I have been die-hard Canon fan since its first digic.

I am still using SD200, still adequate for any event.

I LOVE the fact, that I can manually select my setting shutter speed (-10 Seconds) specially for night scene etc.

And most of all, I love its ability to take great video, even w/ 60fps. (that's part of the reason I have yet to buy a camcorder.) * yes, as long as w/ highspeed sd card, there is no time limit.

Recently, I accidentally dropped my SD200 intothe river and now looking to buy another compact "video" camera. I was wondering if anyone can suggest one for me. ( no more than US$350-online-price, please )

WAIT!!!!!!! I should ask, is there a camera capable of capture GREAT video w/other format, instead of AVI? (AVI seems to oops up all the memory in very short time)

thanks~

Check out Steve's reviews of the Canon S3 and the Sony H2 and H5.

I have a Sony H5 and it takes great 640 video and it uses mpeg format.

I have also heard that the Canon S3 takes great video, but I don't know what format it uses.

I see...thanks for the suggestion. I will try to search more.

And good to know that Sony use MPEG instead of AVI.


Although I do still preferr "compact" style.

no clue wrote: AVIs can be much more compact than MPEGs. The size of the AVI heavily depends on the used Codec. In their cameras Canon uses the MJPEG Codec. It is ideal for video editing, but produces quite big videos (1.8 MB per second), if you want to avoid compression artifacts. The good news is that these huge videos can be converted to very small DivX videos without any subatantial loss of image quality using Virtualdub and XviD (both are freeware). When I use a tipod my A710 videos become as small as 8 MB per minute and you can play them with any DivX capable DVD player. Without tripod I get about 15 Mb per minute and the quality is still higher than the videos of all non-Canon cameras. Canon cameras simply produce the best videos. The sound is aweful, though.

kassandro wrote: Thanks~

I will continue w/ SD series.

I just found SD600 only $199 at staples this week.