Uploaded June 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Canon stole all the good ideas from Sony to make the Optura S1, a very compact MiniDV tape camcorder from 2005. Its physical design is excellent and it has very good video quality in bright lighting. It gets quite grainy in dim lighting, so thankfully it has a built-in LED light. Unfortunately it has rather loud tape motor noise, but I don't know if they're all like that, or if my particular example has worn-out motor bearings; that is a possibility, considering the large amount of video that the previous owner recorded.
Canon stole all the good ideas from Sony to make the Optura S1, a very compact MiniDV tape camcorder from 2005. Its physical design is excellent and it has very good video quality in bright lighting. It gets quite grainy in dim lighting, so thankfully it has a built-in LED light. Unfortunately it has rather loud tape motor noise, but I don't know if they're all like that, or if my particular example has worn-out motor bearings; that is a possibility, considering the large amount of video that the previous owner recorded.
