Slashdot Mirror

3CCDs just look better than 1CCD systems (videolink - resizes your window) You can even see the difference in the lcd screens of the camcorders if you compare the two. The Panasonic's image is a standout in both color and clarity. I have a Panasonic FZ20 digital cam (nice shot - link resizes your window) and I can attest to the quality of the Leica lens on there as well.

It can be had on Ebay for $600 package deals.

I have been looking for a good DV cam to use for a long time, but I didn't want to use miniDV, I want to use flash ram. Recently Panasonic has come out with a whole line of them that use SD cards, but they're a little pricey, and you can't get much video at DVD quality on one SD card. I don't know about the durability of the hardware, but at least this option would take out all of the mechanics.

USAF C-23 Sherpa
USCG HH-65A Dolphin (Dauphin)
Sony
Panasonic Toughbook
Software for the F-35 Strike Fighter (p.17)
Fox NBC Rec Vehicle

Not huge projects, but not inconsequential, either.

Certainly the HDV 1080i cameras do that and I'm pretty sure HDCAM does too.

I'm pretty sure grandparent was talking about the Panasonic AG-HVX200, which apparently actually records at 1920x1080 (DVCPRO HD/50/25). There are lots of articles about it at Google News.

It was being shown at NAB, but it's not available today. I believe it will ship in Q4 2005 for about $6000.

I was agreeing with you until I saw I do like dell workstations and home PCs and laptops

Dell laptops are the worst brand of laptops you can buy. They break constantly. I go to school with 200 people who own a Dell laptop. Without fail, everyone I know with a Dell laptop has had very big problems.

If you're not buying a Mac, you're much better off with an IBM or Panasonic or a lesser-known brand

Panasonic sells DVRs. I'm sure other companies do as well.

I just started to buy house music from http://www.traxsource.com/ as a replacement of vinyl now that I have my digital 1200's: http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/tech nics_dj/video_flash.asp?/

Traxsource uses an inaudible signature key inside the waveform but the files are DRM free. You can use the files as you see fit, however if they find a file with your signature on it (they can identify you by analysing the file with their software) in the P2P networks they will crack down on you and probably sue if you can't explain yourself (they are a friendly bunch of music lovers after all). You can even burn the file, rip it, re-encode it and the signature will still be there.

The BL-C10A PTZ camera is about $200

http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/se rvlet/ModelDetail?displayTab=O&storeId=11201&catal ogId=13051&itemId=68953&catGroupId=16916&modelNo=T oughbook-29&surfModel=Toughbook-29

Video won't play for some reason, but dig on that.

Stupid me, screwed up, even with preview! No, these are built like tanks: http://www.panasonic.com/computer/toughbook/video2 .asp?videoname=ThisIsToughbook

Which is exactly why I purchased Panasonic's version which uses SD. Even better I can record a show off TV and watch the following morning on the way to work. No more missing Futurama for me! http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servle t/vModelDetail?displayTab=O&storeId=11251&catalogI d=11005&itemId=68138&catGroupId=17169&modelNo=SV-A V50S&surfModel=SV-AV50S

Actually size is not that big of a deal. Panasonic makes phone systems that include the ability of to have wireless phones roam within an area aka similar to a cell phone system. The phones are tiny and the cradles are also small. Just drop the phone into the cradle and it starts recharging no connection other than sitting in the cradle.

I own and love my veo observer, but it limits reception to IE users..

I've since become EXTREMELY enamored of panasonic netcams, they only thing they suck on is sound, they have no audio... take a look at them try a websearch for urls that include "viewnetcam.com/" to find a camera on the internet-- I found one listed with someones posted hijack this log (I won't post the url) but it's an amazing device- push and pull motion jpegs, works on my palm phone (kyo 7135) at reasonable speed... If I didn't NEED sound, I'd replace my veo with this.. (there is a model that includes sound on panasonics JP site, that specifies it's a USA only model, but I don't find it in the USA anywhere, and converted from yen, it runs 700$ or more)

slow to start up and there's a lot of delay between pressing the shutter release and actually taking a picture. You can mitigate this by half-pressing the shutter release to pre-focus/meter, but that's a problem with a moving subject (like a toddler!).

