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.
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.
There are a few controls that I wish were available for both videos and stills, however. For instance, photo-only options such as selectable metering modes--you have a choice of evaluative, spot, and center-weighted--would come in handy for videos. And video-only options, most notably 16:9 operation and image stabilization, would be great for stills. Since the DC40 uses electronic image stabilization, you do sacrifice a bit of your 16:9 frame when it's active. But at least the camcorder delivers a true wide-screen view, rather than letterboxed 4:3.
Aside from its media-related performance, however, the DC40 operates smoothly and quickly. It adjusts focus rapidly when zooming and panning, for both high- and low-contrast subjects, and swiftly adapts to changes in subject exposure. The zoom switch is quite responsive; in variable-zoom mode, the lens can go from wide to tele in a snap. The constant-rate zoom presets run at slow, slower, and unbearably slow, but I guess that's where you need them the most. The electronic image stabilization keeps the video steady through minor shakes.
Canon positioned the DC40's microphone in the front of the camcorder, below the lens. As such, it doesn't pick up the thock sound of the zoom switch being released or the profane utterances of the frustrated videographer. That said, the audio quality is just OK; I miss the level controls that were available on the soon-to-be-defunct Optura models.
The 2.7-inch LCD is a bit small and quite coarse but remains usable in bright sunlight and moderately dim environments.
Low-light video quality came as a pleasant surprise. Yes, it's grainy, but not offensively so, and it retains enough color to look realistic. The video light provides strong illumination as far as about 6 feet away, but if you point it at a person, they'll be seeing spots for days.
Still photos display the same characteristics that make the video appealing--good white balance, exposure, and saturation--but without the image stabilization, you have to manually set the shutter speed a bit high in order to get sharp pictures. In Auto mode on a bright day, I couldn't snap one sharp enough to print.
Product Specifications:
Product Description:
Canon DC 40 - Camcorder - DVD-R (8cm)
,
- DVD-RW (8 cm)
Product Type:
Camcorder - Yes
Dimensions (WxDxH):
2.4 in x 5 in x 3.4 in
Sensor Resolution:
4.29 megapixels
Effective Sensor Resolution:
Video: 2.99 megapixels - Still: 4 megapixels Mpix
Shooting Modes:
Digital photo mode
Min Focus Range:
0.4 in
Focal Length:
6.1 mm - 61 mm
Red Eye Reduction:
Yes
Microphone:
Microphone - Built-in - Stereo
Viewfinder:
LCD - 0.3 in - Color
Display:
LCD display - TFT active matrix - 2.7 in - Color
Supported Battery:
1 x Li-ion rechargeable battery - 850 mAh ( Included )
Product Basic Spec:
Video input type:
Camcorder
Digital Zoom:
200 x
Optical Zoom:
10 x
Optical sensor size:
1/2.8 in
Optical sensor type:
CCD
Min illumination:
0.6 lux
Analog Video Format:
NTSC
Image Stabilizer:
Electronic
Camera Flash:
Built-in flash
Lens Aperture:
F/1.8-3.0
Focus Adjustment:
Manual
,
Automatic
Media Type:
DVD-R (8cm)
,
DVD-RW (8 cm)
Image storage:
JPEG 2304 x 1736
,
JPEG 1632 x 1224
,
JPEG 1280 x 960
,
JPEG 640 x 480
Display type:
2.7 in LCD display
Display resolution:
123,000 pixels
Audio input type:
Microphone
Microphone operation mode:
Stereo
Connections:
1 x USB
,
1 x Composite video/audio output
,
1 x S-Video output
,
1 x DC power input
Expansion slots:
1 MiniSD
Weight:
16.9 oz
Manufacturer Warranty:
1 year limited warranty