RCA EZ5000R Palm Style 720p High Definition Digital Camcorder with 4x Optical Zoom 4 Inch LCD Scree

I have had 2 of these now and they both have been defective. They work fine, but the screen that you view through doesn't work properly. The first time I received this product the screen showed up as if it was upside down and it was in black and white. The second one I received also was a problem with the view screen. It worked fine initially, but then it went black. Doesn't show any picture at all.

So i needed a cheap camera, and i needed them to be fairly easy to use, and to be honest disposable.. I didn't expect much from them when i bought them. I purchased 3 in April of 2010, i used them in a harsh environment, firearms and concussions were prevalent. we dropped them, mounted them improperly, and generally were surprised how well they hold up. In fact i still own them, and continue to use them. The file it captures video is .FLV, it captures about 30 minutes at about 1GB in 720p, which for editing on my computer is perfect, and uploading on facebook is a breeze. Video Quality is great, it's not interlaced, no lines, specks, or hums, very clear all the time. Operation is VEEEERRRY Simple.. 1 power button, 1 GIANT red record button, and a zoom toggle on top, and a switch from HD to web.. (I've never switched it to web as the file size is awesome in HD.)

Cons: Focus is tricky, there is no way to manually focus the camera, and it has the worst image selection software I've seen.. basically what that means is your taking video of your kids frolicking in the back yard pool, and the bush your standing next to, a leaf is in the foreground of the shot.. despite it being in the corner, consisting of 5% of the shot, the camera will stubbornly focus on that leaf.. and ignore everything else..

Camera mount that comes with this, is standard to all camera, and will work with every camera mounting hardware commercially available, the only issue is it's mounted ALL THE WAY to the front of the camera, see the grey strip in the image, where the lens is, it's that far up on the body, leaving the rest of the camera to precariously hang over the edge of whatever you mounted it to.. all the weight of the camera placed on this tiny point at the front of the camera.. needless to say all of them are broken, they never broke free and dropped the camera, but thay have broken from whatever internal mountings held it together so that the mount just spins in place and never tightens, and even if it does the camera wobbles at that point.. so it's basically a hand held..

Audio is fine i have NO gripes, it just suffers from the same thing EVERY handheld suffers from, the mics aren't insulated, so every time you touch or tap the camera, it sounds like a truck hit the camera man, and when the wind blows, it's all you'll hear.. we solved the wind issue by placing some fuzzy insulation from a hard drive packing foam, over the mics, got rid of any wind glare.. I've had to do it on a lot of cameras.. nothing particular to this one..

I think i payed around $100bucks for them a piece.. NO they aren't Steven Spielberg IMAX cameras, and yes their cheap, but they are damn hardy, and you will get what you pay for. a very simple camera, that works well, no bells or whistles.

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