Just my feedback after 1 month of usage. I would like to add I got a 16G SDHC for this camera. Another purchase here in Amazon.com.
Features on video recording (my main purpose of buying a v. cam)
1. Anti shake I feel is good, 6 out of 10 rating.
2. Lighting, in the location of no natural sunlight, a fluorescent light fare much better than yellow light. When it gets dark, the picture seems to be grainy.
3. Video format: there are like 5 settings, I only uses the 640x480 30fps SHQ ( it think is stds for Super High Quality?). W/ that format, I can store about 10 hours on 16G card. The 640x480 HQ gives about 15 hours. The rest of format I find no use of.
4. There's no flash working when in recording mode.
5. Battery life for the camera is about 2 hour of constant recording, pausing for occasion photo shoot.
6. During recording, you can take photos, however, depending on your video format setting, the resolution on the photos is automatically corrected. Say my setting, 640x480 at SHQ, during recording, I can only take a 2 MB pixel photo (and no flash). If you set to 640x480 60 fps, it gets down to about 500k pixel.
7. Booting up and shutting down is fairly quickly, about 2 seconds maybe, tho you have to hold down the button until you see the screen comes alive or the LED blink (unlike the canon PS SD400, you just hit the power button and the camera is on)
8. B/c of the water proof feature, the button to activate recording and photo shoot are very clumsy, you have to press really hard for it to activate. Again, unlike SD400, the buttons are light touch.
9. Output out to my laptop, the USB cable is proprietor by Sanyo. Don't lose it. I have no card reader so I plug the USB cable into the camera. USB plug is next to the battery so every time you need to plug the usb, you have to open the battery compartment. Again, I think it's for waterproof reason.
10. Output using Picasa 3.0, the download speed is about 9.5 to 10 mb / second.
11. Power will be drain during upload to Picasa b/c the USB doesn't charge the camera. Only way to charge it is to unload the battery and plug in the housing charger.
12. Connect the camera to our tv is very easy with the red, yellow tv connector for tv viewing.
13. Photo mode w/ recording stopped is at 8 mega pixel. However, pictures gets quite grainy when it's low light (I think it's due to CMOS technology and not CCD), anti shake for photo shoot is terrible too when it's low light, when it's bright, it's excellent. And no Red Eye function, almost all photos shoot are with red eyes. (use Picasa to auto remove them), one feature I wish they have.
14. Menus are pretty easy, buttons are pretty easy, nothing complicated.
15. This thing is light, to about the weight of a cell phone.
16. 1 thing I get around for this camera to stand by itself it thru tripod, and the square base that comes w/ tripod for quick releases, I use that as the stand (on countertop, etc), as well as a better feel for not dropping the camera.
17. 2 suggestion to make this good. 1. USB to charge the battery when uploading files, 2. Red Eyes reduction, make the flash light goes 3 times.
18. All and all, this cannot really be use as a great camera for the buttons are clumsy, so a hard press would often move/shake the camera and gets blurry images, no red eyes reduction and CMOS tech makes it grainy in low light. Canon SD400 don't do that at all.
19. As a video camera, for $185, I think it's good.
20. Didn't have a change to try out the waterproof, it's winter time here and I haven't got a chance to go to Hawaii yet.Get more detail about Sanyo Xacti VPC-E2 Digital Camcorder and 8 MP Digital Camera (Blue).
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