Camera / camcorder

[igorek]

I am looking for a still camera ( > 4Mp, zoom > 5) that also can take movie clips (at least 320x240, preferably 640x480). Recent Canon Powershots have Ok movie capabilities (not limited to 3 mins as in earlier models, 640x480), but there is a problem: zoom cannot be changed while a movie is being shot, which is an enourmous deficiency IMHO.

Will highly appreciate any suggestions.

[thecoalman]

From the reviews I've read if I was going to purchase a cpombo unit I'd be looking the JVC Everio series.

However they are not cheap and record in MPEG which is no comparison to mini-dv. I've no doubt the still camera feature is no comparison to decnet still camera either. Best advice is get a device for each function. They don't make still cameras that take good video and vice versa.

[diven]

Take a look at the Canon S3 IS (6 MP) or you may still be able to find the older S2 IS (5 MP). Both have 12x zoom, and movie clips at 640x480 (at 15 or 30 fps) and can be zoomed while recording. The only limitation is that the size of the movie can't exceed 1GB, which translates to a bit more than 8 minutes at the highest setting.

I believe the main reason that most cameras don't allow you zoom is because of the noise the zooming mechanism get recorded. These two have something called "ultrasonic zoom" which is virtually silent.

I've had the S2 IS for a bit over a year and really love it. I've had no problems so far.

Enjoy!

[MJA]

from http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/s3is.html

"Movie Recording pixels/Frame Rate

640 x 480 pixels (30 frames/sec.)
640 x 480 pixels (15 frames/sec.)
320 x 240 pixels (60 frames/sec.)
320 x 240 pixels (30 frames/sec.)
320 x 240 pixels (15 frames/sec.)
Recording can continue until the memory card is full*
(Max. Clip Size at one time: 1 GB)**
* Using super high-speed memory cards
(SDC-512MSH recommended).
** Even if the clip size has not reached 1 GB, recording will stop at the moment the clip length reaches 1 hour. Depending on the volume and data writing speed of the memory card, recording will stop before reaching 1 hour or before the recorded data volume has reached 1 GB."

[edDV]

Interesting that zoom is defeated in movie mode. I never tried that. Maybe the 50x compression rejects real time zoom? Exploding pixels?

[igorek]

Thanks guys. When you are talking about 1GB or 1hr limit, this is only for one clip, correct ? I hope it does not affect the total length of all recordings on the same card.

The reason I am asking is that my Powershot, in addition to the disabled zoom, refuses to record more than 999 seconds total (all clips together) on the same Compact flash ! I suspect this is a bug in their software (they reserved just 3 decimal positions for the total movie length, and keep saving it somewhere in a file on the card).

[igorek]

1GB per 8mins (or 16 Mbits per second) sounds like extremely wasteful for MPEG. I beleive that 2 Mbits per second stream provides pretty much perfect quality at 640 X 480 format.

I noticed that my Powershot writes at 250KB per second (2 Mbits/s), but the image quality is substantially worse than a video stream of 600 Kbits/s I am watching from the Internet. I guess these cameras just don't want to invest in a good compression.

[diven]

I've read that you can record multiple 1GB videos on the card. One person claims to have gotten about 33 min on a 4GB card with an S3. I only have a 1GB card myself, so I can't personally vouch for this though.

These don't record to MPEG. I believe they use Motion JPEG, which is less efficient space-wise.

[igorek]

I see. In this case the whole thing seems impractical: S3 IS weighs more than my current Powershot and my old mini-DV camcorder together :), plus paying $30 for a 2GB card and getting just 15 mins of recording out of it does not make sense when an hour-long mini-DV is just $2-3.

[guns1inger]

No still camera seriously competes with a mini DV camera for quality, features or resolution. if you really want video, use a video camera.

[trhouse]

I recently bought a second digital camera, a Nikon L6 for $97 on clearance. It creates Quicktime .mov movie files. Quicktime 7 introduced in 2005 is said to be mpeg4 compliant. Just to test, a eight second clip made at 640 by 480 resolution and 30 fps came out to be 9.14 MB or about 1 MB/ sec.

The manual for the camera only mentions SD cards up to 1 GB, but the store allowed me to try a 2 GB card and it worked. The 2 GB, X60 card was $16 so prices are dropping. It shows about 30 minutes of record time at 640 by 480 and 30 fps. It can zoom during record but you can hear the noise. The camera itself is tiny but the zoom is only X3.

Here is a 1.75 MB clip with it zooming. This web site has a 2 MB limit on file uploads so this is about the most I can show.

[edit]The zoom is not optical, it is zooming using digital

dscn0204.mov

P.S. Here is where I bought the card.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=250133

This L5 has a X5 zoom and image stabilization which from my shaky clip might be handy.

http://www.nikonusa.com/template.php?cat=1&grp=2&productNr=25550

[edDV]

1GB per 8mins (or 16 Mbits per second) sounds like extremely wasteful for MPEG. I beleive that 2 Mbits per second stream provides pretty much perfect quality at 640 X 480 format.

I noticed that my Powershot writes at 250KB per second (2 Mbits/s), but the image quality is substantially worse than a video stream of 600 Kbits/s I am watching from the Internet. I guess these cameras just don't want to invest in a good compression.

Most Canon's use MJPEG compression which is highly inefficient vs. mpeg. There is no motion compression, just a sequence of JPEG compressed frames. As such, bitrate needs to be 3x or more vs. MPeg2. All bitrate compression comes from in frame compression.