[Recovered Thread: 30200]

[thkn777]

Oh well - maybe I can throw in a comment here since I am after nearly the same but a bit shifted in the "good picture" direction.

Tried the Fuji F700 and the Canon S1 IS so far, have now a Oly C-770 to test.

Fuji F700: small, easy craddle for picture upload/battery recharge, lens are covered automatically. 3mp pictures with very(!) high compression at the cost of image quality. ISO 200 .. 1600, AF illuminator. Some nice sequence shooting modes. LCD is ok - bad viewable in bright light. Cameras response in quick and the videos are nice. Due to the high ISO value you can take movies also in a more dim light. I was about to buy the cam BUT I couldn't get a SHARP shot in. Pics are not blurry but I missed the special "THAT's it" on it. If you want a pocket cam and can miss a bit sharpness in pics and won't print bigger than A5 - you are fine. Prices are extremely low (got mine for 299,- EURO).

Canon S1 IS: 10 x optical zoom, image stabilizer (IS), nice camera body to hold. Makes good pictures in bright light and good videos with sound where you can use Zoom like in a camcorder. The 15fps movies were a tad better than the 30fps for me - don't know why. It's so close being a camcorder - don't know another cam that comes closer. Even the movie-shutter is likea camcorder one. CONS: Battery usage is not acceptable, especially with IS on. You can charge the battery and continous shoot around 450 - 470 pics. Ok. But I didn't manage to complete a single session 1-2 hours with one battery pack (4x2100mAh NiMh). Lens cap is a joke. And: focus in dim light is terrible. And I mean ISO200/400 with 1/30..1/60. Thats not too dim - isn't it? No focus here - and I tried hard. So for outdoor shots in bright light, long range, camcorder-like handling - go for it! Don't be fooled by "only" 3mp - the picture quality is really nice.

Olympus C-770 UZ: 4mp, 10x optical zoom, MPEG-4 movie 640x480 at 30fps. I managed to get some shots with the "wow" effect on it after only a week. And that with that ... errm ... ugly(?) menu to work with. Camera looks AF in almost dark rooms when I stay at wide angle. And with dark I mean 15s shutter in manual mode and still see only a hint on the picture or fire the flash here and get a sharp picture. Ergonomics arn't as good as with the Canon but not too bad eighter. Fit's my relatively small hands. A bit too much menu use to my taste. Pictures are sharper than with the Canon and with that I mean more "brillant" - colors more on the cool side - have to experiment with menu even more I guess. With just 1090 mAh battery I got 1.5 - 2h heavy duty session covered - everybody told me thats quite normal. Don't worry about the missing IS. I use continuous shooting (with or without AF) and 1 out of 5 or more pics are sharp Leftover can be deleted right away - it's a digicam: right? Drawback: AF faster than Canon in medium/low light, but still pretty slow. Am not sure how the continuous AF works correctly. And now the worst. No sound on movie if you use zoom/AF. So if you disable the internal microfone you have AF and zoom - great. But once you want sound- focus is locked and zoom is locked. I spoke with support and found that an external micro will solve this (see my Oly posts in the Oly section of the board). If you want brillant pics - I'd say the Oly was even better than the Canon. MPEG-4 gives you around 24 mins of video on a 512 MB XD card. Processed to AVI (tool on CD) and from AVI to MPEG-2 (TMPGEnc) looks very good on SVCD. For a camera that is

Any special questions? Just ask.

Hth

[jvigil]

So if I had a large card.. like a 5-something how many mins could I get on the card? What is the largest card I can get? Is it better to get a few smaller ones or 1 large one?



Janell

[thkn777]

well - a normal movie scene isn't that long. Watch a movie and see for yourself. 5 secs .. 10s .. 30s. Continuous 10mins - never saw that.

Smaller card increases response time of cam in terms of "scanning" for images. Get a X-Drive (portable HD solution) and 2-4 medium sized memory cards I'd say and you are fine.

But remember - we speak about a camera - not a camcorder!

[Bloodstrike]

I think this is what you want. Samsungs Duocam a camcorder and digicam in one.



http://www.samsung.com/Products/Camc...oCam/index.htm

Here is a topic about Samsungs new digicam with cellphone functions

http://www.stevesforums.com/forums/v...mp;forum_id=26

[jcdjcd]

I have the few years old Fuji S602 Zoom . It take great pictures and video at 640x480 at 30fps. With my 1 gig cf card, I can take a straight 15 min. video without stopping. Has to be a fast card though.

[marshur]

Have you found anything? I am also looking for a program to [highlight= #ffff88]burn[/highlight] all my small [highlight= #88ffff]video[/highlight] clips in mov, avi, and mpeg files to a cd to be viewed on tv dvd player.

I have searched, and tried many trail programs, and none of them will work.

[marshur]

I finally found a program that would burn my video's and play it on my tv dvd player,
it is here http://www.picturetotv.com/download.htmIt is MoviesOnTV

It has a free trail, and if you like it you can buy it for 39.00:|

As an aside...I bought my Dad a Sony Handycam mdl: TRV308 that I am selling. It's a great Hi-8 video cam that he never could manage to learn to use...probably has 3hrs on it. Anywhoo....

[scnoble]

Take a look at the Konica A200. I use it with the 4 GB Microdrive which gives me up to 1 hour of 640 x 480 VGA movies at 30 fps. The Konica also shoots 800 x 600 SVGA video at 15 fps. Additional important features include "Antishake" image stablization for both movie and still shots and a 7X Optical Zoom from 28 mm to 200 mm (35 mm film camera equivalent). And you can zoom while taking movies! And by the way, it is an excellent 8 Megapixel digicam.

[mrcoons]

I agree. I use my S1 to shoot all my videos that will be under 4 minutes in length rather than my video camera. I burn them to DVD along with ones from the video cam and you cannot tell the difference.