I've owned several video cameras in my time. Including one other from Sanyo. They were, of course, all standard definition.I've only had four days of playing with this, but I can say that the quality of the videos and stills are excellent. I had seen some sample videos posted from this camera, but they mostly violated general rules of good photos/video. They were shooting towards the sun; they were using bad lighting, etc. The results I'm getting from this are awesome with simple common sense logic of shooting with the sun behind me and getting close and tight on the subject (usually my kid).
Mathematically, there is 3 times the number of pixels in a 720p video versus standard definitions 640x480 resolution. Definition is defined as a combination of the resolution and contrast in the image. So if you shoot in 720p mode and have reasonably good lighting to create contrast, you get AMAZING results. I have also shot indoors in lower than stellar lighting and get very good results.
As far as functionality, the camera fits brilliantly in the palm of my hand and is easily controlled with just my thumb. Two buttons allow me to decide if I want to shoot video or still images (stills are 5.1 MP). The middle toggle controls the zoom. If you want to change whether you are shooting HD or SD, simply press one button and you get visual and audio confirmation of which mode you are in. The pop-up flash is sufficiently bright enough for still images (however, unfortunately is not a constant light for video works only as a flash for stills).
I've often wondered if the video of my son's first years, shot in standard definition, will be considered as poor of quality as the 8mm film that was shot of me when I was a kid. Think about it, it will always be 4:3 square ratio creating those big black bands on the left and right when played on today's widescreen HD TVs. If you have a newborn now, I'd shoot in the format of the TV's today (720p 16:9 widescreen).
The camera comes with more than you will probably need or use. It has a remote control (great for video playback). It has component connections to connect directly to HDTV sets. It has a USB cable, S/AV cable, semi-hard case, strap, and a few other things. No SD card though, but those have gotten so inexpensive anyway.
Also, it only weighs 1/2 a pound. Compare that to the video camera I used to toss in the diaper bag or my wife's purse that weighed 5 pounds.
You'll need at least a 1GB card to shoot high-definition. I'm using a 2GB card. Their are 4GB cards out there, but wait until the brand names release 4GB. Most of the 4GB out there today were on the market 6 months prior to the FAT32 standard (required to go above 2GB) was ratified. Therefore, I'm not about to trust that they will work. 2GB is also plenty of time for the moment.
I highly recommend using the Xacti HD1. I'm having a blast with it. And I can't describe the faces people make when you tell them that this awesome looking camera is shooting "High Def"!!!
HD 30fps 720p
SD 60fps!! (yeah, you heard it... 60 fps for fast action slo mo)
record to SD (no more hideous tape!!)
great still performance
excellent controls
decent lens
less than $1000
Well, the Sanyo HD1 hits on all factors. The quality is simply amazing folks. It is FAR FAR better on HD and SD than my Canon miniDV. There simply is no comparison in the detail. I find uncompressed miniDV picture noisy, grainy and blurry in comparison.
The still quality is also quite decent, on par with my Sony DSC's.
What are the downsides?
image stabilization degrades the movie image, and thus I keep it turned off. This is the single biggest nit with this unit. However, I will HAPPILY trade shakiness in the image for the vast improvement in movie detail. You can remedy the shakiness with a mono/tripod, but you can't remedy movie detail if it's not there to begin with!
still image camera processor isn't as intelligent as the best still camera. So as you hit low light or very bright conditions, the pics may suffer in comparison with a true dedicated DSC solution. However, the quality is very good and for a casual carryound camera, IMO, quite adequate.
Conclusion: the best camera you can buy is the camera you have with you. I own a Canon EOS Rebel XT. I never have it with me when I need it. I would buy a true high-end HD cam, but also I would never have that bulky monster with me when I need it.
The HD1 can stay in your pocket every day of your vacation or weekend, in your briefcase or computer case 24x7, and it is always there, ready to go. Now mix in high quality HD. And the lack of performance in the image stabilization is totally offset by the advantage that you are now equipped to sieze on the photo or movie op any time it may come up.
Most important after the HD movie capture feature is the recording to SD card. This is absolutely a requirement going forward. Having messed around with miniDV tapes, rewinding, forwarding, breaking up movies into clips (something Windows MovieMaker 2 can NOT do by itself) is such a time consuming PAIN. SD based camcorders will automatically record all movie clips as individual files on the SD card, making viewing and editing a painless pleasure, especially when coming from the miniDV world.
