Canon DC100 Camcorder Review

Picture & Manual Control
Automatic Control (7.5)
The word “AUTO” appears in white print on the DC100’s mode switch (located on top); as one might guess, this indicates the camcorder’s auto mode. The automatic controls are not great, but are about what you can expect from an entry-level model. The biggest problem is the exposure: the DC100 has a tendency to blow out brighter objects if there is a significant amount of darker information around them. The darker information does not necessarily have to be the background—the DC100 also does this to the sunny side of leaves, silver objects in a black room, and so on. It seems to handle the darker information much better, while giving up on the detail in bright areas and categorizing it as “white.” When the majority of information in the picture was light, it was a little better, but there were still fewer details than in darker subjects.

The focus is fine until extreme zooming, when the camcorder starts to “breathe” (go in and out of focus at steady intervals). White balance is also quick to adjust, though the colors can be a little flat. The white balance pre-sets are numerous – Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, and Fluorescent H. That said, aanual white balance adjustments are easy and strongly recommended. They will always be more accurate than a pre-set.

Canon offers a number of Scene modes (called Program AE modes by many manufacturers), settings that are meant to optimize the camcorder for certain shooting environments without you having to sweat the details. They include: Portrait, Sports, Night, Snow, Beach, Sunset, Spotlight, and Fireworks. To access these, you must switch the toggle at the top to SCN, then enter the Function menu (for a full rundown of the menu, read the Overall Manual Control section below).

The DC100 also includes Image Effects, which we place somewhere between automatic and manual controls. You can turn them on and off, and customize them to an extent, but they don’t give nearly as much control as a professional camera with comparable features would. Image effects include Vivid (for increasing color saturation and contrast), Neutral (for decreasing saturation and contrast), Low Sharpening (for decreasing contrast along outlines of subjects), and Soft Skin Detail (for softening the focus and decreasing contrast of the skin tones of certain peoples from certain ethnic backgrounds). There is a fifth category, Custom, which gives you the freedom to create a new setting composed of brightness, contrast, sharpness, and color depth, each to a +/- 1 degree of control. Only Canon offers these settings in the consumer realm, though users should employ them cautiously. Too much of any of these settings can ruin a good shot.

Finally, and most notably, the DC100 provides Aperture and Shutter Priority modes. Not quite manual controls, these modes nonetheless allow you to have full control over one aspect (aperture or shutter speed), while the camcorder automatically adjusts the other settings to compensate for your changes. Hence, if you want a slow shutter speed to intentionally create a blur, the camcorder will automatically close the iris a little to prevent overexposure. These controls can be very useful, but Panasonic and JVC allow you to independently adjust aperture and shutter speed.

Overall Manual Control (5.5)
The DC100’s manual controls are not as good as those of some other entry-level DVD camcorders out there. The top of the line DC40, which was announced at the same time as the DC100, has been upgraded with a joystick control for menu navigation, as has the entire 2006 MiniDV line. Last year’s DC10 and DC20 both have slightly different joysticks, but joysticks nonetheless. The DC100 was neglected either out of cost-cutting impulses or because of Canon’s need to justify the price differentiations between models. In any event, the DC100 does not have a joystick but rather a four-way touch pad, which does not handle nearly as well. A joystick, even if it’s smaller, is easier to maneuver. This touchpad is too small, and you often accidentally hit the Set button in the center.

The DC100's touchpad control.

The DC100, like most Canons, is split into two menus: function and administrative (as we call it). The administrative menu contains most of the features that you don’t need close at hand during shooting: clock set, image stabilization on/off, etc. This menu is accessed by pushing the Menu button on the back of the body and navigated with the touchpad. One note that might confuse newbies: Canon has chosen an odd coloring system for its menu. Normally, when an option is not available, it appears in grey text. Here, unavailable options are in white. This caused some brief but noteworthy consternation.

Animated gifs of the administrative menu (top) and the Function menu (bottom).

The Function menu contains most of the manual and some of the automatic controls. Here you’ll find white balance options, image effects, digital effects, and image quality. It is accessed by pushing (you guessed it) the Function button on the back of the camcorder. To select Scene modes, you must first have the toggle switch on the top of the camcorder set to SCN. For Priority mode access, you must have it set to P. Navigating through this menu can be a little frustrating with the touchpad. Having the switch the toggle at the top between P and SCN also seems unnecessary. It’s not like the screen was getting crowded with options. The DC40 employs a mode dial, putting most of the options in one place.

When you are not in a menu, the touchpad also engages the manual focus and manual exposure controls. Pushing up on the touchpad engages the exposure, which calls up a sliding scale onscreen. The scale measures EV steps and ranges from -11 to +11. Pushing down on the touchpad engages the manual focus, indicated by nothing more than a small “MF” in blue letters. You shift focus by pushing the touchpad left and right.

On the whole, the manual controls would be better served by a joystick and a more accurate focus. Panasonic offers joysticks on all their models, as well as more manual controls, among them independent aperture, shutter speed, and gain.

Zoom (7.0)
The zoom toggle for the Canon DC100 is comfortably positioned on the top of the camcorder and can be easily and comfortably reached by the index finger of the right hand. This zoom toggle is raised from the camcorder body and textured to minimize accidental slippage during use. The zoom toggle on both this camcorder and the DC40 reacted with competency and provided a varied range of zoom speeds with easy transition between them. This is a great zoom toggle when compared to those on camcorders by manufacturers like Panasonic, which tend to skip between static and full burst with little warning.

