Canon Elura 2MC MiniDV Digital Camcorder with Built-in Digital Still Mode

Canon's Elura 2MC is small and light enough to pop into a pocket, purse, or glove compartment, making it easy to bring along to any event. Despite its diminutive dimensions, the Elura 2MC is an advanced camcorder, featuring electronic image stabilization, a 10x optical (40x digital) zoom lens, a progressive-scan CCD, and digital still mode.

The Elura 2MC has been designed for point-and-shoot simplicity, making it easy for even beginners to shoot great videos. A number of different programmed auto exposure modes (including sand and snow, sports, portrait, and low light) automatically adjust settings to take the worry out of shooting in challenging conditions.

Besides the different programmed auto-exposure modes, the Elura 2MC also offers three different shooting modes. You'll probably leave the camera set to normal movie mode a majority of the time. Digital photo mode lets you use the Elura 2MC as a digital camera, recording a still image for six seconds on the miniDV tape, and allowing audio commentary. There's a lot of flexibility here: you can switch between movie and digital photo modes and create a unique collage of stills and video. Finally, the digital motor drive mode uses the progressive-scan CCD to capture a full noninterlaced 30 frames per second. This means you can use the footage as a series of independent photographs. The Elura 2MC also comes with a MultiMediaCard for storage of still images.

As a DV camcorder, the Elura 2MC has an IEEE 1394 port for digital editing, or for transferring footage between IEEE 1394-compliant devices, such as computers or other DV camcorders. The Elura also features S-Video input and output. Analog inputs allow you to transfer old footage to DV for archiving. Digital effects include art, black and white, mosaic, and sepia, and built-in faders help ease scene transitions.