One last thing: you can't take out the SD card and plug it into a PC directly. The SD card is not formatted for Windows. You can read the SD just like any hard disk, but to do so, you have to plug in the camera (with the SD card in the camera) into your USB port on the PC, and then tell the camera to act as a card reader... then you will see a drive on My Computers and you can suck off all the video and pics using any Windows utility whatsoever.
Sanyo, congratulations on taking a risk and making it pay off. I love this product.
We can certainly look forward to much advances in this area, with low power MPEG4 encoding chips arriving that will encode up to 20Mbps or more and with much better image stabilization. The HD1 encodes at around 9Mbps. I confirmed this by examining the playback stream in Windows. So if you want to wait another year or two, you will be well rewarded for your patience with great advances in the category of hand held micro HD camcorders. Great time to be a photo/video buff.
edit: one other suggestion. There websites you can visit for more info on the best settings for your HD1. Unlike other reviewers here, I have had fantastic results on indoor video. Some of these sites feature video example downloads so you can see for yourself the quality and the extent of the image stabilization problem. I myself don't feel the need to have a tripod, though I will put on a quick attach monopod mount for the times when I want that extra improvement in image stability.
Buy Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1 5.1MP MPEG-4 High Definition Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom Now
The main reason I purchased this camera is because I was looking for a good "all in one" camera/camcorder solution. I chose the Sanyo because it's affordable (compared to any other HD camcorder), I wanted to shoot in High-Def Widescreen, and the still camera offered a decent amount of mega pixels (5) as well as a nice optical zoom (10x).Size I travel all the time so the camera's small size is a huge bonus for me. It's small enough to put in a pocket, though it feels a little fragile, so you might have second thoughts about putting an $800 camera unprotected in your pockets or purse.
Cost My old digital camera was 3.1 mega pixels and had a 5x optical zoom; my old camcorder was analog, so it was a pain to transfer video. I wanted to replace both and this was by far the most "bang for the buck" I could find.
Video Quality If you're outside and it's nice and bright, the picture looks really nice though you'll see quite a bit of compression artifacts when watching your video on a large display. If it's dark, you're going to have to work hard to get good results. Even after tweaking the settings to adjust for low light, I could best describe the results as "slightly disappointing." Footage shot in the dark is very grainy and doesn't look HD at all. I read the reviews where people said that the camera performed poorly in low light, but I assumed that these people were shooting in dark rooms with the only light being a lamp 15 feet away. That's not the case. When people say it doesn't do well in low light, they mean "It doesn't do well anywhere indoors that's light less than your standard office building." The auto focus is pretty slow, especially in low light, where it often doesn't work at all. Oh yeah, you can shoot Standard Def video with this as well, but if you're looking to do that, there's no point in this camera you can find much better standard def cameras for much cheaper. There is an image stabilization option, but even with it on, the video was pretty shaky. You can use a tri-pod of course, but if you got the camera due to its small size, you're probably not interested in lugging around more equipment.
Recording Length and Battery Life With a 2Gig memory card you only get 28 minutes of HD HQ shooting, which is 9MB per second. A second HD option gives you over 40 minutes, but it's only 6MB per second. The 9MD footage looks pretty compressed as it is, so you're probably not going to want to mess with anything less. The batter lasts about an hour perhaps a little longer.
Sound The camera uses two small microphones located on the back of the OLED display to record in stereo, and the results are solid, if unspectacular. I haven't noticed the zoom motor noise in my recordings, but I honestly wasn't looking for it. There's a handy wind-noise reduction option that works pretty well.
Display The OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display looks great, and even manages to remain usable in the bright sun. This is a good thing since there's no other viewfinder.
Still Pictures I haven't really taken a whole lot of still pictures, but I've been pretty happy with the results. The camera claims to take 10megapixels stills, but they are basically upconverted from 5MP. There is a flash on the camera that can only be used for stills it doesn't work as a constant light source when filming. The best thing about the stills is that you can shoot them while filming, which is something I never thought about before I bought the camera, but it's a nice feature.
Editing The software that comes with the camera is pretty bare-bones, so you're going to want to invest in a better (more expensive) solution. I am using Vegas Movie Studio 6, which supports HD editing. If you have any interest in sharing your videos, you'll need to use a program like this to get your videos down to a reasonable size.
Other Random Thoughts:
The manual is lousy and does a poor job of explaining features.
