Re: Digital Camera confusion

On Oct 1, 9:24 am, Arnold Z. <spamstop...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Then that would be even more reason to go with the Canon S3 IS if videos are
important. You have full use of the 12X optical zoom while in movie mode, the
silent ultrasonic motor isn't recorded in the audio track while zooming, it
auto-focuses continually, and you can even change the EV of the scene manually
while the movie is being recorded in case you need to override its default
exposure settings during shooting. Another fun feature is that you can press the
shutter button while a movie is being recorded to also record a high-resolution
still-frame image so you don't miss an important shot while filming. The movie
continues to be recorded. This causes a slight interrupt and sound in the video
file though. It also has one of the lowest compression ratios of any AVI video
format, creating video with the least amount of artifacts of any camera on the
market. The downside is that you only get 9-11 minutes of 640x480, 30fps,video +
44.1 kHz stereo audio at that rate when you hit the 1 gig file size limit.
Though anyone shooting uninterrupted video clips that long without editing are
the kind that want to destroy your senses by showing you their mind-numbing
home-movies. :-)

On the plus side if you aren't too concerned with video quality (the kid's
birthday party, stuff like that) and need more recording time per clip the CHDK
add-on for the S3 IS has a new hi-compression video mode option in it. Where you
can get 30 minutes of video at the same frame size, rate, and audio settings.
40+ minutes if you change the audio to 11 kHz. Over an hour per gig by lowering
640x480, 44.1kHz audio to 15 frames per second. I'll admit that the
hi-compression setting produces some pretty nasty artifacts at times, but it's a
nice trade-off to have when you need it. Maybe the video won't be as important
as recording an uninterrupted stereo sound-track of that live-concert or
high-school musical. Scenes with little motion won't be strongly affected by the
hi-compression mode.

Thanks to all who posted on this thread. I am confused no more. I was
already pretty well decided on a S3 or S5 after seeing the sample
movies on dpreview. They seemed to me to be better than most of the
Panasonic examples, as the Panasonic movies were a bit over-
compressed. Same for the Sony videos. Also I noted the 44.1Khz 16bit
stereo sampling for sound on the S3. Now that I know about the ability
to script programs on the S3, it has to be an S3, as I consider myself
to be (in general) a more than competent programmer, and the
opportunity to add custom functionality is a BIG BIG BIG advantage.

Is camerabox.co.uk considered a reliable supplier of cameras?

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