A great entry HiDef Digital Camcorder (Sanyo Xacti VPC-CA9)

Member Name: tlmartin

Product:	Sanyo Xacti VPC-CA9
Date:	28/05/09 (1776 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 720p, cheap, 12Mp camera, waterproof,

Disadvantages: Battery length 1hour, you must buy spares.

I am going away in July this year and I wanted to take a camcorder with me, so that any movies recorded could be stored on PC or even put on DVD. Also so I could play around with video editing, as I recently used a Composite video source to PC converter, and made a DVD up of my parents' cats.

I was about to order the VPC -CA8 which is a normal standard definition Camcorder as this Xacti was a nice small model, easy to hold, water proof and thus would withstand beaches and different weather. It was cheap, and having no hard drive generally meant the data would be safe and the camera should last even with possible rough handling.
I had decided on this camera. I went to buy and then I notice the CA9 to be released shortly. The difference being the CA9 was a 720 HiDef camcorder. WOW I thought this camera will do all the things I want and now let me play about with recording in HiDef.

I ordered the camera from Jessops at just over £300 with an 8GB SDHC card, camera bag and spare battery with a discount voucher and cashback from using QuidCo.
So this made this camera a very reasonable purchase.

The camera arrived in decent size box (no overall wastage of space). It comes with its own small wrap of a case, a CD for connecting, a USB and a 720mAh battery.

The camera itself is a fantastic size, it literally fits in your hand and you point and shoot. It takes high quality HiDef recordings as well as high quality 12Mp photos.

I took the camcorder out on my Stag do over the weekend, so I can give some actual factual information before I give it an even more thorough test on holiday to Mexico this summer. (and see how immune to Swine Flu it is)

As pointed out this Camera fits neatly into your hand so you can aim it quite stably as if holding.... Well in essence a gun. It is also quite light at around 250g in weight. It has a 2.5" LCD screen that comes out to the side so you can clearly see what you're recording as well as the battery/storage information. This LCD screen can be rotated so if you're having to record from a weird angle you can while still being able to make sure you get the shot. It also means as the recording person you can see everything happening properly while only glancing at the screen (or keeping it in the corner of your eye). No longer will you miss what your recording until you play it through the TV to hopefully see what you recorded (and unfortunately not what you missed), and worse of all while recording you only ever got to see it in black and white. All controls for the optical (5x) and digital (60x) zoom is controlled by the thumb, as is recording and taking digital photos while recording.

The camera can store on up to 32GB SDHC cards, however I do not know if this is due to that being the biggest SDHC card out there or because that actually is a file limit. I was using an 8GB card, and I took a spare 4Gb on my Stag do just in case. I didn't need the 4Gb card as the 8Gb clearly stores around 2 hours of data at top quality and over 1000 images at top quality. I think when I go away I may buy another couple of SDHC cards to ensure I have plenty of storage if not even go for a big 32GB one. Do however be aware you need a Class 6 card for the best throughput, I tend to use SanDisk SDHC cards with video capabilities for the camera to ensure there are no problems with write through, as if there was a buffer problem you'd end up loosing part of the movie and the buffer would keep filling.

The battery was my biggest disappointment, it last just over 1 hour in total. To me this isn't a long time, however thinking about it now, I remember my old Sanyo Hi8 Camcorder having 2 battery packs the big one for 1 hour the smaller 1 for 30mins. I remember them taking about 8 hours to charge and each being the size and weight of a brick. Where as this battery is a small rectangular battery and only takes a couple of hours to fully charge. I should have had a second battery but still waiting for that from Jessops, however I have just ordered a 1200mAh battery from China for the camera with a USB charger for only £7.99 from EBay. I will have 3 batteries then and the larger one should last for well over an hour. I think from this I will also buy maybe 1 or 2 more from China at £7.99 as that is dirt cheap. Plus I prefer USB chargers as it saves carrying big charging devices for all my equipment i.e. I only need my USB travel charger kit that plus into cigar lighter and wall socket and I can charge nearly any piece of equipment I have any time anywhere. One thing that maybe useful to get and I will look to get is that you can buy a DC converter for the camera, because obviously when transferring the files to the PC your using battery power.

