Kamera Perekam

Panasonic HX-WA10

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:32:00 -0700

Panasonic is holding a two day convention in London, starting today, and it has just announced some new products including the tasty looking all-weather HX-WA10 camcorder.

The WA10 is a pistol-grip camcorder which Panasonic claim can be used in water to a depth of three metres for up to an hour. The WA10 is capable of recording Full HD video with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 with thanks to something called Backside Illumination (BSI) sensor technology, which has improved the sensitivity of the CMOS sensor, making it possible to shoot images with high-resolution Full-HD quality even in dimly lit areas. Panasonic is aiming this squarely at the outdoors market stating: “Full-HD video can also be captured in all kinds of year-round outdoor conditions, not only in the rain or while swimming in a pool or the ocean, but also during marine sports such as snorkelling and surfing, and winter sports like skiing and snowboarding.”
The pistol grip camcorder features a 2.7in TFT LCD screen, can shoot 16-megapixel still images and with separate video and photo buttons there should be no more mixing up modes – though three metres under water that might be the least of your worries. Along with the WA10 Panasonic will be releasing the DC10 and DC1 camcorders. Details on these two seem a little scare at the moment but the DC10 seems like an indoor version of the WA10 while its little brother the DC1 has been reduced to 14 megapixels but with its screen boosted to 3in.
No release dates for the camcorders have been announced yet, nor has pricing but as the convention continues in London we will bring you more news as we get it.

Samsung SMX-C20

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:45:00 -0700

High definition camcorders have only been available to consumers for five years, with Sony’s HDR-HC1E leading the way. But already standard definition models are on their last legs. If you’re on a tight budget, though, opting for standard definition can give you more features for less money. Such is the case with Samsung’s SMX-C20, which costs a similar amount or less than a pocket Internet HD model, but provides a lot more control and configuration.
The most obvious benefit the C20 has to offer is an optical zoom. Virtually all pocket Internet camcorders only incorporate digital zooms, but Samsung provides a 10x optical telephoto. The C20 is built around a small 1/6in CMOS sensor with just 680,000 pixels, but one of its benefits is allowing this very respectable optical zoom, despite the camcorder measuring just 109mm along its longest edge. The sensor isn’t of the back-side illuminated variety, however, unlike Samsung’s HMX-H200. There is a digital zoom available, but this boosts the factor to an utterly ludicrous 1,200x, which as always we’d recommend avoiding.
Image stabilisation is also optical rather than electronic, so theoretically more effective than usually expected at this price. In fact, almost no pocket Internet camcorders offer any form of image stabilisation at all, with the notable exceptions being JVC’s PICSIO GC-FM2 and PICSO GC-WP10AE. Whilst JVC’s latest models also incorporate a few more configuration options than most pocket Internet camcorders, they don’t go as far as Samsung’s SMX-C20 in this respect either. A quick menu accessed via the joystick on the LCD edge lets you adjust a selection of settings with a few finger presses, including focus, exposure, and scene modes.

Focus options include face detection and fully manual, although the latter is hard to adjust with only the joystick. The exposure control has 13 positions between -2 EV and +2 EV. The scene modes include the usual suspects, such as Sports and Portrait. But the same menu also houses the white balance presets, so you can’t enable both at the same time. There is no option for manual white balance either.

If you don’t want to make these kinds of settings yourself, the C20 also offers a Smart Auto option which attempts to detect conditions and set the scene mode accordingly. However, whilst reminiscent of Panasonic’s Intelligent Auto, Samsung’s Smart Auto doesn’t offer the same range of scene modes, and is nowhere near as effective as a result. Smart Auto essentially enables low light mode in poor illumination, although a macro mode will also appear when appropriate.

If you delve into the main menu, time lapse options are available, allowing you to record a frame every one, three, five, ten, 15 or 30 seconds, for a duration of 24, 48, or 72 hours, or for as long as your media can hold. Annoyingly, back light compensation is only accessible via the main menu, where a discrete button would be more appropriate.
The C20 also incorporates one of Samsung’s more unusual recent design features – a lens that points slightly up. This takes a little getting used to, as you naturally expect to point this format of camcorder in the direction of its longest dimension. However, it's also true that your wrist feels more comfortable with the camcorder pointing slightly downwards. So having the lens points up means you can hold the device without twisting your hand, making the posture less tiring. Once you've adjusted the LCD to compensate, shooting like this can be quite comfy. If you prefer holding the camcorder in a more torch-like fashion, controls are available on edge of LCD for operating the zoom and toggling record.

