The new Sanyo Xacti C5 digital camcorder is one of the smallest devices of its type. In fact, it's so compact that you'll probably mistake it for a digital camera. If you're looking for an ultra-portable digital movie camera for capturing spontaneous moments, such as night outs and family shindigs, the Xacti C5 would make a good choice. It's not exactly great value for money (its manual controls and format support are very limited), but it comes with a 1GB SD Card and is available in a choice of three colours (silver, bronze or white).

Pros: Compact and light; great screen; good quality video and stills
Cons: VGA only; no built-in memory; few manual controls


Building on last years launch of the VPC-C1, Sanyo has added to its Xacti camera range with the launch of the tapeless Xacti C5 - a slim, light and elegant solid state still and moving image camera, which combines chic designer looks with impressive performance.

Along with the external makeover, the Xacti C5 (68x108x23mm) has undergone an array of internal improvements which help to keep it up-to-speed against other portable digital video players. In particular, the impressive swivelling polysilicon TFT LCD monitor has been enlarged to 2.0-inches (210,000 pixels), enabling clearer viewing while recording (there is no optical viewfinder) and during playback, and the CCD has been expanded to 5.26-Megapixels (10-Megapixels with interpolation) for snapping detailed and large printouts.

The Xacti C5 is tapeless and has no internal memory, so it comes complete with a 1GB SD memory card (normally costs around £130 ex. VAT), so you have at least a few hours of continuous video recording at your fingertips out-of-the-box, in addition to a soft carrying case, wireless remote control and matching power/USB docking station. Incidentally, one minute's worth of video occupies around 5MB of storage space, so a 1GB card will allow you to store around 200 minutes of video (3h 20m).

The Xacti C5 captures excellent picture and sound quality, thanks largely to its support for the MPEG-4 resolution (640x480 pixels at 30fps). Unfortunately, this is the only format and the highest resolution the camera records to, which is relatively restrictive for more creative work. It also lacks many of the manual controls a creative photographer requires. On a more positive note, however, the files recorded on the Xacti C5 are small in size, and the built-in microphone produces great 48KHz, 16-bit stereo sound (MPEG-4 audio).

When all this is combined with the camera's ability to reduce external noise (such as noise wind) and the built-in file compression facility, you have the pleasure of filming high-quality recordings, for longer periods of time, without having to worry about the complexities of regular digital camcorders. The Xacti C5 also includes a Digital Image Stabiliser, meaning the camera provides optimal correction levels for camera handshake which can occur when shooting long lengths of video.

This operates relatively effectively under any zoom setting, compensating for camera shake to produce more natural and clear results. As with the predecessors in the Xacti range, the C5 provides the capacity to shoot moving and still images simultaneously.

Other major technical achievements include a 5x optical zoom lens (38- to 190mm), 12x digital zoom, auto focus, four filter functions, flicker reduction, self timer (2 seconds/10 seconds), centre weighted and spot measuring photometry, and a super-thin Lithium-ion battery (720mAh) that provides around 60 minutes continuous recording. There's also an 11-language user interface (Japanese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Korea, Chinese-traditional, Chinese-simplified), talking navigation guide, voice recorder, quick stand-by mode, and support for Exif Print, PRINT Image Matching III, and PictBridge.

Using the C5 is a snap, too. And just because it's so small doesn't mean it's hard or uncomfortable to use. The hand-grip and lenses are angled to enable a natural shooting style, echoing the ergonomic design of the earlier Xacti C series. And the Xacti C5's pocket-fitting, super-slender frame weighs just 145g, so it'll hardly hurt your wrist when used for extended periods. The only annoying design feature is that the camcorder is a little too top-heavy to balance by itself, so you'll either have to support it by hand (or third-party object) or attach it to a tripod.

Being able to connect the Xacti C5 to a TV, VCR, PC or DVD recorder (S-Video and composite video ports) means you can easily play back recorded images and stills on a large screen, or make backup copies of your recorded content while you're playing it back. After placing the Xacti C5 in the docking station, you can save recorded video clips and still images onto your computer's hard disk, where they can be edited freely.

Along with a 5.26-megapixel CCD, the Xacti C5 boasts a new high-speed engine. This helps to ensure low noise in dark areas along with accurate colur reproduction. There's no f-stop on the Xacti C5's lens mechanism either, so when you shoot video clips you can zoom in and out smoothly and capture good exposure correction.

In wide-angle mode, it's also possible to capture close-up images - the lens can be as close as 1cm from the subject. The five-point auto focus judges focal depth at the centre, top, bottom, left and right of the screen (area auto focus is used for video clips). With the focus point displayed on the monitor, this eliminates the need to change to Macro mode.

BIOS, Oct 07, 05 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Camcorder