HV20 Can take a beating (photos)
 

This is one tough little camcorder, I'm impressed. Picked one up from Best Buy yesterday and not even 6 hours later it had received it's first war wound. (Completely unintentional of course) You probably can't see it in the picture, but there is actually a deep indent in the wall now from the force of the impact. Amazingly nothing cracked and no parts came off the HV20 and everything is still intact and functioning fine. The only damage seems to be cosmetic. This thing is built solid.

Thanks for testing this for us Derek. :) Seriously though, I'm sorry to hear that your 20 got a war wound but glad to see that it didn't crack and everything is working.

Robert

what happened to it...or will that info make you embarrassed?

Let's just say... it was a tripod malfunction. ;P Seriously though, what happened was I knelt down to grab a laptop and bumped one of the legs behind me and it came down over me in a seesaw motion, bounced off the wall, and I managed to grab it mid crash before it smashed into my PC monitor. I don't recommend trying to replicate this at home ;P

My Optura 20 was also banged up one time when we took a pit stop at the Coquihalla Toll Booth. Asphalt + Camera + Camera in your pocket = dents in your cam.

Wow... that's the only damage you guys got?

You wouldn't want to see my elura 2!

http://www.lousyheros.com/pics/elura.jpg
http://www.lousyheros.com/pics/elura1.jpg
http://www.lousyheros.com/pics/elura2.jpg
http://www.lousyheros.com/pics/elura3.jpg
http://www.lousyheros.com/pics/elura4.jpg
http://www.lousyheros.com/pics/elura5.jpg

Ouch! Some scary battle scars there guys. :)

Remind me not to lend you guys any of my cameras! ;)

I know from discussions at different forums, how people said the Canon 300D dSLR was in plastic, so bad quality, and that it would easily break. But the truth is, that the plastic is really polycarbonat, and more elastic than steel. It can take impact without structural intergrity problems (old style ABS plast would break).

Ouch. I just got my HV20 today - I hope it won't have to endure the beatings I've seen an FX1 and ZR20 take (and live through). It seems fragile when compared to even the ZR20 from several years ago - very light. I intend to use it with a 35mm adapter w/rails, so hopefully that'll help protect it a bit more.

Glad to hear yours is still working fine.

My Sony HC1 had had a pretty hard hit against concrete. It was on a tripod indoors in what I thought was a secluded corner and the next day, its eyepiece was popped out and the zoom / focus mechanism didn't work anymore. It was standing upright but apparenly, it was bumped and fell and no one admitted to it. Thankfully, Sony's service did fix it as a warranty problem, although they didn't really have to.

Wow.. You guys really hurt your cameras... I have yet to get any damage or anything on my Elura 100 that I have had for about 5 months..

Good you hear that your cams' still work. Sorry that it happened.
~Gabriel