There’s no storage integrated into the C20, with removable SD memory called upon instead. The video resolution is set at 720 x 576 and frame rate at 25 per second, although you can choose between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. There are three quality levels available, with the top one capturing video at 4.5Mbits/sec. So a 4GB SDHC card will be enough for around two hours of footage. Still images can be captured at 1,696 x 960 or 848 x 480, neither of which are going to give a standalone digital camera any competition.

Where colour is concerned, the C20 performs very well for its price. Fidelity is good in bright light, although the camcorder is put through its paces by extreme contrasts in brightness. It’s also hard not to notice the lack in detail compared to most HD camcorders. There is obvious smearing visible from bright light sources, too, but overall the C20 achieves very commendable results for its price.

Low light abilities are a mixed bag. Again, colour remains reasonably accurate, even in relatively poor illumination. However, the image is much fuzzier in these conditions, and detail is even more obscured. So whilst you can see your subjects in low light, the picture isn’t particularly impressive.

Built-in software is becoming de rigueur for budget camcorders, and the C20 includes an app called Intelli-Studio, or i-Studio depending on where you look, which installs on your PC straight from the camcorder when you first plug it in via USB. Intelli-Studio is reasonably well featured, with modest editing abilities and uploading to Flickr and Facebook as well as the ubiquitous YouTube.

Verdict

It won’t be very long before we find it impossible to recommend any camcorder that doesn’t shoot in high definition. But for now there’s still just about enough reason to choose standard definition when on a budget. If you just want to point and shoot, with no need whatsoever to configure your shooting, an HD pocket Internet camcorder would suit you best at this price. However, if you want a little more flexibility, particularly a fully fledged optical zoom, Samsung’s SMX-C20 would still be worth considering instead, and its sub-£150 price makes it great value.

Canon Legria HF R18

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:35:00 -0700

Canon camcorders have a great reputation for image quality and features. But the company hasn’t been quite so well known for its budget options. Most recent to challenge the value end of the market is Canon’s Legria HF R18. Is this the model that will give Canon the edge for the more price-conscious consumer?
The Legria HF R18 is actually top-of-a-range of three models that share almost all specifications. The R18 integrates 32GB of flash memory, the R16 only has 8GB of flash memory, and the R106 has none at all. All incorporate an SD card slot, so you can add more storage if you want. In the case of the camcorders with memory on board, if this runs out during shooting the camcorder can switch automatically to removable memory without a break in recording.

Apart from the R18 being black, the R106 being silver, and the R16 offering a range of colours, the memory allocation is the only difference between the three models. They are all built around a relatively small 1/5.5in CMOS sensor with just 2.39-megapixels. This should be enough for Full HD, but only 1.56-megapixels are used in movie mode, less than the 2.07-megapixels required. You can take photos at up to 1,920 x 1,080 pixels but not at the same time as shooting video.
The Canon HD video lens provides a 20x optical zoom, and there’s an automatic cover over the glass. However, the image stabiliser is electronic. It has two settings – Standard and Dynamic. The former is for general usage, whilst the latter is particularly tuned for removing camera shake when shooting whilst walking. However, it crops into the frame when enabled, which will reduce detail, so you’re better off with the Standard version if you don’t need the added smoothing of the Dynamic setting.

Four AVCHD quality modes are available, with data rates ranging from five to 17Mbits/sec, but not the top 24Mbits/sec possible with this format. All are HD, although only the highest quality one is Full HD. The remainder operate at the anamorphic 1,440 x 1,080 resolution originally used by the tape-based HDV format. Even at the best quality setting, the R18 can fit over four hours of footage on board, so you probably won’t need the extra memory slot.