Try setting the camera to "action" mode, so it continuously re-focuses while the shutter release is half-pressed.

Second issue: on camera flash is evil. Only a few compact cameras give you a hotshoe. DSLR's will give way better flash results with their bounce flash/diffuser capability. Almost every flash picture I have yields terrible red-eye. Photoshop Album can generally fix this, but not all the time. Even without red eye, you generally get a sterile, harshly lit result.

1. At Digital Photography Review I identified 24 non-SLR digital cameras between 3 - 6 megapixels and under $600 as having the ability to add an external flash either via hot-shoe or pc-sync connector. That seems like more than a few to me.
2. I've looked at a number of sample on-camera flash pictures at Steves Digicams, including ones for the A70, and see that it is possible to take pictures using the built-in flash without red-eye. Of course several factors affect whether or not red-eye will appear, so this isn't definative, but there are certainly camera configurations that make it less likely to be a factor.
3. That is assuming the user actually owns an external flash and a diffuser/bounce-unit, and is carrying it when the photo-op presents itself, and can manage to pull-out, mount, turn-on and charge the flash and associated diffuser/bounce-unit, and then frame and take the picture before said opportunity goes away (or, in the case of your toddler, decides to take a nap). But yes, if you have a DSLR and an external flash with a Lumiquest diffuser, particularly if its always mounted on a nice Stroboframe flip-flash bracket, the result will be much more pleasing than any direct-lighting flash setup, regardless of the camera its attached to.
4. I submit that virtually anyone who needs an article to decide between an SLR and non-SLR camera should start with a non-SLR. Likewise, anyone who isn't ready to buy an SLR because of the unnecessary cost, complexity and size is not going to buy and drag around another 5 lbs. and $300 of external flash, diffuser and flip-frame.
5. I find that most every photo editing program does an adequate job of red-eye removal, and this (or a black Sharpie brand marker) is a more convenient and appropriate option for most digital camera consumers.

As a former pro photographer, (newspaper, studio, wedding), I appreciate the advantages of an SLR, and how a pro or avid hobbyist benefit from these more costly, larger and more complex pieces of equipment. But a pro or avid hobbyist does not need to read this type of article. As for myself, I've grown too lazy and cheap to drag $2,000 and 8 lbs of camera gear around with me and go through the ritual of setting-up flash brackets and bounce cards anymore. If I need that stuff, I still have the gadget bag with over $5K of Canon gear. Instead, I use a Panasonic Lumix, which is still at the upper-end of size and weight for most consumers.

On the other hand, when the typical consumer asks "what's the best camera" what they really want to know, when questioned, is what's going to give them good snapshots of the kids and easily print quality 4x6 and maybe the occasional 8x10. For them, something with a good zoom range, relatively quick focus and release time, decent low-light capability, built-in flash that sits-up high enought to avoid red-eye in most cases, and at least 3 megapixels, coupled with a pl

> I'm not familiar with what "VRLA" means

and you call yourself a nerd??
A quick google for "VRLA battry" found this page.

Apparently VRLA means Valve Regulated Lead Acid, and they are a type of sealed lead/acid, you the parent poster should be alright.

Picked up one of these little babies on eBay the other day for around $350. DVD quality MPEG2, SD media. Record time is a little short, but the camera is literally the size of a credit card (ok.. a thick credit card). These have been around for at least a year now...

Panasonic have a few models out that write to SD card. Also, there's no real advantages of digital media over tape ATM and plenty of negatives.

Look, there are three qualities that just about any technology has: Good; Fast; Cheap. You get to pick two and it will be the opposite of the third (i.e. if you want it to be good and fast, it won't be cheap). On that note, you aren't going to find anything in the 'under $100' category that is going to be good and 'fast.' If you can spend a little more money, this is what I have set up and they work really well is the Panasonic NetCam: http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/gate /cameras.asp. I have only used the all-weather flavor and so far am pretty impressed with a $600 out-door camera with as many features as this one has. The indoor camera is much cheaper. You might even be able to find a low-light variant. If you have some more money, Sony makes a camera that has just about every option and is really nice but it costs over twice as much as the Panasonic. Good luck and congrats!

