I've had this camera for about a week now and have been loving it ever since. I've used another "flip" camcorder and the Bloggie Touch puts it to shame.Pros:
1. Love the quick on and record. Great for spontaneous videos of the little one.
2. The touch screen interface makes it both useful and fun to use the big screen.
3. The still pictures come out brilliant, when the lighting and focus is good.
4. The battery charges up super fast and stays with you for a whole day of shooting.
5. The image stabilization is good. You can take decent video while walking around and panning too. Note that it is not optical, but electronic SteadyShot stabilization.
6. The lens is very good quality and the pictures are crisp.
7. Really like the "snap picture while recording" feature. I find myself using that feature the most. The video doesn't stall while the picture (full 12M resolution) is being taken and since the focus and exposure are usually locked well while you're in the middle of the video, the pictures come out great.
Cons:
1. In low lighting, there is quite a bit of graininess and using the digital zoom makes it much worse.
2. While the lens is good quality, the auto-focus mechanism is really very slow. If you move around the camera too much before focus has locked on, the auto-focus will almost never lock.
3. What I really miss with this camera is a flash. Even a tiny one would help with low light pictures.
4. Minor annoyance: to preview a picture right after you take it, you have to go through at least two clicks. Sony could have designed it so that it always goes to the last picture taken by default, instead of the thumbnail list of all pictures/video on the device.
I decided to purchase this camera over a still camera that can do video because:
1. This one is dead simple. One button to turn on, one to take video and one to take stills. This makes it both easy and quick to use.
2. This one can do 1080p video and 720p at 60fps.
3. Its under $200 and is smaller than your phone.
4. Its got internal flash and USB connector no more SD cards or cables. 8GB is enough to get you through the day before you can come back to your laptop to dump the pictures.
I decided to purchase this camera over other ones in the same category because:
1. Its got a big display and the touch screen is fun to use.
2. Its got a better lens system than the others.
3. Its got (some) image stabilization.
This little camcorder/camera has a glass face that provides most of the functions with the exception of an one/off button, camera button and another button for start/stop video recording. There is an initial set up prompt menu when you first start the device and a demo video that gets you all excited that you immediately want to play with it!
Pros of this device
1) camera provides photo size of 12megap, 8m, or 2m
2) movie size 1080 (30p), 720 (60p), 720 (30p)
3) camera self timer (2 or 10 minutes)
4) zoom touch
5) camera has a single face recognition
6) delete and view of saved items very easy to navigate
7) mini hdmi to allow view to television
8) auto focus , not fastest response, but if panning slowly, it works great
9) a USB that is neatly stored in body of camera
10) allows for a mini tripod to be attached
11) for each of the saved photo/movie youncan tag it to you tube, facebook, flickr, and prelabeled email addresses.
12) the picture will rotate likemit is an iPhone/touch!
13) volume adjust on playback is great and picks up voices very well.
14) weighs less than iphone4
Con: you have to buy a separate pouch! Does get warm after using for half an hour continuously. This can only be used with windows and is not compatible to Mac! Hmm, not good.( update as of February 2011, software is now available to Mac users to allow download to a MAC! Yeah)
Also, wish there were some rubber gribs around the edge as it can get a little slippery to hold, but you do get use to it and adjust your grip to accomodate it.
Results: even in low lighting, both the camera and camcorder recorded pretty good results. The auto zoom will adjust from a moderate panning speed to avoid blurs. We were quite impressed with how well the auto focus adjusted.
Setting up the software was easy and detected the device immediately. The picture is a little grainy whe using less than 12 megapixel, and the playback on the hd1080 (I, which is what we suspect) was actually not bad on our 46 inch tv!
It is simple to use and I am usually the one that needs the manual and get over whelmed with the numerous functionalities. It was very intuitive and really simple to use for the market it is aimed at: shooting fun footages to share with family and friends.
Update: December 12th: in low light and indoor shoorting: the picture/video can come out with a tinge of yellow. This result will happen if you shoot too quickly without allowing the camera to 'accumulate' a little more light. The results are great for outdoors and very sharp finish (then again this is more for outdoor than indoor! We are still loving how light it is and that with the touch screen you can move the focus and hold the Touch with one hand!