Unlike the more premium-oriented Legria HF M31, the R18 doesn’t use a touchscreen for menu control. Instead, you get a more traditional joystick, which is located on the edge of the LCD. On its own, this operates a quick menu, which provides rapid access to a few of the most often-used functions, including manual exposure and focus. The latter can be a little fiddly to operate with a joystick, but at least there’s an assist function, which magnifies the frame to help you with adjustment.

The quick menu also provides a speedy way to switching on the Pre REC function and Face Detection. The former keeps three seconds of video constantly buffered, which are then added to the clip when you hit record. The latter now almost universal function picks up human faces and uses them as reference for exposure and focusing. Most amazingly, access to manual audio levels is available, despite the lack of minijacks for an external microphone or headphones. There’s no accessory shoe, either, for attaching peripherals.
The range of settings is reduced compared to many Canon camcorders, too. We’ve gotten used to seeing virtually all Canon camcorders, even the budget ones, offering aperture and shutter priority modes, with a separate exposure control providing the next best thing to fully independent configuration of both settings. But the R18 doesn’t offer these, only the exposure control on its own.

White balance options include just single indoor and outdoor presets, plus automatic and manual. A 25PF progressive shooting mode can be called upon if you want to avoid interlacing artefacts. There’s a cinema colour option to go with it, although you can’t use this at the same time as scene modes. Most impressively, Canon has kept its image effects available. So you can make colour vivid or neutral, reduce sharpening, or soften skin tones. But the user-customisable setting of higher-end Canon camcorders is not available.

If you delve into the full menu, goodies like x.v.Color can be found. There’s flicker removal for 50Hz and 60Hz sources – great for shooting when there’s a TV in the background. For those not interested in manual configuration, the Smart Auto mode detects conditions and sets the scene mode accordingly, although there aren’t quite as many different modes as, for example, Panasonic’s Intelligent Auto.

The R18 shoots decent enough footage in bright conditions. Colours are vibrant but faithful, and detail is quite sharp, although the picture is less fine than premium models, due to the effective CMOS sensor resolution being less than Full HD. Areas of high contrast are also handled commendably.
However, the R18’s abilities in poor illumination are not so outstanding. Now that even cheap pocket Internet camcorders such as Kodak’s Playsport Zx3 have quite large sensors, the R18’s smaller one seems meagre. Although the image was quite bright with a fair amount of colour maintained in our 100W ceiling light test, it was marred by a considerable helping of seething multicolour grain, and this was echoed in our less formal low light testing. The R18’s performance implies that the company should consider back-side illumination technology if it wants to compete on quality using a CMOS sensor this small.

Doors at the rear cover a comprehensive set of video output ports, alongside the USB 2.0 connection. There’s mini HDMI, component and composite analogue. Cables are supplied for both the analogue connections, but not the mini HDMI, so you’ll have to fork out a little extra if you want to view your video digitally on your HDTV.

Verdict

You can pick up the Legria HF R18 for around £300, and it has a fair amount to offer for the money. However, it’s not the only fully featured Full HD camcorder at this price. Panasonic’s HDC-SD60 has a similar range of capabilities, better image quality in low light, and costs about the same when you add a 32GB SDHC card. So it remains our budget HD choice. But Canon has some new models just around the corner, so watch this space. The R18 may not be the one, but it successor just might be.

Toshiba Camileo H30

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 16:40:00 -0700

Although most of Toshiba’s consumer electronics products aim for the higher end of their respective markets, its camcorders tend to be distinctly value oriented. The Camileo H30 doesn’t break the mould, with its sub-£200 price, but it does offer a few features not normally associated with camcorders this cheap.
For a start, it shoots Full HD, although Toshiba already offers this for even less with its Camileo S20. But where the S20 only provides a quality-reducing digital zoom, the H30 sports a fully fledged optical version, although the factor is a mere 5x, where most more expensive camcorders boast at least twice as much. Nevertheless, compared to similarly priced pocket Internet camcorders such as the Flip Video UltraHD, a real optical zoom of any nature is to be commended. If you’re shooting at resolutions below Full HD, there’s also a 4x digital zoom available as well, for a 20x total.
The H30 is built around a 10-megapixel CMOS sensor – twice the resolution of the S20’s, although as with the latter Toshiba hasn’t publicised the physical size of this sensor. A modicum of interpolation is added to bring the still image resolution up to 16-megapixels. There’s a small flash built into the H30 to help with photography, but unlike the S20 no LED video light is provided.

