Despite its compact size, Canon's Optura Pi is a full-featured MiniDV camcorder. A 12x optical (48x digital) zoom Canon lens gets you right in the action, while optical image stablizing assists avoid undesirable shakes and jitters from creeping into your essential footage. The flip-out LCD screen is a big 3.5 inches.

　　A quick word about image stabilization. Many camcorders with image stabilization use digital image stabilization, which is a software-based method of remedying handheld wobbles and shakes. Digital image stablizing works well, it does so at the expense of image quality, minimizing the complete number of pixels used to catch an image. In contrast, the Optura Pi utilizes optical image stablizing, which constantly identifies activity and adjusts aspects inside the lens to compensate, resulting in a shudder-free image without any loss in image resolution.

　　A variety of different programmed automobile exposure modes (including sand and snow, sports, portrait, and low light) automatically adjust settings to take the concern out of shooting in tough conditions. The different programmed auto-exposure modes, the Optura Pi also provides 3 different shooting modes. You'll most likely leave the cam set to typical motion picture mode a bulk of the time. Digital picture mode lets you make use of the Optura Pi as a digital electronic camera, recording a still image for six seconds on the miniDV tape, and enabling audio commentary. There's a great deal of versatility right here: you can switch between film and digital picture modes and produce an unique collage of stills and video. Lastly, the digital motor drive mode utilizes the progressive-scan CCD to capture a complete noninterlaced 30 frames per second. This indicates you can utilize the video footage as a series of independent pictures.

　　As a DV camcorder, the Optura Pi has an IEEE 1394 port for digital editing, or for transferring footage between IEEE 1394 certified devices, such as computers or other DV camcorders. The Optura also features S-Video input and output. The analog inputs permit you to transfer old video footage to DV for archiving. Integrated results include art and sepia. Various faders ease scene transitions.