The pictures are naturally produced in JPG format taking a couple of MB each. The videos are stored in MP4 format using the AVC/H.264 codec this means you need Quicktime to play it (however it should mean can go on your iPod pretty quick, (This is something I may have to try out)

The transfer to PC is via USB cable (unfortunately Sanyo have felt it important not to use a generic miniUSB connection, but something extremely similar but not quite the same connector. Why on earth companies do this, finally Phone manufacturers are getting the idea to use a universal miniUSB connector, yet now here is a Camcorder manufacturer not just charging a device but transferring data wanting to use its specific own connector??? Not a good idea Sanyo it will annoy people. The USB can also plug into printer as the camera can connect to a printer direct. Again I am not sure how that works these are things I will use further over the next few months and update on here as I do.

There is also a cable so you can connect to a TV, although what is strange it will only output at SD through a standard Video composite connection, but with stereo sound. Naturally you also have the option to review your video on the 2.5" screen of the camcorder.

There is software on the CD to allow you to do video editing, but obviously if you have something that can handle AVC codec you'll be fine. I have been intending to and buy the Corel Video Studio pack for a while, now maybe the time, as that can handle this codec and will have far more functionality than freebie software. However this software does make it easy to create a basic DVD or presentation with full instructions in the manual or like me you can just store the original files on you network hard drive and play them every so often, only messing about with creating a DVD when you have the time. The Camera also allows you to use iot as a PC Camera when connected to the pc, or even do screenshots of a PC which are stored on the camera.

There are a lot of editing facilities within the camera before you even export the files to the PC splitting, joining, imprinting the date etc., and naturally recording like setting the ISO for pictures, the white balance, flash settings and light settings, etc. All of these I am going to have to play with more and more in depth over the next few months. If I used it for a year I can see there are things there for the advanced professional I would never get to use just yet.

The results of the recording is a very good sound quality from the inbuilt mic, and very good video quality while being played back through my PC.

I am very pleased with this camera. With what comes with it, the quality and for the price, it is certainly an excellent entry model into the world of Digital Camcording, as well as an excellent entry into the world of HiDef Camcording. So far I am very pleased with this camera, and with the numerous features I have left to play with I get the impression anything I have a problem with is down to me not having found the setting to tweak it. However the camera does allow me to just turn on and point and shoot without any need to do any complicated set up.

I will be updating this review often with new features I discover from the software that comes with it, which naturally allows you to create DVD's and edit the video, to the various inbuilt features I am yet to use.

29/05/2009 Update
As I said I will update this often as I discover new features and play with new settings. So my first update, after getting a battery through the post from china, yes it is a compatible one of 3.7V but 1200mAh, I now can record for an extra 20mins (Although this may get longer as the battery gets conditioned, and then less as the battery dies). So it is definately worth while getting a couple of additional batteries, considering this only cost me £7.99 (no P&P) for that and a USB Charger, although I am very skeptical about the USB Charger (So I charged it in the normal charger).

I also noticed on the menu that there are 2 views, you can use the Normal menu if you want to use all of the variety of features and really personalise and tweak the individual settings of the camera. Or you can use a simple menu that does a lot of changes automatically, but based upon what you want the end result for, i.e. HiDef recording, or to upload onto the web.

There are also inbuilt filters into the camera to allow you to get some special effects on your photos or recordings. so in addtional to normal recordin, you can have things to be a bit softer with a cosmetic filter, or greyscale, or even in sepia to add an oldy worldy effect.

This camera does just keep on getting better, however now I should have 1 1hour battery that came in the box, i should have another 1 hour battery on its way from Jessops as part of the package and I have this 80min battery from China. as that means 1 in cam 2 to carry and gives me 3 hours of recording. I thik I wil check ebay out for either a 2 pack of 1200mAh batteries just to have a few spare available, especially considering the size of the batteries is literally 2" by 2".

Summary: An absolutely great camera for a bargin price of just over £300

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