The on screen menu navigation is difficult.
You can't see your changes to video settings in real time on the preview display; you have to record something to see what you did.
In addition to the camera, you get a nice case, a docking station, some video cables, and a remote control.
A 2GB stick is the smallest you're going to want to get. Even a 2 gig card isn't big enough, but I've heard enough people say the 4GB cards currently on the market aren't reliable enough to purchase, that I'd recommend waiting until the new crop of 4GB cards is released and affordable.
Transferring video to your PC is done via a USB cable that plugs into the dock, or into an adapter which then plugs into the camera. The little adapter is tiny and there's a 90% chance of me losing it in the next 6 months. Why couldn't the USB and power cable plug right into the bottom of the camera?
Final Thoughts:
I've got mixed feelings on the Sanyo Xacti CPC-HD1. On one hand, it's an affordable solution for someone that only wants to carry one camera around with them. On the other hand, the picture quality is pretty disappointing, particularly the low light performance. I'm experiencing a little bit of "buyer's remorse" but I find comfort in knowing that even with its many flaws, it's probably the best I can do for $800 ($900 if you include the price of a memory card).
If you're looking to see the camera in action, this page has some stills and short video clips you can check out:
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/hd1_samples.htmlI don't do reviews...but I was disappointed enough that I thought it might be helpful to hear my experience.
I saw this beauty and thought "this has it all!" If you're looking for either a still digital camera or video unit, this one will probably catch your eye. I originally liked the concept so much I bought another for my wife...then we tried to use it.
#1) Unless you're using a tripod...the stills are awful, even with the image stabilization feature. Nearly every photo on a sun-lit patio was blurred despite resting an arm on a table to hold the camera steady. This happened to everyone that we passed the camera. I could see one person being "shakey" and blurring a shot, but not everyone.
#2) The camera would mysteriously lock-up and display "System Error"...this happened on my wife's camera the first day we attempted to use it
#3) In low-light or an average lit room, it was impossible to get the camera to focus. I'm not talking about midnight in the woods low-light...I'm talking about in our living room with 6 overhead floods and the ceiling fan spotlights.
#4) The camera gets quirky if you attempt to do anything too quickly. Like switch from record to play, take a picture immediately while recording, or switching over to the voice recorder mode from recording mode.
As you can see, we had several issues (one of which appeared to be specific to a single camera..."system error"). I was sold based upon the hand-held size, the 10x optical zoom, 5 Megapixel, and hi-def. I never got as far as viewing the hi-def video, but other reviewers say its not really hi-def, so I believe them. This camera is a great concept, but I think its not quite there. Almost seems like they released it to market a bit early without doing more testing by average camera users.
Hope this helps your buying decision. I bought 2, and returned both within two weeks.
Want Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1 5.1MP MPEG-4 High Definition Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom Discount?
I was one of the people who saw this camera at CES in January and was so impressed that I preordered it immediately after the show. I received it two months ago, and have quickly realized that the potential was way better than the actual ability of the unit.My gripes:
1) Bought the 4GB card from PQ1 (used in Steve's Digicam review) video didn't work for more than 2 seconds. Had to figure out on my own that the card needed to be formatted inside the camera to make it work. Fortunately, that one is now solved.
2) HD quality is a joke. I'm in the audio/video industry and if you think the camera video will look like your HD cable or satellite picture, you will be EXTREMELY disapointed. Video is acceptable (at best) in brightly lit environments, and is nearly unusable indoors in almost any condition. Photo quality is better, but still not as good as most basic digital still cameras.
3) The autofocus is terribly slow, so if you are recording something and moving around at all with the camera (even when doing a very slow pan), the image is blurry. So, now you really can only use the camera outside on a bright day with a tripod. Not quite what I was expecting.
4) On top of all that, my camera BROKE 2 months in. The LCD screen will no longer display anything in record mode. The LCD is fine playback works and the menus work, but I can't record anything. It's like the lens cover is on all the time, but trust me, it's not (I've checked numerous times to make sure I'm not crazy). Less than 2 months in and I have to send it to "Advanced Audio Video" for service, and they can't really give me an estimate of how long it will take to repair.
I bought this camera because I love HD and my wife is having our first kid in the next six weeks. Now I'll be lucky to have a working camera for the birth, and if I do the quality will be worse than a good standard def model I could have bought for much cheaper. Mine may be going on eBay soon...
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