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Olympus Camedia D-510 2MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom Average Customer Review:  Electronics list price: $399.99 US | Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France Editorial Review The basics of the Olympus Camedia D-510 break down pretty easily: 2-megapixel resolution; 3x optical zoom lens with autofocus, built-in flash with red-eye reduction, fill, and slow-syncro modes; and a 1.8-inch LCD screen. There are also some more advanced features to go along with this baseline functionality. Particularly useful is the burst mode, which allows shooting of up to two frames per second. Also, a QuickTime movie mode lets you capture up to 66 seconds of footage. There are a number of special effects, including monochrome, sepia, and re-size. Images are generally captured as JPEGs, but you can also choose to use the uncompressed TIFF mode. Most digital cameras ship with a USB or serial port, and with a set of software drivers that allow you to download your pictures to your computer via an image-editing program. Olympus has gone one step farther, and essentially built the functionality of a USB card-reader into their digital cameras. What this means is that for the newer versions of Windows and the Mac OS, you don't need to install extra software. Simply plug the camera into your computer, which recognizes the camera as a removable drive. You are then free to drag-and-drop your pictures wherever you like. Power requirements are standard at four AA, or two CR-V3 lithium batteries. The D-510 uses SmartMedia cards, and ships with an 8 MB card. ... Read more Features Reviews (78)
I will not buy another Olympus digital camera unless I am convinced they fixed such defects. ... Read more Asin: B00005B6TI |
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Versatile Camera
The green of nature is missing from the pictures.
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Canon GL1 MiniDV Digital Camcorder with Lens & Optical Image Stabilization Average Customer Review: Electronics list price: $2,699.00 US | Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France Editorial Review The Canon GL1 (and its big brother, the XL1) are helping to blur the line between consumer and professional video equipment. This camcorder borrows most of the professional-quality components from the XL1 and puts them into a more compact, affordable camera. Though it's small enough to carry around and doesn't cost much more than a top-of-the-line consumer camcorder, the GL1 produces such high-quality results that it could be used as a broadcast videocamera. Great movies start with great CCD sensors, and Canon cuts no corners here. For the best possible picture quality, they use three separate 270,000-pixel CCDs (one for each primary color). To further improve image detail, Canon has intentionally shifted the green CCD half a pixel horizontally and vertically. This shift allows more accurate interpolation, resulting in an image that Canon claims rivals those from cameras with 410,000-pixel CCDs. Each pixel is 72 square microns, which is about 1.5 times the size as those in competingcamcorders. This increased size increases light sensitivity, allowing you to shoot in lower-light situations. Ultimately, the larger pixel size results in an improvement of 4 dB loss budget in sensitivity. For great optical quality, the GL1 uses a fixed (nonremovable) 20x optical (100x digital) zoom L-series fluorite lens. The fluorite element in the lens increases sharpness and contrast, as well as helping to preserve color fidelity. Audio is recorded through the built-in microphone, which features two pairs of pickup elements. Audio can be recorded in 16-bit mode on two channels on one track. Alternatively, audio can be record in 12-bit mode, where the audio track is divided into two, and two channels of audio are recorded onto one track, with the other left over for audio dubbing. The electronics of the GL1 have many advanced features, including a number of programmed AE modes, as well as both shutter and aperture priority modes. There are two different auto modes, one of which allows you to adjust any setting manually, if you want, and the other, which adjusts every setting automatically and lets you adjust nothing. A spotlight mode automatically compensates for lighting difficulties when shooting a subject bathed in a spotlight. Finally, a sand-and-snow mode is designed to prevent dark, underexposed subjects in situations with bright backgrounds--commonly found in sandy and snowy areas. There are also three different shooting modes: normal movie mode, digital photo mode, and frame movie mode. Normal movie mode is for any time you want to shoot video footage. Digital photo mode records a still image for six seconds on the miniDV tape, and also captures any audio, such as a commentary. The frame moviemode records 30 still images per second, but it isn't intended to be used for shooting video. Rather, frame movie mode should be used as burst or continuous shooting mode, as you'd find on a still camera. The GL1 uses an IEEE 1394 port for digital editing and for transferring footage to and from other IEEE 1394-compliant devices. The camcorder also has RCA (composite) audio and video ports, and an S-Video out. The analog inputs allow you to transfer old footage to DV for archiving. Built-in effects include a fader for transitions, black and white, slim, stretch, and strobe. Picture adjustment is also possible; you can adjust camera sharpness, softening orsharpening your subject, as well as the color tone and how dark or light the camera sets the auto-exposure level. ... Read more Features Reviews (21)