Video resolutions range from VGA up to the aforementioned Full HD. In between, there’s 720p and a curious 848 x 480 option called WVGA. This provides a 16:9 widescreen aspect but with the same vertical resolution as VGA. It also records at 60 frames/sec whilst the other modes use 30 frames/sec. Video is stored on flash memory, but the H30 includes just 128MB on board, of which only about 96MB is usable, so SDHC media is a necessity. At the top Full HD quality setting, a 4GB card will be enough for around one hour of video.

The H30 isn’t exactly packed with camcorder features. Discrete function buttons are few and far between. A Pre REC control can be found under the LCD, which also doubles as a web upload button, for one-touch YouTube video distribution. The jog dial on the rear also incorporates a trio of functions activated when you press strategic points around its edge. Top left toggles the Digital Light system, which brightens the image artificially using post processing rather than actual physical illumination. Top right toggles the onscreen data, whilst pressing along the bottom deletes the last clip or all clips from the currently selected recording media.
Unusually for a camcorder at this price, the LCD is actually a touchscreen. But this only operates the menu. Toshiba hasn’t harnessed it for any one-press focus or exposure functions. In fact, there is no direct manual control over the latter settings at all, nor shutter speed. There is a scene mode menu available, but this doesn’t include the usual portrait and sports options. Instead, Toshiba has rounded up a soft skin setting, alongside a night mode and backlight compensation.
There are also digital effects for black and white, negative, and classic sepia tone. You can only select one of these scene settings at a time, though, so there will be no black and white footage with backlight compensation and soft skin. Presets for white balance are also available, with two indoor options and one outdoor, alongside fully automatic. But you can’t set white levels manually.

Strangely, there’s also an Effect menu that doesn’t contain digital effects. This is where you toggle image stabilisation and a variety of special shooting modes. Like the Camileo S20, you can only use image stabilisation at resolutions below Full HD, presumably because - like the digital zoom - it uses the extra available pixels when not all the CMOS is being utilised. It’s not the most effective system, either.

Macro mode is enabled using software rather than a physical switch on the camcorder body, and this can be found within the Effect menu too. The remaining options include a motion detection system, which triggers recording when sufficient action is sensed within the frame, and a slow motion system, which records at 120 frames per second but with a resolution of just 320 x 240 pixels. The final option is time lapse, which records a frame every 1, 3 or 5 seconds, so you can watch grass grow or paint drying without getting quite so bored.

Not surprisingly, there’s no accessory shoe nor mini-jacks for an external microphone or headphones. A side flap houses a mini-jack for outputting composite analogue video and stereo RCA audio, mini-USB, and a mini-HDMI socket. Underneath a flap on the bottom is the SD slot, positioned alongside the compartment for the removable battery. You also get a small selection of extras in the box, which is another surprise considering the H30’s price. In particular, Toshiba bundles a cable so you can hook up the H30’s mini-HDMI to the full-sized HDMI found on an HDTV. There’s also a little pouch to keep the camcorder in.

In sunny outdoor conditions, the H30 shoots decent enough video. Colour fidelity is good, and there is sufficient detail, although compression is relatively aggressive so there is some softness to the picture. However, performance in low light lets the side down. The picture becomes dark and grainy more quickly than most Full HD camcorders as illumination drops. You can improve things noticeably using the Digital Light mode and Night scene setting. However, low light image quality is still significantly behind our favourite low-cost Full HD models, such as Sony’s Handycam HDR-CX105E and JVC’s Everio GZ-HD300, even if these are considerably more expensive.

Verdict
It would be churlish to be too critical of any camcorder shooting Full HD for £180, and the Toshiba Camileo H30 does offer some impressive features for its price. In particular, you will be hard pressed to find another camcorder at this price with an optical zoom as well. However, the H30’s poor low light shooting will make it far from ideal for capturing social gatherings in badly lit indoor locations, which is frequently the issue with low-cost camcorders. So whilst it still offers plenty for your money, a key capability is missing for the target audience.