Its almost perfect, but I had some issues with it. So I will lay out what I thought were faults, and then lead into what I thought is great about the camera. Just as a preface, I am not an expert on cameras, so I hope this will be a "non-tech-friendly" kind of review.
First, while the design looks cool, it's not as easy to handle as one may think. Basically, once you open the digital viewfinder, the camera needs to be held like a gun. So your grip is around the waist holding it, rather than some of the more traditional models, where its like a circular barrel that you hold your hands over the top. The controls are all at the reach of the thumb. There is a button for photo, video, zoom, menu and selections. In my opinion, the design of this seems a little awkward. I felt, if you are going to make a gun-style camera, the zoom should be at an easier access point, like where the trigger would be. Not so. Overall I had little use for the zoom.
The buttons they do have are small and feel like I need to press them hard to get them to activate. Especially the menu and photo button. They wobble in place and I keep thinking I am going to break these buttons pressing too hard.
A few things about the photo part. I took some photos with it. Some were nice, some were not. Most of the shots I took seemed to come out really grainy. I am not sure if its my settings. I have some photography knowledge of indoor/outdoor and ISO film, etc. So I played with those settings, but I still felt like everything was coming up grainy. I hope its my own settings thats the problem because I was hoping to rid of my digital camera in place of this.
The battery life is a little on the low side. I would say about 2 hours total. Also you have to take the battery out of the camera and into a battery charger. How nice it would be to just plug it in to the wall and let it charge that way.
The software that comes with it is worthless.
On the plus side of this camera. It is really responsive. The videos are clean, takes nice long videos. I shot one for about 30 minutes and playback was perfect. No drops in voice or video. Quality was sharp and picture size was big (not certain of the specs on the video playback). Its entirely digital and uses an SD card for storing information.
I have used the camera on both PC and Mac and its easy to get the info. The PC creates a new drive and you can access it that way. They are MPG4 files and you can drag and drop them from the SD card onto your hard drive. Quick read, the camera is responsive once you put the USB into the port, the menu on the camera asks if you want to read from the card - clicking the center button on the camera starts it in motion.
On the Mac, it took it, loaded it all up, showed you thumbnails in iPhoto, once you clicked import, it brought them all to its place. Very simple and quick. I like how the Mac handled the info.
The menu offers tons of options in controlling the quality of your image varying size of the image, rate of recording, various settings you might be while recording, etc. And this is for both photo and video. There is a flash installed on the camera as well for your photos, but does not work with the video settings. You can also set it up on a tripod which has a standard sized insert screw-thingy (i dont know what its called).
The camera is also waterproof (not resistant - proof!) You can go into about 5 feet of water. I have no tried this, its been on the chilly side lately, but when I get a chance, I will definitely try some underwater video.
I don't recommend this camera for amateur filmmaking, but definitely for videos with friends or YouTube stuff, or even if you want to practice filmmaking and doing some editing. Despite my criticisms, it is a very friendly camera and easy to use and both PC and Mac are friendly with it as well. It comes with a nifty protector case that wraps around it, and a strap that hooks onto the bottom to hold while you are vacationing or wherever. Very nice camera that performs much better than you might expect. I liked this one a lot and glad I got it!Get more detail about Sanyo Xacti VPC-E2 Digital Camcorder and 8 MP Digital Camera (Blue).
0 comments:
Post a Comment