Category — Digital Camcorders

The folks over at Creative Labs are probably not having such a great week. JR.com last week accidently leaked details on their new compact camcorder series, the Vado. After word got out, the company seemingly scrambled to submit a proper press release and image of the product this week.

Wired noticed the last week that the camcorder appeared out of nowhere on JR. They’re basic review of the product is that it’s merely a clone of the Flip camcorders.

From Wired’s blog:
“It’s a surprise that nobody has done this before. The modest little Flip commands a huge 13% of the entire market, proving the demand for a cheap and cheerful camcorder. We expect that Vado won’t be the first attempt to cut a slice of this cake.”

Can you really blame them for trying to capitalize on the Youtube video phenomenon? Plus, who can argue with the $100 price tag? I’d think these would come in handy when you’re traveling and don’t really care about quality.

Picture Source: JR Blog

At the Black Ghosts concert last night, I saw a hipster with one of those neat-o vertical camcorders.

I think it was a Sanyo Xacti HD1000. It was so sleek and compact, it mesmerized me in all of its simplicity. It put my walkman cell phone camcorder to so much shame that I lost all desire to use it.

Most of the vertical camcorders I’d seen were those cheap Flip Photo or Aiptek ones you can buy at Walgreens. But the Sanyo models seem okay, almost cool even! They film in HD and use decently large flash memory cards. Now, if I could just find $600-$700 dollars lying around, I too could post youtube concert videos like this one.

Technology is really moving fast these days. It’s hard to keep up sometimes. Take flying cameras for example, I had no idea commercials and films have been using flying camera technology for several years already. They’ve even used these gadgets on a few Harry Potter films, The Da Vinci Code, and The Beach.

Films typically use wires and tracks and all sorts of other devices to get difficult shots. But what if you still can’t get a camera close enough to the action? No problem! Just rig up “the methanol-powered Flying Cam, a mini helicopter that can be outfitted with 35mm, 16mm or HD video cameras” to get the job done.

For amateur filmmakers, you could use a helicopter spy cam instead. However, I doubt the video quality would measure up.

Source: People of the Web: Gadgets and Gadflies

Canon released their first line of HD flash camcorders this month, the Canon HF10 and HF100. According to this news source, the two HF models are about the same:

“both camcorders are basically identical, with each featuring Full HD recording (1920×1080 resolution), 12x optical zoom, and the ability to record footage at 24p and 30p frame rates. Optical image stabilization and a 3.3 megapixel CMOS sensor round out the camcorders’ features.”

The HF10 relies on internal memory and/or flash memory cards, while the HF100 operates on memory cards only. Both camcorders are on the pricey side. But since Canon is a reliable brand, it would be a worthwhile investment.

The Canon HF10 starts at $879.

And the HF100 starts at $1099.

Over the weekend, I watched the intriguing First Snow starring Guy Pearce, Piper Perabo, and William Fichter.

It was directed by Mark Fergus, half of the screenwriting team for Children of Men. I really loved that movie, which was totally shafted at last year’s Oscars btw, so First Snow has been sitting in my netflix queue for some time now. I basically had to force myself to watch it yesterday. I won’t lie, it was pretty slow at first.

The movie focuses on Jimmy Stark (Pearce), a floor salesman with big ambitions and a con man feel. While stranded at an auto shop in the desert, he gets a psychic reading out of pure boredom. During the session, the psychic has a sorta seizure and asks for Jimmy to leave. Well, this withheld prediction begins to bug the crap out of Jimmy, especially when some of the early predictions the guy made came true (like getting a promotion and a fluke basketball game win). After tracking the psychic down again, he learns that the psychic predicted that Jimmy wouldn’t live past the first snow. You follow Jimmy along as he tries to make sense of this revelation as it drives him to near madness.

The pacing could be a bit better, but overall I’m glad to have seen it. Definitely a good effort made by a first-time director. I think the cinematography and the acting really held my interest the most. The eerie lighting design and deliberately framed scene composition added to the suspense. I feel it would be quite difficult to reproduce these artistic choices with even the best professional camcorders on the market today.

See the trailer here.