Pic

Now if only there were a Linux driver supporting the wheel...

What major advantages does this have over the 18-month-old Panasonic W2 other than a slightly better video card and smaller footprint? The W2 weighs 2.8 pounds, has a DVD-RW, 12.1" screen, big keyboard, 1.1 GHz CPU, and its battery lasts over 7 hours.

In the USA, we get the older version of the W2, but it's still some-tasty.

On a side note, some tips for running Linux on the W2:
- Red Hat
- Debian
- leog forum

I currently use a Fuji too. It is 2 MP as well. Probably the same as yours, the FinePix 2400 Zoom.

It is an OK camera, given that I purchased it 3.5 years ago, and it is still ticking. It has a good lens. The Megapixel thing is not an issue. Its pictures are nice and sharp. It also has great macro capability.

The problem I have with it is low light performance. It can't focus and the pictures are grainy. Flash pictures are really crappy too.

I found that this is a common problem with consumer digital cameras. A relative of mine has bought a high end prosumer camera, the Nikon 5700. It suffers from the same problems of low light performance as well. He also made a mistake of using a microdrive Compact Flash card, and writing to it is very slow.

I have been thinking of my next camera, and find the following choices to be suitable for my need:

• Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20. Here is a overview of it, and here is the info from the Panasonic web site. This camera has the greatest optical zoom you can find, 12X. The lens is made by Leica, known to be great always. It has an optical image stabilizers. The drawbacks are a proprietary battery (need to buy a spare for more $$$$), and the LCD does not swivel. The price has come down dramatically since they introduced the 2 Megapixel model. This one is 599$ MSRP.
• Canon S1 IS. This one has it all, a good lens, a swivel LCD, image stabilizer, Canon quality, AA batteries (cheap rechargables), ...etc. The problem is that it is only a 3 megapixel camera, and for this day and age, this is a bit low. It takes great pictures for sure. Check the gallery in the above link.

Of course, you can take the removable lens DSLR route, but that is too expensive for a general user like me.

They've invented the infinite hard drive. They're just waiting for it to finish the low level format

The manuals have a fair approximation (see here, for example). However, if the new models are anything like the E-85H, the UI is dreadful - absolutely dreadful. It took me a good 3 days to learn it, and I'm generally very comfortable with this sort of thing.

Besides the poor layout of the menus, the recorder takes about half a second to respond to button presses. That may not sound bad, but trust me, it's noticable, and it gets more and more aggravating as time goes on.

Panasonic Unveil New DVRs (includes photo)

Panasonic Unveils New DVRs

Important additional details I noticed:

• will be introduced in Japanese market Sept 21 (no info on non-Japanese markets in press release)
• recording capacity of 709 hours of video in EP mode (?)
• offers high-speed dubbing from hard disk drive onto DVD-RAM at speeds of 40x and onto DVD-R disc up to 64x in EP mode
• no pricing details in the press release

http://catalog2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/se rvlet/ModelList?storeId=11251&catalogId=11005&catG roupId=11058

Not a mirror but this is the Panasonic page. It was also covered by JCNNetwork and Engadget.

My suggestion, if you have the money to spend, is an engenius. We use a pair at work and aside from a flakey power system they get great reception and distance. Analog I believe. We get through 5 stories of concrete building plus the perimeter and into the neighboring buildings.

We tried most consumer products before purchasing these and nothing came close to the performance of these. The 5.8 ghz phones, from panasonic, could hardly get reception down the hall. All of the 2.4 ghz phones we tried couldn't reach another story. The 2.4 ghz I use at home can't reach to the other end of the house while our 900mhz (digital) can penetrate the house and surrounding acreage.

