Hi

I am about to purchase my first mini DV camcorder and am considering the following:

Canon MV600i or JVC GRDX25

Does anyone have any experience of either of these two machines, which would you go for?

Do you have any similarly priced alternatives (£400 budget) and why.

I would appreciate any help/advice that you can give.

Many thanks

[woody67]

I have the JVC 100 which is the same as the 25 but with a few more functions and a 1.3 mp sensor

I prefered if over the Canon due to its smaller size.

Things to consider are that record, stop, and zoom etc are mostly done with your thumb on the rear of the unit and not with your fingers on the top - you can easily pause or zoom the wrong way.

Menus are a bit fiddly to get to whist trying to film - lots of shaking while you look for what you want.

I would have prefered some common functions such as fade and other adjustments/modes to be accessable by a simple button, and not a search through the menu.

In auto mode I notice that the exposure can be upset by too much sky or light - leading to a dark picture. But just use manual.

As a carry anywhere point and shoot cam though, its great.

woody

[Eee-Tee]

SPS- As for the canon, I have the MV400 (2 models ago) yet there are few major changes. From my point of view, is ideal for a 1st cam, as its straight forward to use, but still has many features that more expensive cams may not have- white balance/man. focus/ shutter speed/ different shooting modes-sand,snow,sports ect.....

I think that for the latest model, they improved the CCD and the lowlight shooting. I think the size is pretty much the same, which is OK as i find mine a good size. When i was choosing my cam, i was put off buying a smaller one after being told camera shake is too much of a prob. Just dont expect £1000+ like quality from it- at the end of the day u get what ya pay for- in my view the canon aint bad at all....