Panasonic D-Snap SV-AV50 Camera Review - Menus and Features
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There are four basic selectable modes for this camera:
- Picture (still)
- MPEG4 (video)
- Voice (internal mic recording)
- Audio (MP3 playback)
The menu screens are rather plain and simple, too plain and too simple, as far as my opinion goes. First of all, there are no features like LT Exposure (long-time exposure setting), Exposure compensation, ISO speed, adjusting white balance or any of the features that a decent $400 camera should have. All you get for the settings in the Still Photo menus is:
- Picture size (1600x1200; 1280x960; 640x480)
- Quality (Normal and Fine)
And that's it. Aside from that, you can only turn the flash to on or off. So if you are familiar with the red-eye effect, don't worry, it's not going anywhere with this camera, you can still enjoy your friends looking like vampires on your pictures. What a truly stripped version of a digital camera.
Next, the video part of it. The D-Snap records movies with sound in the MPEG-4 format, and the codec is kindly provided on the software disc that comes with it. The files being saved are in the .asf format and should be playable with your Windows media player. Should be is the word. If you'd like to play the movies back on your computer, assuming you already have the codec, you're wrong. That happens to be un-readable until you install the codec either from their support site or the CD itself. The automatic search for codec in XP did absolutely nothing, promptly telling me to contact the vendor if I experience further problems. Not so plug-n-play now is it? Under the video menu screen, we get another skimpy array of settings such as:
- XF - Extra Fine
- SF - Super Fine
- F - Fine
- E - Economy
In the tests I was forced to use the 32MB SD card that I had obtained separately from the unit because the supplied 8MB would have been full before I got through 4 pictures on Hi-Res setting. The 8MB included, in my opinion, is another insult to a consumer who is spending a load of money and being forced to buy a bigger card right off the bat, unless he/she plans to shoot only 4 pix, 30 seconds of XF video or record 2 ½ MP3s.
The D-Snap has a resolution of 2.0MP and a 3-position digital zoom that can also be applied to video recording as well. You will have to set the zoom for video in advance, otherwise it will not zoom while filming. Since there is no optical zoom on the camera, if you care about the quality of your pictures, I strongly recommend staying away from the fixed zoom settings, as they make the image look considerably worse. Getting close-ups is done by enlarging the pixel size and 2.0MP is not a great resolution to begin with.
While doing video recording at night, you have an option of extending exposure time in a fixed manner by pressing the Nightview control button. The objects do appear brighter, but there is an extensive lag and the video looks as if there were some dropped frames during the playback.
A good addition to the features is that the external jack on the camera can be used as an input as well as an output (with your docking station, of course). A great idea, since you can hook up an external source, like a VCR or a satellite box to it and record your favorite show on the SD card inside the unit.
Also, there is a nifty feature called Auto-recording. What that does is starts recording when a signal is sensed at the input jack. In other words, if you want to record the latest episode of Friends on an SD card when you are at work, simply hook it up to the cable/satellite box, set the timer on the source and set the D-Snap to auto-record. When the Source turns on, D-Snap senses the signal and starts recording automatically. Now you can have your own wallet-size copy of your favorite episode wherever you go. Oh yeah, if you are planning to do that, you should probably drop another couple of hundred dollars on a 512 MB card, since it is the size you need to get around 50 minutes of footage recorded on an Extra-Fine setting.
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