Finally, I can tell when my father uses our 2.4 ghz phone when I'm on the perimeter of the linksys 802.11b/g border. Depending on what my signal strength is, it'll drop or weaken.

My primary concern when buying laptop was getting long batterylife and low weight. And after a long search i finally found what i consider the best in those two areas the panasonic toughbooks: I personally bought the W2http://www.panasonic.com/computer/toughbook/lear n_more_tbw2.asp/ which weighs only 1,3 kg and with full brightness and WiFi on gives me around 4-5 hours battery when surfing the web and doing similar stuff, and it even has a build-in cd rw drive.

The benchmark runs the following applications: Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Excel 2002, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2002, Netscape Communicator (Mozilla 5), McAfee VirusScan 5.13, WinZip 8.0, Macromedia Flash 5.0, and Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1 ... MobileMark also includes a conditioning run that prepares a notebook's battery for testing by draining the battery completely, then requiring that the battery be fully charged before an official test run can commence.

HP Compaq Business Notebook nx5000 (review): 6 hours, 4 minutes (15" 1024x768, 6.2lbs)

Panasonic ToughBook CF-W2 (review): 5 hours, 47 minutes (12.1" 1024x768, 2.9lbs)

HP Compaq Business Notebook nc6000 (review): 5 hours, 32 minutes (14.1" 1024x768, 5.9lbs)

Acer TravelMate 8000 (review): 5 hours, 25 minutes (15" 1400x1050, 6.8lbs)

F) depending on the effect you're trying to get, consider alternatives. Think: Pixelvision. Think VHS. Think cheapie DV camera. Process the the bejesus out of it. If it's your first work, don't bother with trying to make it look Hollywood, or even Daytime TV. just get something out the door, that you feel good about. It's better to make some not-so-great art that you find personally fulfilling and was a great learning experience than some primetime dogfood commercial.

G) Here's another tip: Shoot with a cheap DV camera (like I dunno - a Canon ZR60 - $300 when you can find 'em) and then take all the colour out in post. There is no loss to the luminance signal (DV is 4.1.1), so a cheapie is going to look a lot more like a high end camera in Black and White than it will in colour, due to the loss from using a single chip NTSC camera.

H) CONCENTRATE ON CONTENT. If the content is compelling, the formal inadequacies are often not as noticeable, or can even be used as a foil to amplify the content. Having something important and insightful to say with your work will trump any HDTV camera and lighting crew and prima donna actors you can find. Life is too short to make stupid crap, but if your budget doesn't permit hiring Walter Murch and a REAL CAMERA then focus on what you're trying to say, and strive to say it well.

I) there is no point I.

J) Pracitce your editing chops doing some video smashups. Rent a bunch of DVDs of movies that make you go "THAT WAS FUCKING GREAT", rip them to your drive as QT movies, and then edit the crap out of them. Study the really well edited ones - see how they're put together.

K) It seems you're going for a "music video" from what I can gather, so look at the masters of the genre, especially Chris Cunningham and Godley and Creme for fancy stuff, and then check out the works of the Emergency Broadcast Network. you don't need fancy cameras and actors and lighting to make an extremely effective video. You just need a vision and the will and some small amount of money to get you going.

Good luck,

RS

That's a PERSONAL scanner. You need something like this

I'm telling you don't go for the cheap route for something like this. I've worked at several companies that generate and scan in thousands of invoices per person per day. They used some heavy leased Bell+Howell scanners with software called Documentum which provided a browser frontend to the invoices. Similar to what google does to PDF files. You could search text (even handwritten IIRC) and display the documents in your browser and print them.

