You didn't go for the pink one, shucks :)

I had looked at these when they first came out, the 360deg lens caught my attention. I'll be interested read your review of it once you get it.

Bob.

Cute little bugger. So this replaces the flopped Webbie?

What makes you say the Webbie flopped?

"What makes you say the Webbie flopped? "

OCD

Bob.

Kodak is calling their new model the PlaySport. Same sensor as the Zi8, but the PlaySport is more ruggedly built and it waterproof to 3M. The Zi8 also allows for an eternal mike to be added.

If you could find kodaks in your area, I would look into the Zi8 or the PlaySport which is due out in a few months when considering a pocketcam.

It looks like there are two version of the Bloggie. The PM5 (pictured and linked above) has a swivel lens. The CM5 is slightly more expensive, but includes 5x optical zoom - that's a feature I'd like to have.

...Jerry

I never saw any good reviews on it, and I've never seen one in the wild, it doesn't use SD cards and the battery is prorietary. An articulating LCD is ridiculous for a micro cam, anything else?

But I have seen a shortage on Flips and lately the Kodak one, so I put 2 and 2 together.

"I never saw any good reviews on it, and I've never seen one in the wild, it doesn't use SD cards and the battery is prorietary. An articulating LCD is ridiculous for a micro cam, anything else?

Oh, so you didn't know what you were talking about and you made something up? That seems to be a recurring theme in all of your posts.

Why don't you prove me otherwise then? Give me a link to a glowing review and/or report of hot sales.

I might as well add NO USB connection to the list too, but by far the biggest criticism is the video is not very good compared to Flip.

Well, I can vouch for the Flip - it basically blows. It can't seem to pick a halfway decent white balance.

I can't speak for the Sony, never tried one.

All in all, we need to remember what these pocket video cameras are intended for. Most of the public that goes for these things are satisfied with them - the rest of us are simply trying to get more from these things than was intended.

"Most of the public that goes for these things are satisfied with them - the rest of us are simply trying to get more from these things than was intended."

I am often amazed by the emotional aspect of what people like. Even though I have hours of AVCHD video of my grandchild. My personal favorite video was shot with my Canon G9 still camera. I was in the right place at the right time, the lighting conditions were very good and this little point and shoot camera is around so much that no one even notices it anymore. The audience for the video is small but all are ardent fans.

Well said!

Time to record a few impressions.

Firstly, I need to stress that this is not a serious camera – I guess the price (A$299) already says that. It is however great fun to use, and unbelievably small for an HD camera.

Just about everything is automatic – focus, white balance, audio volume and aperture, apart from a menu changeable “backlight” setting. The picture is ok, particularly with optimum lighting conditions, but compression artefacts can creep in in low light, as you might expect.

As I said, so easy to use – swivel the lens forward and it switches on, press record and you’re off.

Movie Sizes can be 1920 x 1080 30p, 1280 x 720 60p, 1280 x 720 30p or 640 x 480 30p.
Bit of a restriction that – I thought I’d pass through life without having to tussle with 29.97 fps, but no other choice.

I’ve just recorded a music gig I did on Sunday and am experimenting with options for transferring to DVD. It’s hard to see much difference between 25fps MPEG 2 and 30 fps, but I would have thought that the original 30 would involve less processing – it certainly renders faster. I haven’t tried 24p yet – are there any recommended special steps to take going to 24p from 30p? Never done it before.

The biggest disappointment for me is that it doesn’t record more than 30 minutes continuously. For the music gig, I had a friend who waited till a song finished around 25 mins then stop/started recording to get another 30 mins. I’ve written to Sony about this, and they said there are no present plans for this to be changed with a firmware update, but they have passed my request to their technical department…

It has optional steady shot and face detection, flicker reduction, and a video out port as well as USB out.

A 16 Gb SD card can hold 2 hrs 40 at the highest res, 8 hours of 1280 x 720 30p or 16 hours of 640 x 480. The battery will run out before this – I’ve bought a spare, and they go for about 90 mins continuous use. You can also use 32 Gb cards

The 360° clip-on lens is a bit of a gimmick, but interesting. It records a true 360° circular picture. The software that comes with the cam can convert this to a narrow “ribbon” strip across the middle of a frame – when I walked around the room I disappeared off the right hand edge of the strip and reappeared on the left.

The mp4s go straight onto the Vegas timeline - preview a little slow on my ancient Core2Duo, but easy enough to edit using Ram Render occasionally.

So, very handy for the purpose I bought it for – to have in my pocket or car just in case ….

" I haven’t tried 24p yet – are there any recommended special steps to take going to 24p from 30p?"

I've never even attempted to do that conversion. 24p to 60i is an obvious breeze using pulldown however 24p to 30p requires serious interpolation and there's not enough data at 24p to make it flow smoothly at 30fps
If I had to do such a conversion I'd do it in AE using pixel tracking. Hideous render times even on a fast machine and things can go wrong requiring manual tweeking.

Bob.

Thanks Bob - it was the other way round - I have 30p and was wondering what 24p might come up like ... in fact I just tried it and it's not bad - I'm going to try a 30/25/24 comparison of the same clip tomorrow and see what differences might emerge.

Peter,

Thanks for your impressions of this camcorder. I've been interested in one of these low end units for very casual use.

Are you saying that even though it will take large capacity memory cards, it stops automatically at 30 minute intervals?

RalphM

"Movie Sizes can be 1920 x 1080 30p,

I don't want to start another long argument about interlaced vs progressive, but I put Blu-ray images on DVD media all the time and I've been quite happy with 720p60 at 15 mbps MPEG2. If you're not distributing the material to others, it would make a decent way of showing you own stuff on your own equipment assuming you have a capable Blu-ray player.

Yes Ralph - 30 minutes is the maximum continuous shooting time. It automatically stops then, and switches itself off. I don't know why such a limit exists, and I've put in a request for new firmware.

I guess it's designed for short bursts - the "blogging market". With the supplied software, you can even upload directly from the camera to YouTube.

Thanks for that John. I haven't yet got into BluRay. My normal shooting, on EX1, has all finished up on SD DVDs, and if I want to display HD for my own purposes, I've been using a WD Media Player attached to my Sony Bravia.

I must have a play with 60p ....