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 For a while now I'd thought about upgrading my trusty DV camcorder for a new, swanky HD model. I put it off for a while, because the DV cam is just great in low light and I couldn't see anything which really came close in the current crop of AVCHD models.
The one thing which I have started to tire of though, is tape. It's just not a friendly medium when you're on holiday or out on a trip and having to think about how much time you've got left before you change the tape.
Then you've got all that capturing to do before you edit.
Then one day during the autumn, about to fly out the door on a day trip, I thought about taking the camcorder. Did I really want to lug that bag around with the batteries and tapes? Wouldn't it be great to have something I could stick in my pocket, but which still took great video?
Moon on a stick? Maybe.
I did some scouting around on Vimeo for clips recorded with the latest batch of stills cameras, which can record 1280x720 video. Mostly the sound was awful. Video stabilisation was pretty non-existent, especially given the size of the units.
Then I found some clips from the Sony Cybershot T500, and actually thought 'This is not bad'. Low light performance isn't the best, but it had optical image stabilisation and a stereo microphone on the front, and you could zoom in and out while recording (a given on camcorders, but scarce on still cameras).
So I took the plunge. I could critique the footage on a technical level, but I reckon I take more video now than I did with the camcorder, and get better stills along with it.
For me, this device is a decent compromise between gadget and useful device. I often see people filming on their mobile phones, and think 'What's the point?' Surely you can't do anything with it once you've filmed it.
At least with my new T500, I've got pretty good video at the end of the day. Now all I need to decide is if I'm going to render out HD and play it back on my TV with a media player unit (WD TV perhaps) or downscale to SD and keep to the traditional DVD route.
One things for sure, I'm bound to kick myself when this year's models come out with more features and better quality. That's technology for you....
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Comments
Since writing this article, I've sold the T500.
I now have a Panasonic Lumix TZ7, which records AVCHD-Lite at 25fps!! At least one manufacturer is starting to understand that some of us want to edit our clips after we've shot them.