see it but my daughter’s bright purple top came out brown. Now that I know how to get into Low Light program mode and set the exposure though I am going to try shooting again in there and see what the results look like.
I also shot outside using Point & Shoot mode and the Sports program mode. The first clips I shot I used the P&S mode and it was a mostly sunny afternoon but the video came out looking like it was overcast. It wasn’t too bad but there was quite a difference compared to what it looked like when I set it to Sports mode. I shot my son’s T-Ball game using the Sports mode and setting the White Balance to Outdoor and those clips are very good. (Not the camera work, the video.) The objects are sharp, the colors real and believable. There was some flaring on the coach’s silver athletic shirt when he would face the sun and he was still for a few seconds but overall it was an excellent image. I can plainly see that experimenting with the different manual settings.
The only real problem I had with the focus was when I was shooting in the den where it was somewhat dark for the camera and my daughter was standing partially in front of the TV. I had her in the center of the lens but the camera kept seeing the brighter TV screen behind her and as motion would occur on it the camera couldn’t decide whether to focus on my daughter or the TV. It kept switching back and forth. Repositioning myself so the TV wasn’t in the picture cured that problem. Outdoors though, as long as I had the subject in the lens, the camera had no problem keeping focus sharp even while they were running toward me or away from me. The audio on the 100MC is much, much better than the old camcorder. However, so far I have shot everything in 16 bit recording and I noticed that the wind noise is very noticeable in this mode. The windscreen is not available in 16 bit audio mode so I am going to try setting it to 12 bit and turning it on the next time I film outdoors. Also, the camera operator’s voice booms compared to the subjects that you are shooting and sometimes even my breathing can be heard. I’ve got to try to be more cognizant of this. I am extremely happy with my purchase but my wife is starting to get jealous. The first couple of nights I took the manual to bed with me to read and I had the camera there as well and she started telling friends that I’ve been sleeping with that camera since I got it.

Mike - thanks for the info. I did download the Owner Manual from th Canon site IN ENGLISH and printed it on good quality paper and took it to a binder and had it bound sprially. REALLY makes it easier to use. I am now going to take a total of 25 pages that I use most and do the same binding job BU this time I am going to trim it to the same size as the original. These are the pages I will tke with me.
ALSO - my LowePeo 40 bag is a tad too small.
AND getting the video to a permanent useful VCR device is a pain. Wish the miniDV vcr's would lower in price.

What is your problem in getting your video to a "permanent useful VCR device"? I reread this post again as I was preparing to delete it from my email and I thought, "This shouldn't be so hard, unless I'm not following where he is going." I hooked my Optura up to my analog VCR using the AV in/out jack on the front of the Canon and hooking it up to the line inputs on the front of the VCR, switched the VCR to L2 input, popped a tape in and started recording. I was even impressed at the quality that was still there despite the drop in video resolution to the VCR. Let me know if I missed something in your post.

Mike