Thursday 29th April 2010

Pistolgrip camcorders

You Tube has been celebrating its 5th birthday this month, and is one of the reason for a big increase in sales of handheld camcorders.

Small, light-weight affordable video-recorders, have fed the monster of online videos.

Ciaran O'Byrne has an overview of them for this week's Consumer Technology Review...

Just as the capacity to take photos has helped the mobile phone market, the capacity to take high resolution video and upload it with ease to the net, is driving an increase in sales of hand held lightweight camcorders.

If you imagine how early video images from mobile phones looked - they were VGA images, very grainy, then MPEG quality, and combine that with faster broadband speeds, it makes more sense and it is a lot easier to use these kind of camcorders.

There are two basic design shapes - the small traditional flat barrel shape that sits in your hand as if you were making an "O" shape grip, and the screen flips out sideways, and the pistol grip type, which has a retro image to it, and looks like the handle of a small gun - just as it says. Again, the screen can flip out sideways and twist around on an axle to the front and back.

What are the main functions on them that make them attractive?

Well, most of these models will be dual function cameras, that can take still photos and shoot moving film.

Look out for the specs on the camera - are they High Definition, what is the sensor like for the stills camera function - it should be at least 8 megapixel, and some go up to 14 megapixel, how easy are they to operate - they smaller they are the more cluttered the function buttons can be, what is the sound quality like, some are only in mono, some in stereo, what battery length is there, how much can it store in terms of boths hours of film, and/or still photos, and do they have HDMi sockets as well as USB sockets - so you can link your camera straight to your TV and bore the relatives with your holiday video?

Also, if your priority is to post video to the web, how easily can you do that? Can you edit on the camcorder itself, or does everything have to be transferred to computer, then edited and uploaded.

You have a few examples here in studio...

The Sanyo Xacti VPC-CS1, the Hitachi DZ - HV575E, and the Flip Ultra HD. We'll have the details of these models on the website...

The first is one of the Sanyo "Xacti" range, which consists of 7 different dual use camcorders, all in High Definition, and even one model is waterproof, which I've impressed before as a good idea.

The model here is the VPC-CS1, which is described as a superslim "lifestyle" model - it is very small, almost smaller than a mobile phone, brushed steel finish in silver - pistol grip that takes 8 megapixel photos and full HD film. It has a very fast optical zoom, and even has a sound zoom function where you can focus the mic on one particular subject.

It's a little too small for me which makes use of the funciton buttons a little awkard, but the others in the Sanyo range are all larger, and have much greater ease of use. This model is a little more costly at nearly €299. Some even come with wireless transfer capacity - where some camcorders such as the Sanyos can use the new Eye-Fi SD memory cards, which allow you to transfer directly from your camera to your computer.

The Hitachi model I have is a very handy pistol grip type - a little bigger than that Sanyo, fits nicely in the hand and you have three buttons to use, one to record video, one to take a photo, and a toggle switch to zoom in and out. The stereo sound is very impressive, and it has a flash light below the lens to light up a dark room, which works very well. It is very easy to operate, but also has a touchscreen where you can delve into the settings. The cost should be around €130 to €150.

The Flip Ultra HD is the superstar in the bunch, with celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson apparently loving them.

The basic premise of it is that is a small but chunky very simple camcorder - that is extremely easy to use and has a built in USB key that flips out of the side so you can load your video directly to your computer. You have only three buttons - one button to record and stop recording, and a button to play video, and another one to delete footage. That's it.

It's only downsides are a relatively small screen, no headphone connection, and an internal only memory (which lasts 2 hours), but you cannot add to it with plug in SD cards.

The Flip HD from websites such as expansys.ie for around €140 to €150 including postage and packaging.