Canon Elura 60

The Canon Elura 60 was first shown at the 2004 Photo Marketing Association International annual convention is Las Vegas. I got a chance to take some time to play with the camcorder and make some first impressions. The biggest advancement on the Elura 60 is the size of it's CCD, the camcorder element primarily responsible for video and low light performance. Canon has drastically increased the CCD size on the Elura 60, which will hopefully improve the low light performance which has been less than desirable on previous models. The Elura 60 is also very small, and includes a host of still features.

Video Performance
The Canon Elura 60 includes a fairly large (when compared to other CCDs of similarly priced camcorders) 1/4.5 in. CCD with 1.33 gross pixels. I looked at the Canon Elura 60 at the Photo Marketing Association 2004 show in Las Vegas and the lighting conditions made it impossible to test the video performance. One thing worth nothing however is that the CCD on the Elura 60 is much larger than was included on the Elura 50 as well as other Canon camcorders including the ZR series. Typically a larger CCD means improved video performance however we won't really be able to know until we get an Elura 60 for testing.

The Front
At the top of the Elura 60 is the lens, off center to the right slightly. Below the lens is the stereo microphone under the lens. If you drew a line down the front of the Elura 60 The microphone would fall on the left side. Below the microphone is the Canon logo, and below that is a piece of plastic which removes to reveal the S-Video and the Firewire jacks. On the right side of the front of the camcorder is just plain plastic with a half moon infrared sensor.

The Right Side
The right side of the Elura 60 is silver with gray trim towards the very back. In the top left corner of the right side of the Elura 60 is a button for selecting full auto recording mode or manual mode. Moving down to the bottom of the camcorder is an anchor for the handle strap. The majority of the right side is completely blank, save a speaker right after the hump. Moving down about half an inch is a large hump where the power dial, or rather the markings for the power dial fall (the dial itself balls on the back of the camcorder). At the way front of the right side of the Elura 65 is another piece of gray plastic, however this one is a soft type of plastic covering up the Mini A / V, USB and DC in power jacks. Along the bottom of the right side is the handstrap.

The Back
The back of the Elura 60 is mostly taken up by the battery slot. The viewfinder is located on the left side with the side of the LCD screen under it. To the right of the side of the LCD screen is the battery slot. And above that is a small battery eject button. Towards the top half of the right side of the battery slot is a button for selecting whether to record to MiniDV tape or to SD memory card. Below that is the power dial which surrounds the silver record button.

The Left Side
The left side of the Elura 60 is best broken down into two parts, the first being the lens barrel and the second the recording part. The lens barrel runs along the top of the camcorder continuing with the viewfinder which extends outwards but doesn't rotate up. Below the lens barrel is the recorder part. At the front is the well placed menu jog dial with the menu button right under it. Opening up the LCD screen reveals three rows of buttons. The first row includes the rewind, fast forward, play / pause and stop buttons. The next row includes the digital effects buttons and the exposure / end search button. Below those are the data code, drive mode / record pause and the card mix / slide show buttons. At the way button is the SD slot.

Automatic Control
There doesn't appear to be many changes in the automatic control options of the Elura 60 compared to previous Canon camcorders, however I didn't get much of a chance to look at the options or see how the automatic focus and exposure modes performed.

Overall Manual Control
Overall, the manual control on the Elura 60 is not that bad. Canon gives you control over every picture function besides gain, and the dial towards the front for controlling some of the manual control options is quite good. The biggest downside to the general manual control is that the focus and exposure buttons are hidden away behind the LCD screen which does not make them easily accessible.

Zoom
The Canon Elura 60 includes a 16x optical zoom. The zoom is controlled by a plastic slider which I liked a lot when I tested it. The zoom slider gives the right amount of resistance, allowing you to achieve variable zoom speeds and hold them. The only downside to the zoom control on the Elura 60 which I could find was that you could not get an ultra fast zoom - however, the overall control was quite good.

Focus
The focus on the Elura 60 is controlled through two buttons on the inside of the LCD screen. Although this method is better than Sony's touch screen and good because it's not hidden in a menu, the placement inside of the LCD screen instead of say on the camcorder barrel makes it slightly cumbersome to use.

Exposure (Aperture)
The manual exposure control on the Elura 60 toggled again through a button that is hidden inside the LCD screen, and is increased or decreased using the dial on the front of the camcorder. Had Canon placed the toggle button on the outside of the camcorder it would be really great exposure control.

Shutter Speed
The Canon Elura 60 offers manual shutter speed control through the menu button towards the front of the camcorder. Although I don't like having to scroll through a menu to access manual shutter speed control, the menu button is very well placed on the front of the left side of the camcorder which makes it very accessible. Another thing to note is that Panasonic and Sharp are the only other two camcorder manufacturer's who put manual shutter speed on their camcorders.

White Balance
The Canon Elura 60 offers four white balance modes, full auto, manual, indoor and outdoor. Like the shutter speed, the white balance in controlled through the menu and the jog dial in the front of the camcorder - where I really like their placement.

VCR Mode
The VCR mode on the Elura 60 is controlled through the VCR controls inside the LCD screen. The VCR mode is generally fine, providing you with all the control options that you would need.

