Canon Optura 100MC Camcorder Review

by Robin Liss
Published on Dec 17, 2001 12:00 AM



One of the best original MiniDV camcorders was the Canon Optura. This camcorder went against the mold with an SLR type body which consumers either hated or loved. Canon has continued the tradition of the original Optura with the Optura 100MC; quality features, good picture all in a creative body. The Optura 100MC carries a MSRP of $1699.99 but you should expect to pay a street price of around $1300. It's a great camcorder that can compete with the similar Sony's.

You'll notice that the size the 100MC is pretty small, but still usable. The camcorder is ½ in wide, x 5 1/8 tall and 5 1/8 in long, it’s a square! You'll notice that the camcorder's lens is big compared to the rest of the camcorder. The lens is also larger for a consumer camcorder. This is good for two reasons. One the bigger the lens the better the picture and two I believe it makes the camcorder look more professional. Most consumer camcorders could be used for wedding and event videography, however many professionals don't want to use them because they are so small that they look like consumer equipment and therefore make the professional look like they are using bad equipment. I think the larger lens makes this camcorder look slightly more professional. The camcorder has a 5/18 in (How weird is that) CCD which is slightly larger than a 1/4 in CCD but I don't think it actually makes a difference. The CCD is the best you can get on a Canon consumer Camcorder, is 1.33 MegaPixels (Again, what a weird number why not 1.5). If you've read any of my other reviews you would know that camcorders stop utilizing the CCD pixels around 500,000-600,000 pixels. The extra pixels are included for still imagining, which I’ll cover later. The picture quality on the 100MC is the best I have seen on any consumer level Canon camcorder (of course excluding the Gl-1 and XL-1), and Canon camcorders are known for good picture quality. The camcorder has a 2.5 in LCD which should be large enough for most users. The viewfinder is color, I usually prefer a black and white viewfinder with a color LCD because a black and white viewfinder gives you a sharper image which is easier to use to tweak image controls. You’ll wish you had that extra sharp black and white viewfinder with all the great manual controls this camcorder has.

The camcorder has a 10x optical zoom which is becoming the standard on Canon camcorders. Other manufacturers have managed to get larger zooms in small MiniDV camcorders, however typically other manufactures camcorders do not produce as good pictures as the Canon’s. Does this mean that the size of the zoom (and ultimately the size of the actual lenses, larger zoom means the lenses have to be smaller to move more) correlates with picture quality? It would be hard to give a definite answer but I can certainly say that having the smaller zoom allows for bigger, nicer lenses which result in the superior picture quality of the 100MC. The camcorder also includes Canon’s great optical image stabilization which really is smooth and does not degrade the picture quality like the electronic image stabilization included on almost all other consumer camcorders. The optical image stabilizers on the 100MC look much better both in performance and in picture quality than the electronic counterparts on Sony, JVC, Panasonic and Sharp camcorders.

Canon has always been great for including many manual controls on their consumer camcorders, and the 100MC is no exception. The weakest manual control on the camcorder is the focus, which you use a dial to adjust. I really wish is was a focus ring around the zoom, which is much easier to use but for some reason Canon relegates the zoom to a tiny, hard to use dial. A great manual feature included on all Canon camcorders, but lacking on most other manufacturers consumer models is manual exposure control. The 100MC allows for 7 steps of exposure control. Canon states that they have taken a six blade iris control (what exposure controls) from their 3CCD camcorders and placed it on the 1CCD camcorder. Canon states that this gives better control of exposure and a better picture quality. I guess this is true in theory, however I couldn’t tell the difference. The camcorder also nicely includes 8 manual shutter speeds from 1/60th of a second to 1/8000th of a second. Finally the camcorder includes control for setting white balance manually. You can find all these manual features on other consumer Canon camcorders, such as the ZR and Elura lines. If you don’t like the manual features the 100MC includes a typical set of automatic exposure modes that you can use. If you don’t understand what any of these controls are you really should, they are the easiest and best way to improve your picture quality. If you know how to focus correctly, set your white balance, shutter speed and exposure correctly you should be able to get great looking video out of any camcorder. It’s really worth it to learn these controls, and a great way to learn them is to purchase Camcorderinfo.com’s Interactive Video CD-ROM Camcorders for Beginners, which covers all these features and more.