In addition to the standard variable zoom speeds found with most camcorders the Canon DC100 has three fixed zoom rates available when the administrative menu is entered. Listed within the Camera Set category the fixed zoom rate will lock the zoom speed at either speed 1, speed 2, or speed 3. The speed 3 setting will provide the fastest zoom rate while speed 1 will produce the slowest. Fixed zoom rates are certainly handy in some situations where the last thing you want is a jumpy zoom transition: weddings, graduation ceremonies, and other affairs that move at a slow rate. The problem with fixed zoom speeds is that you’ll eventually want a different speed: changing back to variable requires entering several different menu structures, by no means a quick or efficient feat.

Zoom Power/Ratio (25.0)
The Canon DC100 comes with a 25x optical zoom lens that positions this camcorder’s zoom range squarely in the midst of those being offered on 1/6th inch CCD camcorders this year. JVC, by comparison, has one of the top zooms : 32x on the GR-D350. With zoom ranges this large comes the inevitable problem with camera shake when higher zoom levels are reached. To help combat this visible movement during recording, manufacturers commonly outfit camcorders with an image stabilization system. Manufacturers like Panasonic are now equipping more of their consumer grade camcorders with an optical image stabilization system that won’t compromise the footage’s resolution and overall image quality. Unfortunately, the Canon DC100 comes with an electronic image stabilization that, while certainly better than no stabilization, will result in resolution being reduced from 450,000 effective pixels in 16:9 to 400,000 effective pixels when electronic image stabilization is turned on.

In addition to the 25x optical zoom, the Canon DC100 also comes with an absurdly large 1000x digital zoom. The digital zoom range can be capped at 100x or 1000x via the digital zoom sub-menu in the Camera Set menu, found within the administrative menu structure. The problem with digital zoom is that as the zoom levels increase, the image quality decreases. This inverse relation becomes almost immediately apparent when digital zoom is engaged, and users will find that even images shot with under 100x digital zoom are incredibly compromised. Digital zoom is immediately recognizable, and considering the already poor quality of MPEG2 format, entirely inadvisable.

Focus (5.5)
Focus can be manually controlled when shooting with the Canon DC100, although the poor design and layout for this control option may prevent it from ever being used. The manual focus control can be used in scene modes and program mode. Pressing the down arrow on the four-way control, when the camera isn’t in a menu structure or other manual control, will open this setting. When the focus control is turned to manual, a small MF symbol appears at the top of the LCD, in the center of the screen. Unlike exposure, aperture, and shutter speed, focus doesn’t have sliding scales or numerical reference points. Instead users will have to rely on the less than stellar 112,000 pixel, 2.7 inch LCD-to-eyeball focal clarity, which produced sub-par results a fair amount of the time. Considering that aperture, exposure and shutter speed all possess some sort of reference scale or number, it’s certainly odd that manual focus is entirely devoid of these essential features.

Exposure (Aperture) (4.75)
Likewise, users can enter program mode, then the Function menu, and finally the priority sub-menu to access the manual aperture control. The aperture priority mode will display a small scale in the upper left corner of the LCD, and users will be able to engage the aperture range by pressing the set button, followed by the up and down arrows of the four-way controller. The maximum aperture setting for the Canon DC100 is f/1.8 when the camcorder is recording in its widest angle. Controlling aperture levels was a bit awkward, due to the position of the four-way control and the small size of the display.

Exposure for the DC100 can be manually controlled when the camcorder is in any program or scene modes except the fireworks mode. The exposure setting is opened by pressing the up arrow on the four-way controller. This is a bit awkward, since the controller is on the left side of the camcorder body, above the LCD cavity. When adjusting exposure levels, the user will find that their hand inevitably obscures a portion of the 2.7 inch LCD in a rather aggravating manner.

The exposure scale for the Canon DC100 has a range of +/-11, which is displayed in the upper left corner of the LCD. This range is navigated by pressing the left and right arrows on the four-way controller. Exiting the exposure control setup is accomplished by pressing the up arrow following alteration.

Shutter Speed (3.0)
There is a shutter speed priority mode listed in the program category of the function menu, but it’s only accessible when the camcorder is in Program mode. The shutter speed priority mode will allow the user to select shutter speeds ranging from 1/8th to 1/2000th of a second when in video mode and 1/2 a second to 1/500th of a second in still image mode. As with the aperture priority mode, the user must first press the set button and then the up and down arrows to navigate the priority range. The shutter speeds provided with this camcorder should give more advanced users a comfortable set of options for a variety of lighting scenarios.

White Balance (7.5)
The Canon DC100 does provide its users with an impressive list of white balance preset modes, as well as a full auto and full manual mode when shooting in either video or still program modes. The white balance menu is accessed by pressing the function menu button on the left side of the lens barrel. When the function menu is opened, a vertical overlay is displayed on the left side of the LCD. As this display is scanned, a second horizontal overlay appears at the LCD’s bottom. This overlay changes as different sub-menu parameters are scanned via the up and down arrows of the four-way controller. The white balance preset options for the Canon DC100 allow users to set the camcorder to Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, and Fluorescent H. As mentioned previously, the camcorder also comes with a full auto mode and an easily set manual white balance mode.

Gain (0.0)
The Canon DC100 does not provide users with manual control over gain levels, which isn’t surprising since this manual control was not present on the $899 Canon DC40 DVD camcorder. Manual gain control is a feature not commonly found with consumer camcorders, although it can be found, with an extensive range of setting options in Panasonic models.

Other Manual Control (0.0)
There are no other manual controls when shooting with the $499 Canon DC100 DVD camcorder.