Hi Camcorder

DigitalArtist:

The camera is small, looks nice and is easy to use
but the video quality sucks.
Rating: 1 / 5

Gianpaolo Cammarota:

Ok, it’s cheap and fun because it can go in the water. Still, it’s not worth the money.
1) When zooming in or out, the movement is not continous. It’s like he camera stops every third of a second for recalculating the focus, Luce, b/w balance and everything else and you can totally see all those little stops in the resulting movie.
EVEN if you don’t zoom, but there’s things moving in the scene (or changing light), the same problem appears.
2) when zoomed all in (30x) the camera doesn’t focus well on the subject.
3) the image stabilizer is weak. Hand held shooting is almost impossible.

Had to return it. . .
Rating: 1 / 5

R. Davenport:

Pros:
* Waterproof to 10 feet (snorkeling only depth. )
* About 2 hour battery life.
* Lightweight and size is small, but could have been much smaller.
* You can run the camera on AC using the supplied AC connector . . . maybe, as the manual never really says this but hints at it (see cons for the other side of this feature. ) I tried using it plugged in and it seemed to work, but only with the battery in it’s compartment.
* BRIGHT Yellow (could also be a con)
Cons:
* Marginal video image quality. Making a great HD image using a 1/6″ sensor is just not in the cards. You get fringing, pixalization, blocking, everything you really don’t want in anything except perfect light conditions. The tiny sensor cripples the camera with severe noise. Video in bright light, not zoomed, is OK, though I can see a lot of noise there as well. Zoom to near max or have less than perfect lighting and you move from reality to impressionist to Picasso. You can always select a lower image size to improve the quality, but that’s not HD . . . and why 640×480 instead of 720×480?
* Image stabilization just doesn’t work. Their “digital” image stabilization is crappy and makes the resolution worse.
* Really poor still pictures. Its pictures look worse than my cell phone camera and my cell is really old. 2 megapixels is really worthless . . . the Sanyo VPC-E2 is 8 megapixels and is a much better camera than this one. Still image noise is on the brink of disaster.
* Low light performance is poor. The high-sensitivity mode helps a little since what it’s doing is slowing the shutter down and basically giving you 15 frames per second video.
* 30x zoom is unusable at maximum zoom and doesn’t go wide enough at minimum zoom. Starting at 28mm equivalent and only zooming 10x or 20x would have been better.
* NO SEPARATE CHARGER! If you want to keep taking pictures, you would have to plug the camera into an electric outlet – and that is not going to be a choice in many circumstances. Making the charger internal to the camera is just plain cost savings with little or no benefit to the user. In the accessories, there is a charger available for this particular battery, but that is extra cost.
* Strange button arrangement . . . didn’t the designers try this with diving gloves on or left-handed? It has a large video start/stop button on the right side near the front of the camera that I never could figure out why it is there (see my discussion in the full review. )
* No instructions on how to mount the hand strap! This is a big negative because it took 15 minutes to figure out how it was meant to go and that is one of the first things you do when you get a new camera. The strap also doesn’t really seem meant to be used underwater.

In depth review:
1) Getting started
First disappointment was the “Quick Guide”. It tells you how to take a picture and what all the buttons do (except for the strange button on the front right of the camera). No instructions on how to mount the hand strap! This is a big negative because it took 15 minutes to figure out how it was meant to go and that is one of the first things you do when you get a new camera. The instructions for mounting are not in the big manual either. The strap also doesn’t really seem meant to be used underwater. The QG shows you how to get the battery in and mentions needing to charge the battery but doesn’t show you where the “DC IN terminal” is. It doen’t tell you how long it takes to charge the battery so at you don’t know when you can play with your new toy. The QG shows you how to get the SD Memory Card in and out but it does not mention needing an SD memory card.

Second disappointment was that no SD memory card is included in the box so you have to run down and buy a card before getting started if you got this as a gift. It does have 44MB of built-in memory, but that gives you about 44 seconds of HD recording. There is a little piece of paper in the box titled “Note concerning recording in the HD mode” that indicates you better have a high speed SD card to record in the HD mode.

The “Instruction Manual” is totally in English. The “Instruction Manual” echoes the QG and then goes on into real detail. The real manual is 177 pages and is really easy to use and shows lots of thought. Wish they had spent just a little time on a real quick start guide you could carry with you. When you flip the manual over, you find the Xacti Software Instruction Manual which is 21 pages long. However, only one page is about the software – and all it does is tell you to install it. It starts by telling you how to “mount” the camera on your computer, how to use it as a card reader and a PC camera (nice feature). Again, the arrangement is a little strange as there is information in this sub-manual that should have been in the main manual and real info on how to use the software is in the main manual.

