Sanyo Xacti Video Camera
Brad Harris tests a nifty new video camera above and below the surface.
I’m a photographer, gear-freak and even a bit of a techno-nerd, so you can imagine how chuffed I was to try out a new waterproof video camera! The Sanyo Xacti CA65 to be precise. This little bad-boy has enough features and cool stuff to make me daydream about it.
How’s this list? 6 Megapixel still images, built-in flash, MPEG-4 video at full TV resolution, digital image stabiliser, 5x optical zoom, waterproof to 1.5 metres, flip-out 2.5" screen, and best of all—no tapes! Nope, this baby uses SD memory cards, just like a compact digi-camera, which can be used over and over without loss of quality.
It’s perhaps because of this simplicity that the camera can be made waterproof without the need for a bulky housing. In fact, its best feature of all is that it is so small. The whole camera just fits in your hand—held naturally with the thumb up—like a slightly pudgy mobile phone, and the screen flips out from the side. I just hang it at the ready from a clip on my pack, and forget about it. No problem if you fall in the water or it starts raining.
Flip out the screen and it’s ready in about one second. Using the camera is dead simple. Under your thumb are the zoom controls, and above those you either push a button with a camera icon on it to capture a still image, or another with a movie camera icon to record video. It even says ‘photo’ or ‘movie’ above the button. Amazing, what will they think of next?
If you want to get nerdy, push the ‘menu’ button, and go to town on the dozens of different settings you can choose from. One of my favourites is ‘Super Macro Focus’, which allows you to shoot a small subject—like a trout fly or insect—as close as about one centimetre. The video footage is recorded in MPEG-4 format, which greatly compresses the information to allow more to be recorded on the card. This basically renders it unsuitable for high-quality video production, and is better suited to home viewing, emailing and web-videos.
Once you have finished shooting, you just flip open the battery-cover, plug in the supplied cable, and connect it to the computer. Using the software (also supplied), you can do lots of tricky stuff, but I prefer to just use the camera as an external card-reader (the first option that comes up on the camera when it’s all plugged in) and drag the files to my hard-drive. From there, you can do all the usual things to your still images, or put the video clips into an editing program and cut a masterpiece together (that last bit might take more than just a good computer . . . like . . . some talent for that sort of thing wouldn’t go astray). But you get the picture—it’s all pretty easy and logical.
CLICK below to check out some footage from this little beauty. I know you’ll want one!
Quicktime file (4Mb - about 30 sec on broadband)
Available from Camera House stores, it sells for less than $700. For more information see www.sanyo.com.au