Here is my little opinions on the subject. Not surprising I share the same view with the author.(My apology for the length and inaccurate technical details)

Lens
I agree with the author that the lens pays an important part of the overall quality, rather than no. of pixels. Generally speaking, lens with large aperture(F2.8>F4>F5.6>F8, etc.) can create better images. However, to compensate for the distortion near the edge, the larger the aperture, the bigger the lens size. You'd find digital camera with bigger lens(usually implies bigger aperture) cost more, regardless of no. of pixels.
While it's true that camera with exchangeable lens is very desirable for photographers especially when you already has a good lens. However, I do not think the high price of those lens-exhangeable digital camera, especially Nikon D70, is justified(I'm a diehard Nikon film amatuer photographer myself). If you don't like those digital camera exchangeble lens, you may look at those already has good lens equipped, like Lumix DMC-LC1, which equipped with a F2.0 Vario-Summicron Lens, a legendary brand name for most film photograpers. (Mind you, some perfectists critize that the lensare not made in their original factory. Oh well.. :)

Color
The article touchs this topic very lightly, in fact most digital camera manufactuers avoid this. You can imagine different wave in light spectrum refract in different angle in each piece of lens. The problem is particular complicated when the lens group has more than one lens. That's why lens with more lens group is more expensive. This problem is called the chromatic abberation.

Aspherical lens(glasses with uneven density) and coating could help solving this problem. You can see the color reflect from the surface of many professional lens are not white - usually redish or slight greenish. The less white light reflects from the lens' surface, the better the coating. (This is in fact one tip you can use in choosing a good digital camera)

Light
As implied in the word 'photographing', it's all about light(photo). The better the lighting condition, the better the images created - this is true for digital and film photographing. You can't control the light, but you can control how light enter the camera. Most digital camera owners would find that regardless of no. of pixels, the images quality drops drastically in low light condition.

Guess what I'd say - yes, bigger(and high quality) lens invite more light thus create better images. What's so difficult to understand. XD

Conclusion

The quality of the lens outweights the no. of pixels. Well, in fact this is a most unwelcome answer, and people stop asking me for opinion on choosing digital camera, and go buy some fancy looking garblish. Luckily we've slashdot where I can find people still listening to me.....hello? HELLO???......

Hmmmm. I would just attach these to my PC... you won't hear the noise from your fans/drives at all afterwards.

Seriously, many people don't realize how much "complete silence" is actually more annoying than a little background noise. My CPU gets hot quite often (very hot apartment) and the volcano fan on it gets *very* noisy when cranked, but with some decent tunes I work better than silence anyways.

Are people really so bothered by a little fan noise, or it like the casemod fanclub where less noise=bragging rights (not that some casemods aren't very cool).

There's the average standard versions which can stand some abuse, and then there's the hardened rugged versions used by the military, police, and other people who constantly use it out in the field all the time. The standard ones provide a decent level of toughness, but the more rugged ones have every port sealed against dust and water, for example. I've read reviews where you can drive over the rugged versions, but I wouldn't try that with the standard ones.

There's the average standard versions which can stand some abuse, and then there's the hardened rugged versions used by the military, police, and other people who constantly use it out in the field all the time. The standard ones provide a decent level of toughness, but the more rugged ones have every port sealed against dust and water, for example. I've read reviews where you can drive over the rugged versions, but I wouldn't try that with the standard ones.

i suspect M-O media will last longer

The world's cheapest 3CCD camcorder is just $699.

This looks like it's very similar to the more expensive version with still capability (which you really shouldn't bother with in a video camera). It was given a review which praised the image quality but admitted it didn't reach the peak of the top 3CCD camcorders.

I have to admit that I wasn't thrilled by the iSight camera's quality; a friend demoed it to me and my $500 Canon ZR-series video camera was much better. However, that might have been due to the extreme low light in her apartment.

That being said, I was able to try a LogiTech QuickCam on my PowerMac G4 at work and if my memory serves it worked just fine. I think the cheaper brands don't support the Mac, but the QuickCam's cheap enough and it does.

D

Then you're looking for this. 702x480 30fps 6mbps (that's high quality) MPEG2. Fills 512megs in 10 minutes. Not quite 720x480, and sorry no 60fps (why 60fps?? that'd take a crap load of space), but it's darn near close.

too bad it uses SD, if it was compactflash II compatible they'd have a real winner on their hands, with 2gig CFII selling for only $150 while 1gig SD is over double that.