The camcorder has an IEEE 1394 FireWire port for transferring your video from the MiniDV tapes to your computer or another camcorder with FireWire equipped on it and vice versa. The camcorder also has analog in’s (Composite and S-Vide) with an analog pass through filter. The analog pass through filter is great because it allows you to convert television, old tapes or any analog composite source to digital video for transferring to your computer by running it through the camcorder. The camcorder has a mini-earphone plug plus a mini-microphone plug. The microphone on the camcorder is poorly placed on the top of the camcorder. The problem with this is that you will find that you are very likely to touch or tap the microphone white you are recording. I found that the microphone also picked up a lot of the camera and operator noise,

A great feature which Canon is bringing back to their camcorders is audio dubbing. What this allows you to do is re-record the audio track over video that has already been shot. For example, you can ad narration to video you shoot after you’ve shot it. This is really great and makes easy, in camera editing quite simple. In what a move that is clearly copying Sony’s PC110, Canon has added a swing down ‘’Multi-Angle Grip’’ as they like to call it. The grip of the camcorder can rotate down to create a stick which you can hold the camcorder with and allow it to rest on top of your hand. It’s a really nice feature and makes the camcorder easy to hold. The camcorder includes a LANC or Control-L port. This is used to plug in a zoom controller to remotely control your zoom on a tripod. These are great tools because they allow you to manipulate the camcorders controls with out touching, and typically bumping it. The camcorder also has a remote control and an extended recording function. With the 100MC you can record in four different modes. Normal SP which fits 60 min to a tape. LP which fits 120 min. to a tape. 2x SP which fits 160 min. to a tape and 3x SP which fits 240 min. to a tape. Normal LP supposedly does not degrade image quality, however LP is not a very reliable format. Many users have found that frames drop out, are skipped or there are audio glitches with LP. I would not recommend recording with LP for any important projects. The other 2x and 3x recording speeds are achieved by compressing the image further. This allows you to fit more video on the tape however the quality is not very good and the tapes are only supported by the camcorders with extended recording capability - which is very few. The camcorder can also shoot in progressive scan video mode. This mode is often used to give a film look or to shoot video that will eventually be distributed in electronic form (CD, Internet, etc.) I'm not going to explain how progressive video works because it is somewhat complicated but you can learn how in an article Andrew Alexander wrote by clicking on the like further down in section where I talk about the still capability.

In the past Canon camcorders have been behind Sony in still imaging capabilities but it seems they have finally caught up with the 100MC. The Mega and a Third pixel CCD can record still images up to 1280 x 960 pixels in resolution. You can also save images in 640 x 480 resolution. The camcorder has a progressive photo mode. I won’t explain how the progressive photo mode works in this review because you can learn that in an article that Andrew Alexander did on progressive video. Basically the progressive still mode allows for sharper stills. The camcorder includes a popup flash to give your stills some extra light. You save your stills on either a Secure Digital or MultiMeidaCard flash card. The camcorder comes with an 8MB card which can hold 17 high resolution and 32 low resolution stills. The still quality on the camcorder is quite good. The high resolution stills are good enough to be printed on a full piece of paper and certainly on a standard photograph size paper and you would not be able to see any pixelation. The low resolution is great for distribution on the web because when your emailing people photos or posting them on the web you want to keep their size down so they can download fast. I was impressed with the still capabilities of this camcorder. The pictures look really sharp and are just as good as those produced by the Sony PC110 and the PC9. A weakness of the camcorder is that it does not include a memory card reader for your computer. As soon as Canon released the camcorder they realized that the other manufacturers were including memory card readers or interfaces to transfer stills with the camcorder. Now Canon offers a memory card reader for free when you purchase a new camcorder. They’ve been doing this for about a year with other camcorders. I believe that they are going to continue to make you mail in to get the memory card reader because that way they can force you to register and get your mailing address.

This is a great camcorder by Canon. Ultimately this camcorder will be compared to the Sony matchbox camcorders, specifically the PC110 and the PC9. Although it is slightly larger, in my opinion it is much easier to shoot good video with. You get a lot of great manual control with the camcorder and the stills are just as good as the Sony’s. In my opinion the Canon 100MC’s stills are slightly better than the Sony’s stills but it’s really a judgment call and very few will be able to tell the difference. I guess if your going to compare the two I would say that they are equal in their merits and the best thing to do is for you to see which one feels best in your hands and which one you think you can shoot the best video with.

The Canon Optura 100MC is a great camcorder. It is a big step for Canon camcorders. Previously they were behind in their still imaging capabilities but the Optura 100MC includes all the still capabilities and features as competing camcorders. The Optura 100MC produces a great picture and gives you toms of manual control. It’s a great deal and a good camcorder for anyone who would like to learn how to maximize the performance of their camcorder and get the best results.