Following in the footsteps of Sony’s DVD camcorders, Canon has released its DC40, which uses 8cm DVDs instead of Mini DV tape. Shooting directly to DVD will never produce Mini DV quality results, however the DC40 minimises the impact of MPEG-2 compression with excellent optics and electronics.

In DVD camcorders’ defence, recording to DVD is not only convenient, it has numerous benefits. Firstly, you don’t need to worry about wearing out video heads through excessive recording and playback. Plus, there are also less moving parts in general that can potentially go wrong. A standout feature is the scene thumbnails which you can jump to during playback, instead of having to slowly shuttle through linear tape. Canon sells blank DVD-Rs for $5.95, comparable to low-range DV tapes which you shouldn’t use if you value your Mini DV camera. Chalk one up for the DC40.

Furthermore, you don’t need to transfer the completed footage to an intermediate device; all you need to do is finalise the disc after you have finished recording to the 8cm DVD-R or -RW. This writes the table of contents to the DVD, letting your DVD player reference the segments of footage on the disc. Be aware that you will need to have the power plugged into the camera when you finalise the disc for viewing, and the process can take up to 5 minutes.

All this means you should see less long-term hassles with the DVD based camcorder, but the picture and sound quality won’t be as sharp as you may be expecting.

“Is it any good, then?”
The video output is much better than a high quality VHS signal, but not as good as Mini DV. Colours are compressed but still retain a lot of contrast which makes the footage feel more alive. During high motion scenes, the compressed signal blurs edges slightly, so you should really consider picking up a book about filming with video to offset the compression and noise that cameras of this nature add to the picture.

You may be shocked to hear that the DC40 records a mono audio signal. This is due to capacity limitations -- if a stereo signal had been recorded, it would have reduced the already low recording time or degraded the video quality. Instead, a stereo signal is emulated during playback.

Footage is displayed as you shot it, represented by selectable thumbnails both in camera and on the finalised DVD. On an 8cm DVD, the DC40 gives you 20 minutes of high quality recording, 30 minutes of standard quality, and 60 minutes of low quality -- all of which, except low quality, are widescreen. In contrast, a Mini DV tape will give you an hour of standard play or 90 minutes of long play.

Menus and manual image adjustments are all navigated through a small four-way rocker switch on the side of the camera. You can change and set the white balance, focus manually, and define shutter speeds and iris settings. It’s cumbersome at first, but after you familiarise yourself with it you start to appreciate it, especially considering the camera’s miniature footprint.

It’s a very consumer oriented camera, providing 11 pre-defined settings for those that just want to point and shoot. These are accessed by a function dial, which works exactly like a still camera. These features all come in addition to the manual and automatic settings, and work well. If you leave everything to the automatic settings you will get nearly an hour of shooting off a fully charged battery, and more if you use the viewfinder instead of the 2.7in LCD.

Even though it is clearly not a professional camera, it will still accept screw-on telephoto or wide lenses to get you up close to, or further away from, your subject. Included is an AV cable which ends in RCA left and right audio plugs, a composite plug and an S-video plug. There is no Firewire connection for editing, which you can do using the DVDs and bundled Roxio MyDVD software.

There’s also a USB cable for connection to Pictbridge printers, and an infra-red remote which will control all useful aspects of the camera. The receiver is located at the front of the camera, so it’s more reliable if you use it from off centre of the lens instead of behind the camera.

An interesting feature is the image sensor’s native 16:9 aspect ratio. It’s a more effective use of the sensor and results in a higher resolution, as the pixels on the sensor are all used to generate the picture. In comparison, a traditional 4:3 aspect ratio chip drops the detail from the pixels that fall outside a traditional 4:3 frame when delivering widescreen footage. Even though the camera does not record HD signals, it signals the move toward widescreen in consumer electronics.

There are a few nice touches: the lens cap is motorised, there’s an inbuilt LED camera light, and a still photo mode with a surprising amount of options. In addition to selectable resolutions between 640 x 480 and 2304 x 1736, there’s a separate camera flash -- you can even change light metering methods. A mini-SD card reader records the JPEG images.

The recording medium doesn’t do justice to the Canon optics and CCD, which means that the footage is some of the best you will see in the direct to DVD camcorder class. If you have your heart set on the convenience of shooting to DVD, the Canon DC40 is a good example on how to minimise the quality trade-off that you should expect from other cameras.

The DC40 comes without any pretensions -- it‘s a no-hassle point and shoot video camera. It does this well, and doesn’t lock users out of the plentiful manual controls. It just delivers the control and features that consumer camera of this size and price would be expected to.