Video Going Still

It has been said many times before on this blog but the CES 2009 show in las Vegas made it big time official – Video is Going Still. Video cameras are now doing still photography in a big way as we can see in the camcoders above and below. For example the Sony CM1 line of camcorders shown will be selling for $200US, have 5Mpixel still-image shooting capabilities, HD 1080P (@1440P width not 1920P)and 720P video recording with 5x zoom, 85 minutes of shooting on Li-Ion battery, stereo sound recording and memory slot for SD cards.  It is called the Webbie and is designed for YouTube and other video Web site downloads in MP4 format(super compact). But it also can record 5Mpixel still images  and has full image and video download software plus connections.

Meanwhile Panasonic is not being outdone,  its HDC-HS300 camcorder delivers full 1920x1080p HD.

The unit can also record 10.5Mpixel still camera shots starting at the top of the line 120GB hard disk drive. Its  “3MOS” sensor system consists of three 1/4.1-inch CMOS sensors, each with a gross pixel count of 3,050,000 and an effective pixel count of 2,070,000. the cameras have auto-image stabilization and touchscreen triggered autofocus feature. Users touch on the screen an object they wish to track and the camera works to keep that figure or object in sharp focus no matter camera movement or zoom effect. Finally the camera is able to record 50 hours of images given the

Summary

Video cameras are now offering still image taking capabilities (JPG format rather than camera RAW for fine images in SLR stillcameras). But the results are impressive in low light and high zoom values with sophisticated image stabilization. Noise suppresion and sharpness vary with videocam and are subject to benchmark testing. But compared with just two years ago when this user looked in vain for a video camera with still image taking capabilities – my have conditions changed!