LCD / Viewfinder
The Elura 60 includes a 2.5 in. LCD screen and a color viewfinder. The LCD screen appears perfectly fine, however a big problem with the viewfinder is that it does not rotate. Although the viewfinder can be pulled out from the camcorder, it can not be rotated upwards, which makes it awkward for many shooting solutions.

Handling
The new Elura 60 looks very similar to Canon's Hi8 models, with a clear separation between lens barrel and recording body. The Elura 60 has a great hand feel. Your hand wraps very nicely around the camcorder, and your fingers fall on top of the camcorder, not covering the lens or the microphone. In general, the camcorder is a good size. It's small enough to easily be held in one hand, but not too large to become cumbersome.

The placement of buttons was also very well done on the Elura 60. The menu button and the menu jog dial at the front of the left side of the camcorder is perfectly placed. You can easily operate the camcorder by holding it in your right hand and cradling it with your left. If you shoot in this method (which most users do) you will easily access the jog dial and menu button for adjusting some of the manual features.

The camcorder's general layout fails however when it comes to focus and exposure control. This would be a great camcorder if the exposure and the focus were controlled through the jog dial (or better yet a focus ring) in the front of the camcorder. Instead, opting for a cleaner outside, Canon placed the focus and exposure controls inside the LCD. Their placement makes it hard to easily adjust them while shooting a stable image. They did such a good job placing the menu button and jog dial on the front left of the camcorder, but failed by placing the exposure and focus controls inside the LCD screen. I should note that as I mentioned in the zoom paragraph, the zoom slider is very well placed and easy to control.

Stills
The 1.33 Megapixel CCD on the Elura 60 produces 1,280 x 960 pixel resolution stills saved to SD cards. Because I looked at the Elura 60 at a conference I was unable to draw any conclusions about the still performance of the camcorder. Canon includes a USB jack on the camcorder for transferring the digital stills from the camcorder to a computer and they've included many other still functionality features to push the hybrid nature of this camcorder. Canon includes 'PTP' functionality on the Elura 60. What PTP does is when the camcorder is directly plugged into a mac or a PC, it appears as a hard drive on the computer. Many digital still cameras provide this functionality but I don't know of any camcorders which do. The Elura 60 also includes a print share button which sends the pictures to the printer with one touch, and if it is hooked up to a compatible printer, directly to the printer with out going through a computer.

Another great feature which I am surprised no one has included on a camcorder yet, is the ability to record stills to the SD card while you are recording to MiniDV tape. This seriously improves the hybrid nature of the Elura 60. On every other camcorder to my knowledge, you can not record stills to the Memory media while you are recording to tape. This is a great innovation on the Elura 60.

Audio
The microphone on the Elura 60 is placed on the front, not a great place but frankly with the small size of today's camcorders, there isn't really any place where you can put the camcorder where it will perform wonderfully - so we instead concentrate on the audio options that the camcorder gives you. The first is that the Elura 60 includes a shared headphone out jack. The camcorder includes a cold shoe, which is a shoe on the top of the camcorder for attaching external accessories, especially microphones. Being cold means that the camcorder doesn't provide power to the accessories attached through the shoe. The biggest drawback on the audio options of the the Elura 60 is that it doesn't include a microphone in jack, which means you have to use the on camera mic - a big problem.

Jacks and Ports
The Elura 60 includes a USB jack, a Firewire Jack, and S-Video jack, a shared RCA out / microphone out jack. It also includes a cold shoe for attaching accessories.

Other Features
Night Mode Canon has introduced a new night mode on the Elura 60. With the new night mode, the camcorder can automatically detect when you are shooting in low light lighting conditions. It will lower the shutter speed down to 1/30th of a second and increase the sensitivity of the CCD.

MPEG Canon has improved the MPEG recording of the Elura 60. The camcorder can record MPEGs at 320 x 240 or 160 x 120 pixel resolution, as has been available on previous models, however the camcorder is no longer limited in the recording it's recording time. The only limit on the amount of video you can record is the size of your SD card.

Top Loading Tape Mechanisim This is a feature I am extremely excited about. I can not honestly recall over the past three years any camcorder under $1,500 which wasn't a bottom loading camcorder. The benefits of being a top loading camcorder is that you can change the tapes on the fly while your camcorder is attached to a tripod. If you have a bottom loading camcorder, you have to take the camcorder off the tripod, detach it from the tripod plate and put the new tape in. It is much easier to have a top loading tape mechanisim. Canon should be applauded for bringing back the 'lost art' of the top loading tape mechanisim.

Conclusions
Canon is making what looks like a great attempt on the Elura 60. They have drastically increased the size of the CCD on all of the new Elura's As frequent readers of this web site will know, a major problem with Canon's camcorders over the past few years, excluding their very high end products, has been the low light performance. It is especially disappointing when Canon camcorders have done such a good job under normal lighting conditions and in generally making good products. The Elura 60 seems to continue Canon's tradition of well designed products with lots of manual control, and if the larger CCD improves low light performance we may have a real winner in the Elura 60, combining control, still functionality, and great video quality.