I was going for sensationalism, but since you tool the troll bait:

My laptop uses a Li-ion battery now. Most lithium ion cells have a 3.6V nominal rating with a 4.2V full charge rating ( Panasonic ). This release claims 4V for the new technology. (FYI the new technology uses either a Lithium or graphite anode, and is based off current lithium ion technology.) Most likely both would use the same number of cells.

If they went for the greater number of charge cycles at maximum capacity, they would use a graphite anode. This reduces the voltage to 3.5V and might mean an extra cell is added to the pack.

The proper comparison should be Watt-Hours / kilogram. Then we don't care about the terminal voltage. For the new battery that works out to 3.5V * 70Ah/kg = 245 Wh/kg. For my laptop it is 14.4V * 4Ah / 0.4kg = 144 Wh/kg. A bit less than 2x. (By the way, watt hours / kg is a really weird dimension - it reduces to square meters per second.)

Either way, battery life would be greater for the same total battery weight. A more conservative estimate would be 4-6 hours. Still a big improvement. Add in the expected price to be equal, and the fast recharge time (you are not going to charge the battery in 30 sec - you'd pull way too much current doing it)

In my case, I'm supplying a major law enforcement agency with an application running on PDAs. Those guys fall down hills, drop from helicopters, crawl through the mud, dive for cover, and generally beat the living hell out of whatever they're carrying. Nothing less than this would survive. Currently we're using the Panasonic Toughbook 01. Amazingly tough device. I think it's even cheaper than the subject of the article.

a band called Panasonic. They got harassed by Panasonic the company, changed their name to Pansonic and released an album called "A".

ack! sorry bout that. usable link- Toughbooks Toughbook 18

ack! sorry bout that. usable link- Toughbooks Toughbook 18

The The Panasonic model will let you skip by directories or tracks when you are listening to an MP3 CD-R. I got it at Sears, and so far it has worked well. You can also change the display to show the track title, filename, or directory name while the song is playing. Mine is the SL-MP35 but the MP70 is the newer version of it.

The light sensitivity of a camcorder is proportional to the size of the pixels. The bigger the pixels the more photons they collect, the more sensitive they are to light. The cost of a camcorder is also proportional to the size of the pixels. The bigger the pixels, the bigger the CCD, and the more expensive the CCD. In a 3-CCD camera the cost of the CCD is multiplied by 3, so increasing the size of the CCD greatly increases the cost of the camcorder.

So, choose two, best picture quality, good low light capability, low cost.

Zalman, Thermaltake and others neglect to specify this, which is no surprise since their claims always clash with each other and with their suppliers'.

And there's also the subjective side of things, but that's a whole other issue. Two fans with the same noise emission levels aren't necessarily as pleasant, since their spectra may be completely different. Reducing RPMs will give you less overall noise, but crappier fans will always give you irritating bearing noise, for instance, even though they may be quiet on average.

For example, the Silent Boost heatsink/fan from Thermaltake is advertised as being as loud as 21 dBA. However, closer inspection will tell you that it uses an 80cm Panaflo 2450 RPM fan, and Panasonic says the fan alone (without the heatsink, which will add to the noise due to additional turbulence) is 28 dBA loud.

The same goes for all sorts of fans and PSUs advertised as being silent. Manufacturers exaggerate their claims, and the one with the lowest number typically sells the loudest product.

Perhaps you should consider a Panasonic Toughbook. I have no experience with them personally, however I only hear good things about their durability. They are a bit pricey though.

This would be a boon for notebooks though. Even if the MTBF is rather poor compared to the larger drives, the size would make it possible to stick perhaps 6 of these into a notebook in a RAID5 configuration. You wouldn't really need hot-swappable, but if a drive did fail you'd have the others picking up the slack. A big red LED could flash on the notebook telling you to pick up a new drive, and the information for the new drive is rebuilt on the fly.

It might be a bit expensive, but for those looking for a rugged notebook (a la Panasonic Toughbook series) this would be great!