An HD camcorder in your pocket

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 05/22/2006 12:49 PM  |  Life

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

It's amazing to see how digital cameras have transformed the world of photography. Even professional photographers now find their fanatical devotion to film shaken.

Photographs on important documents and ID cards, including passports, are now printed directly on the page thanks to the use of digital cameras. (That doesn't mean forgery is no longer possible, though.)

Digital cameras have come down in size, too. Now there are cameras that are almost as small as a pack of throat lozenges. Not only that, camcorders that fit in your pocket are also becoming common.

Remember the first Sanyo Xacti digital video camera recorder I reviewed a couple of years ago? Earlier this year, during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Sanyo made news by winning the CNet Best of CES Award in the Digital Photo and Video Category with its new High Definition (HD) video camera, which has a similar design to the one I wrote about earlier. The Xacti VPC HD-1 was the world's first HD-capable consumer camcorder in a compact format (JVC claimed that its GR-HD1 was the first consumer HD camcorder, but it certainly would not fit in your shirt pocket).

Actually the HD feature is a bit too advanced for us in Indonesia today, especially since we do not currently have a lot of the supporting technology needed to take full advantage of it. For example, you cannot use a regular DVD burner to record HD video. You also need an HDTV monitor to play it back. Still, this new pocket camcorder comes with a lot of good things -- as well as a couple of things that could still be improved.

I was able to play around with the new Xacti HD-1 from Sanyo courtesy of Datascrip, which distributes both Sanyo and Canon digital cameras in Indonesia. This particular model was actually launched earlier this year in Jakarta, along with a pair of new projectors from Sanyo.

The small size of this Rp 8.5 million camcorder certainly conceals a lot of features besides just the HD video capture function. First, it has a 10x optical zoom capability, and it can take still pictures with a 5.1 megapixel resolution. You can also turn on the 10x digital zoom function to get a 100x zoom level. As always, digital zoom is not considered as important as optical zoom in digital photography.

You can take still pictures while recording a video. The storage device is a SecureDigital (SD) flash memory card instead of a tape or disc. This is what actually makes this camera's ultra-compact design possible. By the way, currently the largest capacity of SD Card that we can find on the market is 4GB. My demo unit comes with a 1GB card, which should be enough to store up to 20 minutes of HD video.

On top of the lens house is a tiny flash. Press a small button, and it will pop up. It can only be used for still images, though. A feature that I definitely liked about this handsome, dark gray camcorder is the 2.2-inch Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) monitor. It displays sharp images with vibrant colors and perfect contrast. The display does not get washed out in bright sunlight.

The monitor serves as the viewfinder, too. If you want to take a video of yourself, you can to rotate the monitor up to 285 degrees. The camera is smart enough to sense which way the monitor is facing, and the image is adjusted so it doesn't look upside down. A recessed button on the monitor side allows you to switch from HD to normal video.

As often happens, I had to figure things out on my own, since no manual was included in the demo unit. The good news is that the control buttons are intuitively placed on the back of the camera. The shutter button for taking photos is on the left, and the toggle video capture button on the right. In the middle there's a control button for zooming. Below this group of buttons there's a five-way navigation joystick on the left and a menu button on the right. The last button on the back panel lets you choose between playback mode and camera mode. When you change modes, a female voice comes out of the tiny speaker on the right side panel telling you what mode you're in.

You can edit images and video clips on the camera. For example, you can zoom in and pan around an image you've taken. Pressing the shutter button will create a new image file. In video mode, you can combine two video clips into one.

You charge the camera by placing it on its docking station, which also has a USB 2.0 port for PC or Mac. A cable for S-Video output is also included in the box. Other features include MPEG-4 compression technology, PictBridge and Exif printing support, wind noise reduction, stereo recording, super-macro shooting (down to one centimeter), and both auto and manual settings for exposure, ISO level and focus.

What could be improved? As with the previous model, holding this camcorder steady is a challenge -- not because it's heavy but because it's so lightweight! You may need a mini tripod for steadier shots. The videos get even blurrier if you zoom in and out during video capture. There is an image stabilizer you can turn on. Interestingly, you can only have it either in photo mode or in video mode.

Video clips are captured separately each time. If you take ten clips, you'll have ten files. There is no option to continue a previously created video clip. As you can only combine two at a time, to create a continuous video clip of the ten shorter clips you will need to repeat the combining steps over and over using the function on the camera. Each time, you will create a new file. At the end, you will have to erase a lot of temporary files.

HD is still a very niche market. Unless you have the right paraphernalia, you cannot really enjoy the higher resolution of the 720-line progressive scan (720p) that this camera is capable of.

Still, if you train your hand long enough, this camera can be a great pocket camcorder for outdoor activities. I would add, though, that at the same price level you may also find a better-performing alternative.

Xacti HD-1 provides an excellent preview of where video cameras are heading. Its small size, the practicality of recording directly to an SD card, and the ability to capture video clips and photos with one device are just some of its strong points. It would be nice if Sanyo had added a Bluetooth remote control, especially for the zoom function, so that the problem of fuzzy videos could be reduced.

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