Canon DC220 DVD Camcorder with 35x Optical Zoom

After researching and reading reviews, I purchased this camcorder from BrandsMart at what seems to be a good price at $278. I had to test it and make a decision to keep or return within 5 days because of their return policy and ended up returning it.

Outdoor videos looked great, even on my 50" HD Plasma TV, however, when I recorded indoors in my living room, the quality was horrible. My old VHS camcorder did better than this thing. Although it was night time, I was shooting in a fairly well artifically lit area, hardly dark, and what I'd consider even more than 'low lighting'. The picture came out extremely 'grainy', certainly not what I'd expect from today's technology. On other small non HD tv's it was still very grainy and bad quality.

I would have loved for this camcorder to live up to my expectations, as it was fairly simple to use, although the manual is not very well written, eventually I figured it all out. Things are laid out pretty nicely and it fits well in the palm, even with a small hand.

Now I'll have to read another manual and learn another and different camcorder. Right now I'm looking at a Sony dcrdvd308 and the associate at BrandsMart now informed me that Sony's night recording feature is much higher quality than this one from Canon. Wish they had told me that before I wasted my time on this one.

Unless you're planning on filming outdoors or inside only during daytime with the blinds open, I wouldn't recommend the Canon dc220. I think there are better options out there for nearly the same or little more money.

The camcorder was received rather quickly and we really do like it. For a non-techy the camcorder was very easy to understand immediately. The only two drawbacks are the quality of picture isn't top notch and recording in not so bright of a setting is not too good. However, overall I think this is a great camera for the price.

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This is a great inexpensive camcorder. MUCH easier than our VHSc camcorder that has been sitting in its bag for 5 years now and also better than the short videos we can record on our digital camera. After you are done you can just "finalize" the DVD, put in in your DVD player and watch the movie.

I blank miniDVD-R are inexpensive (I got 50 for $20) and very easy to store.

One minor complaint. The "finalize" option is only available if the camcorder is plugged into wall power. This is no problem but there is no way to know that unless you read the small comment burried in the manual somewhere that mentions that. Having that comment on the camcorder "finalize" menu would have been a lot more stright-forward.

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Purchased as a gift. REcipient likes that it records on a DVD. Wants an extra battery pack as the battery lasts about an hour and a half.

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I have had a DC220 for a couple months and I am growing to dislike it more and more although some of this is due to frustrations with the mini-DVD format.

The DC220 records on mini-DVDs. These cannot be viewed on a DVD player or transfered to a computer until they are "finalized". Once finalized you cannot record any else on a mini-DVD. I have been using the included DVD-Rs and have been forced to finalize a couple with only a few minutes of video so others could watch them. Kinda wasteful.

You can use DVD-RWs, which can be un-finalized, but in my experience these have only 30 mins of recording time while a DVD-R will record 60 mins.

The finalization process seems very touchy. The camera will not even allow you to select this option unless it is connected to the power cord, not the battery. The process can run for a long time (6 min for the disks I did, which had 5 min of video) and there are warnings all over the manual to not touch the camera while it is finalizing or permanent data loss may result. Also you are warned to only attempt the finalization when the camera is at room temp.

I tried to play un-finalized movies back on a external TV. Eventually I was able to but the process is not straight-forward.

The manual is 100 pages of extremely small, dense text, small pictures and references pointing to other areas of the manual. It lacks any kind quick start guide and I am unwilling to read the whole thing through.

The controls are located in three areas: A circle on the side, a push button on the back and buttons along the bottom of the view screen. It is not clear when each control should be used so each time I want to do a function I need to flip the camera around pushing buttons trying to find the appropriate control, finally having to dig out the manual and reading glasses.

The viewfinder looks into the camera at a slight down angle instead of the more normal (for me at least) straight through. This proved very awkward when I was trying to film from from a deck looking down.