The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group DigiLife DDV-5110B George Skarbek |
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George Skarbek describes his findings with this yet to be released hybrid still and movie solid state Camera |
Recently I acquired an interesting movie camera that incorporated a 5 Mp still
camera, MP3
player and had various extra features. This may be a new direction for cameras
in the not too distant future.
Some of the features of the DDV5110B are:
- Large 6.9 LCD with a perfect 16:9
ratio for viewing and playback
- Image stabilisation
- 5 Mp still camera
- MP3 Player
- Voice recorder
- Microphone and loud speaker
which delivers a lot of volume
- Very long battery life on the
rechargeable Li-ion battery
- Light weight — under 200 g with battery
- Easy-to-use software for editing movies and burning DVDs
- Even has an eBook reader
- Has USB 2 and other I/O ports and comes with cables, remote control, tripod and more.
Storage
A 2 GB SD card enables you to capture movies for nearly two hours at maximum resolution and quality or over four hours at a slightly reduced quality and there is very little difference between the two when you play them back on a large screen. The compression is MPEG4 and it uses DivX. To view the movies on another computer just download the free DivX player. When connected to the computer via a USB cable, the camera appears as just another hard drive.
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Movie formats are 640 x 480 at 30 frames per second (fps) and 320 x 240 also at
30 fps while the aspect ratio can be from 4:3 to 16:9. At the lowest resolution
you can record over 10 hours onto one card but the quality is poor and nobody
would choose it. The battery allows for more than 90 mins of "shooting" but even
at best resolution the movie quality cannot compare with a 3CCD brand name movie
camera costing close to $1000. Quality of the still images is inferior to those from a good, dedicated still camera, but they're acceptable for printing A4 images. At the highest resolution you can take close to 1,000 photos, provided that you don't take any movies or have much MP3 music stored. Increasing the JPG compression slightly does not cause any noticeable drop in image quality but the space available for photos on the 2 GB card increases considerably, enabling you to take more than 1,600 photos. The MP3 player quality is similar to that of medium priced MP3 players but it does not have as many software options. The noticeable omission is that you cannot fast forward within a track. |
The voice recorder is good, has adequate sensitivity and enables you to record
for over 16 hours. Movies, stills and recorded voice files are stored in
automatically created folders.
The Down Side
Some disadvantages are:
- No optical zoom, only an 8x digital zoom
- Cannot zoom while filming
- When there is fast action or movement during filming frames are dropped but
the sound is continuous. My guess is this is because the CPU in the camera
cannot maintain the video compression in these circumstances. This was quote
noticeable when panning the Fl cars at the GP at Albert Park but even normal
panning can result in dropped frames.
- Flash is weak and cannot be forced on. Only Auto mode and off is supported
- There is no lens cap
- Comes with only 64 MB of memory so an additional SD card is required
- SD card size is limited to 2 GB
- Battery life is not displayed during filming
Summary
For users wishing to carry only one small device on holidays to film movies and take stills and listen to music, this product should be considered. For serious photographers the shortcomings caused by the compromises would not be acceptable.
Reprinted from the May 2007 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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