Canon DC40

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CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
Detailed editors' rating

Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 19 reviews
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Product summary

The good: Attractive, functional design; solid build quality; very decent daytime and surprisingly solid low-light video quality; broad set of semimanual photo and video controls.

The bad The bad: Small LCD; uses Mini SD cards rather than standard SD; blinding video light; no S-Video input for converting analog video to DVDs.

The bottom line: The Canon DC40 definitely deserves a spot on your short list of DVD camcorders.

Specifications: Video input type: Camcorder ; Optical zoom: 10 x ; Media type: DVD-RW (8 cm) , DVD-R (8cm) See full specs

Price range: $294.99

CNET editors' review

Edited by: Lori Grunin
Reviewed on: 06/21/2006
Released on: 03/30/2006

With its broad, useful feature set; zippy shooting performance; attractive design; and good video quality, the Canon DC40 cements a place among the best of the DVD camcorders. Of course, it suffers from many of the same flaws as its competitors--such as sluggish disc activity--but if your heart is set on recording direct to DVD, it's definitely worth checking out. However, if your idea of a good time is hitting the Easy button and pointing the camera, you'd best consider the Sony DCR-DVD405 or the DCR-DVD505 as well.There's not a lot you can do to make a DVD camcorder attractive. There's only so many ways to combine the basic geometries of a tubular optical system, a 3-inch circular DVD disc, and a rectangular LCD screen--and for obvious reasons, you've got to rule out the combinations that require thumbs on the back of your hand or eyes in your neck. Canon does its darnedest to make you forget that its DC40 is composed of the same old elements.

For starters, its brushed-plastic chassis, in two-tone metallic champagne and brown, provides a nicely upscale look and feel. Despite the plastic, the DC40 also feels quite solidly made, in part due to its 1-pound, 3-ounce heft. A rubberized strip atop the drive gives your fingers a comfortable edge to grip, and in that position, your right forefinger rests naturally on the zoom switch and within reach of the photo shutter button, while your thumb falls on the record button.

If you've been considering a camcorder with an Easy button, the DC40 isn't for you; it has quite a few external controls for a consumer model. The on/off/play slider, next to the record button, takes a bit of a reach for your right thumb. Given how infrequently you need that control during shooting, its placement works. You have to shift your hand a bit to operate the camera/camcorder switch. The menu and function buttons, which you will need to access more frequently, require either a bit of a right-hand contortion or left-handed activation; since the navigation joystick sits on the left side of the camcorder, it means shifting your left hand back and forth repeatedly. It's not a bad design, but it could use fine-tuning.

The joystick provides quick access to exposure settings--exposure compensation, shutter speed, or aperture, depending upon which mode you're in--as well as manual focus. Though it quickly gets you in the neighborhood when manually focusing, it's very hard to manipulate for fine-tuning.

Canon put playback controls, plus on/off buttons for the flash and video light, on the outside of the camcorder and the battery on the inside under the LCD. That's where they all belong but all too frequently aren't.

Because of the smallish 2.7-inch LCD, the DC40's menu icons can be a bit tough to distinguish. Unfortunately, the viewfinder is also tiny and inflexible, so it's not much of an alternative. You should try it yourself before purchase if you're a senior or you wear glasses.Like Sony, Canon's approach to the high-end DVD camcorder involves tons o' features. But while Sony goes the home-theater route, tossing in extras such as 5.1 surround recording, Canon emphasizes manual controls and photo options. I find the latter approach much more compelling.

Though the Canon DC40 offers a modest 10X zoom lens, it provides a wide f/1.8-to-f/3.0 aperture and can accept 37mm add-on lenses. Video shot in 16:9 aspect ratio runs just less 3 megapixels, while 4:3 uses about 3.5 megapixels; stills take a full 4-megapixel shot. Like all of its competitors, the camcorder can fit 20 minutes of the highest-quality video on a single-sided DVD. Canon's camcorder offerings support 3-inch DVD-R and DVD-RW discs and include Roxio MyDVD in the box.

For the most part, unless an option makes no sense in a particular situation, it works for both videos and stills: aperture- and shutter-priority exposure modes, a large handful of scene and white-balance presets, and a smattering of digital image and video effects. The DC40 also offers a lot of nice touches, including a variable zoom rate plus three constant zoom-rate choices, a display overlay of a horizon line (for those of us who can't keep it level), a built-in neutral density filter, and a wind filter. The two low-light modes, Night and Super Night, simply drop the shutter speed and add the video light, respectively.

See more CNET content tagged:: Canon Inc.,; DVD player,; DVD,; video

User reviews

Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 19 reviews
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Showing 3 of 19 user reviewsSee all 19 user reviews
5.0 stars

26 out of 26 people found this review helpful

"Excellent Camcorder!"

by MMDVB on May 24, 2006

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4.5 stars

23 out of 23 people found this review helpful

"Excellent, Excellent Camcorder"

by loveem on May 26, 2006

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4.0 stars

15 out of 15 people found this review helpful

"Well Rounded Camcorder"

by timny70 on June 6, 2006

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Canon DC40

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Where to buy

Canon DC40: $294.99

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Reviews from
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personal computer world

Editors' rating: 80

Summary: : Canon's DC40 is a marked improvement over the DC20. It is slightly larger, but produces better image quality, has a huge amount of features and is easy to use

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pcmag.com

Editors' rating: 80

Summary: Although performance needs to improve, the Canon DC40 is one of the first miniDVD camcorders to let you shoot decent stills.

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gadgetguy.com.au

Summary: The DC40 is an excellent camcorder with a raft of really useful pro-style features, mostly easily accessed through buttons and dials. Image quality is great and its stills are of very high quality, given that a 4 megapixel chip was considered a luxury jus

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goodgearguide.com.au

Editors' rating: 80

Summary: The DC40 is an excellent DVD video camera.

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