Review Contour has been making a lot of noise recently about the new wireless viewfinder feature for its HD range of helmet cameras. With these units being necessarily small, the idea is that the viewfinder bulk is taken care of by using your phone‘s display, with a Bluetooth connection streaming the pics and video. Simply download a free app and you’re all set.
Environmentally friendly: Contour’s GPS camcorder
The concept is great, however, the current implementation is for iOS devices only, with Android support on the horizon. The cameras themselves (GPS version tested) are impressive pieces of kit. The brushed-metal enclosure slots tightly onto the supplied fixings including the ingenious goggle-mount; skiers and off-road bikers will be most impressed. A few more bundled mounts would have been nice, though the range available separately for your chosen type of extreme, daredevil activity is quite staggering. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Let’s cut to the chase: JVC’s £1,600 GS-TD1 is the most sophisticated 3D camcorder you can buy. While Panasonic may have pioneered DIY 3D moviemaking with its bolt-on 3D accessory lens, this is the first stereoscopic shooter aimed squarely at the pro-sumer. It’s been unabashedly built for 3D from the ground up.
Visual feast: JVC’s Everio GS-TD1 3D camcorder
The GS-TD1 uses a pair of f1.2 lenses, each linked to a 3.32MP 1CMOS sensor. A proprietary imaging system, called Falconbrid, then processes the paired streams to produce 3D video. You have a choice of shooting your footage in a Side-by-Side AVCHD format, or in 1920 x 1080/50i Full HD MP4 MVC, a relation of the MultiView codec used by 3D Blu-ray. Read the rest of this entry »
Review The HDR-TG7VE could be seen as Sony’s answer to cheap and cheerful camcorders like the Flip Mino HD. However, whereas the latter could be viewed as a bit of a toy, the TG7 is more of a proper camcorder – both when it comes to features and price.
Swift shooter: Sony’s HDR-TG7VE
The TG7 is the successor to the TG3, which received an overall rating of 85 per cent when we looked at it last year. It keeps many of the features, such as the pistol grip design and 1080i HD resolution, but adds in some extras too, such as 16GB of internal memory and built in GPS. It also utilises a 1/5in Exmor CMOS sensor.
Sony has kept the titanium casing of the TG3, so it’s very hard wearing, and slimmed it down by a millimetre or two in each dimension so it now measures 30 x 62 x 117mm and weighs in at 280g including battery. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Sometimes, less is more. Take Ricoh’s GR Digital III. It’s a compact Camera costing more than £500, but if you’re looking for masses of megapixels, countless scene modes, HD movie recording or even an optical zoom, then forget it. This is the digital Camera equivalent of the fixed-gear bicycle; a product for enthusiasts who basically want a Camera that can deliver excellent results without the frills.
The quality compact: Ricoh’s GR Digital III
Clearly, the GR Digital III isn’t aimed at the average consumer expecting all the bells and whistles for a couple of hundred quid. Instead, it’s designed for the DSLR user or advanced enthusiast who feels more at ease carrying a quality compact in his or her pocket than ever sallying forth cameraless. So it is worth investing in a fixed-focal length compact that costs more than some entry-level DSLRs? You might be surprised.
The GR Digital III is a successor to the GR Digital II, launched back in November 2007. Both cameras have many similarities, including a sleek, black metal alloy body with a large rubberized grip. Yet the GR Digital III has a number of enhancements including, a new F1.9, 6.0 mm lens which is equivalent to 28 mm on a 35 mm film Camera. The new GR Engine III image processor has improved noise reduction, and the Camera features a large 3in LCD screen composed of 920,000 dots.
Beneath the skin you’ll find a pop-up flash, plus a 10Mp 1/1.7in CCD with an ISO range of 64-1600. The GR Digital III shutter speeds span 180-1/2000sec and it shoots in JPEG and RAW (Adobe DNG) formats, although there’s no option for simultaneous capture in both formats. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Panasonic’s DMC-TZ7 has been around for a while now, although the company maintains it in its current range. It’s not surprising, because it’s one of the few compact super-zooms on the market that includes HD recording – its closest rival is Canon’s PowerShot SX200 IS.
Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-TZ7
The DMC-TZ7 is what you might call a travel-cam or a holiday-cam. It’s a digital compact with an extended zoom, in this case, a 12x optical zoom in the shape of a 4.1-49.2mm f/3.3-4.9 Leica DC Vario-Elmar lens, offering the equivalent range of 25-300mm on a 35mm Camera. The PowerShot SX200 IS has a longer telephoto offering – equivalent to 28-336mm- but we think the DMC-TZ7’s wide angle lens will prove more useful for most photographers.
It also has a 1/2.33-inch CCD comprised of 12.7 megapixels, but only offers 10.1 effective megapixels. The reason is that the DMC-TZ7 offers three aspect ratios – 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9, and it uses the additional pixels to leave the angle of view unchanged, whatever aspect ratio you are shooting in. There’s even a multi-aspect mode that lets you shoot the same image in three different aspect ratios with just a single press of the shutter. Read the rest of this entry »
