Canon's DC51 is a Mini DVD camcorder with an attrac¬tive silver / grey colour tone. It's attractive-looking with softly curved edges. Build quality is also good .. We didn't like the function button being on the side of the body-you have to turn the unit around to see what you're selecting, or turn your head around if you're shooting a sub¬ject in front of you. The 5-way joystick is well-placed. If you have long fingers, you'll need to bend your index finger a bit to reach the zoom.
Canon's menu is quite detailed, especially considering the simpler menus on the Panasonic and Samsung camcorders. Despite the extra options, we never once felt overwhelmed¬very intuitive. PictBridge support is built in. The zoom is very smooth and focuses quite fast, unlike some of the Samsung camcorders. But it's a measly lOx optical, so you won't be doing that plagued the other camcorders. The IS sys¬tem works well-although with just lOx of zoom, it's not really being tested a lot.






Canon has a good software bundle that includes Roxio MyDVD, Zoom Browser EX5.7 (which allows you to browse, organise and print your still image albums), and even the latest DV WIA drivers-which is basically a newer standard than the traditional1WAIN. There's a small EOS utility as well, which allows you to even use your cam¬era remotely. We noticed most of Canon's suite seemed geared towards still images rather than video-peculiar.

With a 5-megapixel single-CCD image sensor, still image quality on the DC51 was quite good as expected, as was shoot¬ing in dimly-lit conditions-mainly due to the immense size of the image sensor chip (1 / 2.7-inch as opposed to the de facto 1 /6-inch on most consumer models). Noise was nomi¬nal, particularly indoors-a good thing considering that this model is predominantly meant for indoor shooting (given its lack of a longer zoom). Maybe Canon could have gone with a smaller megapixel rating and a 3 CCD sensor system to boost indoor shooting. Outdoor video clips were clear, crisp and vibrant, with the soft colour tones that is patent Canon.

The DC51 is costly-more than double the price of its siblings, but it's a good camcorder. We recom¬mend it if you plan on doing a lot of shooting at birthday par¬ties, weekends at pubs with friends, weddings, and so on-basically indoor stuff, which it excels at.


specifications:
1/ 2.7-inch CCD sensor (5 megapixels);
2.7-inch viewfinder (123,000 pixels);
Optical Image Stabilisation (Shift Type);
weight: 480 gm,
Video Quality (Indoors) : 7.5
Video Quality (Outdoors) : 8