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Posted by: skennington Sep 18 2009, 07:56 PM

Check out this little camera. I have been looking at HD camera's in the sub $500 market and think I have landed on this model. For $180 at Wal-Mart, you can get this kind of quality out of it and the reviews for the most part have been positive. I'm sure some quality is suffering somewhere for the price but heck, not a lot you would be wasting if your dissatisfied.


Watch this in HD...

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Sep 18 2009, 08:00 PM

Well the video doesn't look bad at all- on contrary! I also saw some HD Praktica cams for similar price...don't know about quality though.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Sep 19 2009, 12:41 AM

Looks great. I will soon replace my DV cam with something HD, it seems that prices are dropping fast here as well.

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn Sep 19 2009, 12:52 PM

Images look pretty good (although outside with good lighting always shows the best in a camera).

I would say at this price, the only downside is that it doesn't do full resolution 1080i/p but it looks like great value!

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Sep 23 2009, 02:38 PM

Can anyone confirm if this camera is good for GMC lessons? Does it record on SD, does it have Firewire?

Posted by: skennington Sep 23 2009, 02:45 PM

Records on SD card Ivan and you would need to purchase a larger one separately. 16-32gb I would presume. I'm also a bit worried about how it will react under low light conditions. As Andrew mentioned, looks like it performs well in an outdoor environment but what about inside?

Posted by: Vasilije Vukmirovic Sep 23 2009, 04:33 PM

unbelievable! for 200 bucks...

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn Sep 24 2009, 12:29 PM

At this point I'd rather see someone using a decent Mini DV than a cheap HD cam of the same price. From what I have seen so far you should be paying in excess of $500 to get an HD camera that doesn't suffer from some basic drawbacks. That's specifically for GMC instructor use though - an in no way detracts from the incredible value on show here! Also, as time goes on these HD cams are getting better and cheaper so sooner or later this particular piece of advice will be outdated!

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Sep 24 2009, 12:35 PM

Thanks Andrew. I'm planning to get HD cam somewhere around New Year, so I'm asking around now and starting to follow the cams that are available. I hope their prices will get down a bit so they are more available.

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Sep 28 2009, 08:23 PM

Yeah this is so true! I guess we should only stick to good and proven (more expansive cams) from brands like Sony, Cannon etc. Its not that much in standard (SD, HD) rather in quality of optics and sensors and there are very good miniDV cams that still cost 2000$+ and they are no way inferior to HD cams (ones that are in lower price range). HD is the future though, here believe it or not TV stations are still broadcasting in SD but there is some deadline I think when they will transfer to HD (in 2-3 years I think).

Though cheap camcorders can look tempting and some work well for home videos, youtube stuff etc which is cool. For that purpose web cams do the job well too, so why not cheap camcorder

Posted by: edguy Sep 28 2009, 08:39 PM

Well i also own a cheap HD cam from aiptek. It's called Aiptek AHD H5 Extreme

What i found out till now is that with daylight you get a real good pcitur and everything is nice. Inside a flat or something it's hard to get that ultra clear picture. The bad thing abput this cam is that it has no picture stabilisation so your movies are shaky. But when you use a tripod it works well.

So i am very satisfied with this cam and it was a good cheap price. I think something about 170 €

here is an example from inside light conditions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwA1wS7EhOk&feature=player_embedded

My cam can do the full HD resolution but i think in this video i converted it to 720p.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Sep 29 2009, 11:59 AM

That is very interesting. I would like to hear more experiences with these cheap HD cams, and some comparisons perhaps.

I understand that using a cheap HD camcoder is not desireable, but these days you can find webcams that can push the quality on a fairly reasonable level. What is the exact problem with cheap HD camcoders then? I use cheap DV camcoder for the lessons, and the picture is good enough I believe. If I had a bit more expensive DV camera, the picture would be very similar, if not the same after the compression into Flash. I use 1.5KW of light anyway, so this is not the issue, any cam will have enough light - if the setup on the cam itself is properly made.

I would ask someone who has bigger experience in HD field (I'm a relatively noobish there) to explain what are exact problems with cheap HD cams that cannot be overcomed when recording GMC lessons (only for this purpose I'm getting the cam anyway).

Posted by: David Wallimann Sep 29 2009, 04:11 PM

I'm with Ivan on this, I'm very interested in hearing people's thoughts on this.
I can't spend too much money and this option seems good, but would it be better than what I am using now (standard camcorder with built in harddrive...)

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Sep 29 2009, 10:52 PM

That looks very good man! Don't worry about low light conditions, many and much more expensive camcorders just can't capture well in low light and you get noise and grain in the picture. But you can easily fix that by adding more lights (camcorders need A LOT of them). They will really make a difference. Do you possibly have any clips in HD which you recorded in bright daylight outside?

Posted by: Rated Htr Oct 15 2009, 11:05 AM

wish I had seen this topic before buying my camera :/

Posted by: Chris Evans Oct 15 2009, 11:28 AM

Personally I wouldnt touch it with a barge pole, I had a slgihtly older model Xacti HD camera, actually not bad but .... the Sanyo support is absolutley terrible, when I had a probelm with USB connection to my PC I never heard anything back from them (4 emails in total), I had more help from guys on this forum, unfortunatly it never solved my problem, the camera then just stopped working, and has since been thrown into a cupboard and I`ve bought a new camera.

The connection problem is fairly common apparently, your computer no longer recognises the camera, despite all valliant efforts and suggestions from people nothing worked, it didnt even work when I bought a new computer, worthless rubbish imo, I had to buy a seperate card reader in the end to transfer videos to my computer for editing.

will never be on my purchase list again

Posted by: Matt23 Oct 15 2009, 11:44 AM

That happened with my Canon camcorder.

Posted by: skennington Oct 15 2009, 01:30 PM

Thanks for that feedback Chris, glad I went a different direction now. I still bought a cheaper camera but went with the Samsung SC MX-20. Lets hope it don't have issues...

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Oct 15 2009, 11:48 PM

Thanks for info man! I guess the cam has some quality issues, which are gamble since the cam is significantly cheaper and may as well last forever... Similar with some products from Behringer company

Though USB problem you mentioned, that same thing happened on my friends Sony miniDV cam which was only a year old. Though it was not the same (its the firewire that broke) but same thing happens- PC doesen't recognize it...IS there any solution you stumbuled upon while investigating your problem that may be useful in this case?

Cheers

Posted by: Daniel Realpe Dec 3 2009, 03:38 AM

I'm sure that with proper lightening this camera can do wonders,

I love japanese music

Posted by: Todd Simpson Mar 31 2010, 10:15 PM

This is a great little camera for the price. It does suffer from the usual problems cameras in this price range face, low light, movement, etc. but at this price point it's hard to beat. Tapeless, good resolution, etc. It's by no means a pro camera but for day to day stuff I think you will be happy with it.

Todd