Buy Sony Bloggie Touch Camera, 4-Hour (Black) Now
Consider this to be a rebuttal of the reviews of the Sony Bloggie Touch which were badly written by non-photographers, whiners, people who don't read camera manuals, people who don't understand that a camera needs, YES!, light ... Like flash? Get one of the thousands of cameras that feature automatic, built-in flash. Do you understand that a camera, even one with anti-shake features, must be held as motion-free as possible for best results, particularly in poor light? Video cameras don't use flash. Sorry, incorporating a video light on this camera would at least quadruple it's really handy size. Don't like the touch interface? Are you a Luddite? This is the most fantastic camera interface I have ever used. A touch interface like this is the main feature that makes the iPhone, Touch, and iPad so popular with tens of millions of people worldwide.The focusing is quite satisfactory do you want a ring around the lens so you can focus yourself like twenty years ago? Do you think a very, very small form factor 1080p video/still camera which costs less than $160 with the touch interface making it the most easy-to-use camera of its type must do everything perfectly seeing that no camera is perfect regardless of price or class? I think the ergonomics are superb just as the iPod ergonomics are superb.
I like my iPod Nano for the same reasons I admire the Sony Bloggie Touch design: small, elegant, easy interface, excellent performance within the design constraints imposed by current technology. Attach the wrist loop, hold the Bloggie as instructed in the PDF user manual (did you read that?), practice for 30 seconds and Voilà! Success. If you have a tripod so cheap it doesn't have a vertical flip capability, you have no right speak about tripod use.
My use so far has shown the Bloggie Touch to be everything I hoped it would be in video and stills. I have numerous cameras including Nikon SLRs, Leicas, Fuji, and Canon from the days of film up to the present. Some photos I've posted online have gotten tens of thousands of views. I have been a press photographer. I love cameras and am inclined to say there are no bad cameras, only bad photographers. Having a camera with oneself and knowing how to use it with style and making use of its features, whatever they may be, is the mark of a photographer. You want quicker focus, get a Leica M9 and focus by hand. Get a Nikon D3 and a few thousands of dollars worth of lenses and other accessories to get the features you think the Bloggie Touch should have but doesn't.
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I wanted to like this camera, but it's been a complete disappointment. First and foremost, the automatic focusing is terrible. The image is often out of focus, and there's no way to tell the camera to try focusing again. (Why not add this and handle it like the iphone does? Just touch on the subject you want in focus.) Most portable video cameras like this (e.g. flip and kodak) have fixed focus, and I was looking forward to the Sony's ability to focus, since it helps get better macro shots. Instead, the camera is just constantly hunting for focus and often not getting it.The ergonomics are also a problem. I often want to hold the camera vertically, because it's more comfortable, but still take the usual landscape wide angle footage (again, like my flip and kodak cameras handle it). Instead, the Sony switches to verticle orientation when you hold it vertically. So, you've got to hold it sideways all the time, which isn't wildly comfortable for any length of time.
Adding insult to injury, none of the useful tools for sharing footage online work with the mac (though it will import into imovie).
The touch screen is nice and responsive and the video quality is good when it's in focus (though with the Sony's typical slightly colder color/white balance). But the camera's downsides--particularly the terrible constant focus hunting & missing--far outweigh its pluses.
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This is a sleek little camera, but had some quirks about it that bothered me. The #1 being that if you hold it vertically, you get a lonely strip down the middle of the tv screen instead of a full screen video. I've been recording and playing with this video camera for days, and the only way to not have that was to make sure I started recording holding the camera horizontally. Imagine you're recording a once in a lifetime event, and later you realized you started holding the camera vertically, and the whole video is just a tiny strip down the middle of your tv. That's an "oops!" that will make you mad for a lifetime.
#2: problem with the focus. I've had to do a lot of fiddling around to get it to attempt to focus on anything. Otherwise it would just continue to film unfocused, which is odd. I'm fine with a moment or two to get oriented, but it was just straight up not bothering.
#3: I recorded some 1080 video, and it did not play well on my computer. So far I cannot get the sound/video to sync together which is very frustrating. I'm guessing this is all because my laptop is a couple years old and really not made to play 1080 video. So I think that setting will only turn out to be useful for watching on the tv. Otherwise for facebook uploads and online viewing, I'm going to record in 720 from now on.
Otherwise, it's fairly easy to use, most of it is just common sense. Not too many buttons to get lost in. It will depend which way you're more comfortable holding the camera too, I like holding it vertically but for those horizontal people, this will work well for them. The plus side to holding it this way is that you'd also most likely use two hands, which will stabilize it and make your video less shaky.
When you plug it in to a USB port, the software should automatically load. It was up and running in minutes. The software was simple with no good editing capabilities. When you take a video, you can check mark it to be uploaded to facebook, youtube etc when you plug it in, or just leave it alone and do whatever you like with it manually. The screen size is excellent, but you've got to be careful you don't hit it when you're just holding it since it is a touch screen. It would have been great if they included a little carrying case.
Cute camera, easy to use, but my preference is still the flip.
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