2) The camera
Definitely not a shirt pocket camera. Although small, at 4. 5×2. 5×2″ it is too thick and too heavy to go in a shirt pocket. No protective case and no way to cover the lens. Of course, the real lens is behind a protective glass, but you would like to assure that you are not scratching or greasing up that.

I’m left-handed, so I always look for ease of use for either hand. Neither hand works well with this camera, but holding it in the left hand at least gives a little leverage. The placement of the video and photo buttons causes the camera to rock whenever you push on one unless you are holding on with both hands. You just can’t keep the camera stable when you are pressing the zoom, the video, or the picture buttons. There is a strange record on/off button on the front right side of the camera that isn’t explained in the manual except for a small reference on page 55. The page 55 discussion of this additional control doesn’t make any sense as you can’t zoom the camera holding it the way they describe. I did figure out a way to use the button: if you hold the camera in both hands and rotate the LCD so you are looking down at it, you could then use the front mounted record button — “why?” is the real question.

I worked my way through the manual and tested each of the features. There are two different setups for the camera to select from as far as operation: SIMPLE and NORMAL. SIMPLE is supposed to be only the minimum functions necessary to operate the camera and it puts 4 menu selections down the edge of the screen: “Select Video and Photo size” which allows you to select 2 different movie and photo sizes; Select Focus Mode that lets you switch between Automatic and Macro; Flash which lets you pick from auto or on or off, and finally a button to switch back to Normal. That’s it. There are several other options that should be on the Simple menu scheme starting with access to the 9 Scene Select modes (Auto, Sports, Portrait . . . Under Water, etc. ) If you switch into Normal mode, all of the camera features are available by pushing the “menu” button. The menu replaces the picture on the screen, so you have to make your selection and then hit menu to get back out and see what it does. Some features that you would want to be able to access immediately are two levels down in the menus. I am not impressed with the menu system, especially when I compare it to the Canon system on their low-end pocket cameras.

Videos and Pictures:
Here’s where I really began to lower my opinion of the camera. It’s slow to start up (1 second plus), slow to focus, slow to take pictures (around 1 sec. ), slow to start video recording (at least ½ sec. ), at least the zoom seems to have multiple speeds. The 30x zoom lens goes from 43mm to 1290mm (35mm equivalent). It would have been more useful with a wide angle starting point and not as much far zoom, especially for underwater photos and videos. You get half-way through the zoom range and it becomes unusable hand held and the quality starts dropping fast.

The camera allows you to take 2 megapixel still pictures according to the ads. It really takes 1. 1 megapixel pictures according to the specs in the back of the manual. The quality of still pictures is terrible. Unfortunately, it is hard to frame the pictures because what you see on the screen is not exactly what you get. The ISO goes from 50 to 1600, but above 50 the quality really falls off just as it does in most other cameras with this size sensor. You get fringing, pixalization, blocking, everything you really don’t want in anything except perfect light conditions. The tiny sensor cripples the camera with severe noise. Video in bright light, not zoomed, is OK with a lot of noise there as well.

Video is marginal depending upon the lighting conditions, and other waterproof cameras such as the Pentax W60 offer better quality and have a more useful lens range. The video is not even close to my canon S3IS, but that is a whole different class of lens. However, it is fine for UTube or quick home videos. It does take HD pictures at 1280×720, but it doesn’t use the entire sensor for this so the quality actually drops from 640×480 which is your only other selection. You can always select a lower image size to improve the quality, but that’s not HD . . . and why 640×480 instead of 720×480? You can take still pictures while you are taking a video, but the real resolution seems to be related to the video frame per second level you select as well as which resolution. If you are taking HD video, it indicates that the stills are 2 megapixal, but they look much lower. I shot a bunch of video of a family dinner in normal room lighting. The camera would make adjustments slowly to the light, but when it finally got it the videos were OK . . . lots of noise and artifacts, but good enough for family memory videos. I also took the camera out to our Koi pond and started it shooting above the water and then slowly moved it underwater to get pictures of our big Koi. The videos were not very clear and but it did adjust readily to the change to underwater light. When I zoomed, I could see blocking and other artifacts. I also tried some underwater still pictures and got unusable quality.

Waterproof, you betcha! The camera functioned properly underwater and didn’t have a problem. After I washed it off and dried it, I opened the door over the SD card and found that the hinges retain water. A little blast of air cleared them, but this is a possible problem if you need to change the SD card or batteries after having it in the wet. Of course, you would need to plan ahead and either charge the extra batteries at night in the camera or buy the accessory battery charger.

Bottom line on the camera: it is not suitable for serious or even semi-serious videos, OK for utube quality videos in HD format. There are other waterproof video/still cameras from Sanyo that take better pictures, just not HD (see Sanyo Xacti VPC-E2 Digital Camcorder and 8 MP Digital Camera (Blue). Right now it seems to be the only waterproof video camera that provides HD format, but I am sure there will be competitors shortly.

Rating: 3 / 5