It could be said that the GL-1 is among the worst of the best, but that is not a fair way of comparing its features to other camcorders. The GL-1 is top end material, producing similar or equal quality as equipment costing twice as much or more. The lower price mostly reflects the fact that the GL-1 does not have as many features as the more expensive models. It already has more buttons and settings than most of us even want to know exist anyway, so except for professionals and hard-core video fans, we amatures are plenty happy to leave the settings on 'automatic' and simply push the record button. What really matters is the end result, and viewing a video on your television recorded with the GL-1 looks no different than a video recorded with more expensive models (well, unless you are one of those hard-core types who are very critical, but then too, every camcorder model produces slightly different results, so any differences noticed would be noticed in all). The major end-result difference will be noticed in audio quality. Recording video in a normal room setting is no problem, it comes out great, but in areas with high noise, winds, or too low of sound, the recording is sometimes less than desired. Too loud of noise causes distortion (avoid sitting directly in front of or even behind a rock group's speaker array, even if 75 feet away!), and when the desired sound to be recorded is too quiet, you may hear a slight humming of the camcorder's motor. Many users have solved the problem by purchasing additional audio recording equipment, which is of course an acceptable solution, but one that new owners should be aware of. Every camera of course has it's good points and bad points, and except for the bad points of not-perfect audio, everything else about the GL-1 is good. Good balance, medium weight, easy loading, good battery life (1 hour with the factory battery, other batteries can be bought that will record for over 3 hours), and the appearance does say you are using high-end equipment. All things considered, the GL-1 is right about in the middle, giving better results than all known lower-end models, but not quite as good of results as the more expensive models. The Gl-1 is Goldilock's "just right" choice (sorry, I just had to say that). The Sony camcorder is said to be a little better, close to that of the Canon XL-1, and I did consider it, but at the time I had just overcome a less than favorable experience with a Sony product and I did not want to make another mistake. If you have the money to spare, get the XL-1 just because it's cooler looking, but for fast, easy, quality video, the GL-1 is a great choice.
My favorite feature of this camera is the frame mode ability that allows you to shoot non-interlaced video, with results that are very similar in appearance to film rather than video. After shooting in frame mode and seeing the results, I've yet to shoot interlaced video again. The one thing that this camera lacks is any ability to manually control the audio levels for the internal or external mics, which can sometimes give you less than optimal results in situations where the noise volume fluctuates noticably, or where you are trying to achieve a specific audio effect. Summary - Excellent camera worth the price tag. Across the board, far more features and better quality than all competitors in its class. Probabaly the only camera that can top the GL1 in this class is the GL2.
Asin: B0000507JI |
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A pleased user
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Apple iBook Notebook (600-MHz PowerPC G3, 128 MB RAM, 20 GB hard drive) Average Customer Review: Personal Computers US | Canada | United Kingdom | Germany | France Editorial Review Portable enough to take anywhere, the Apple iBook boasts a solid set of features and a design that will appeal to Mac and PC devotees alike. Weighing in at a mere 4.9pounds and standing 1.35 inches high, it is easily one of the most compact unitson the market. It comes with a 600 MHz PowerPC G3 processor, 128 MB of RAM(expandable to 640 MB), and a 20 GB hard disk. Additional features include acombination CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, a 56K modem, a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet NIC, and a12.1-inch, active-matrix display. The system comes with both the classic Mac OS9 and the slick new Mac OS X operating systems installed. ... Read more Reviews (43)
Asin: B00005RI8Q |
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