Sony DCR-DVD106 Handycam DVD Camcorder With 2.5” LCD Screen
DVD HANDYCAM 8CM DVD-R/RW DVD+RW 1/6 800K PIXEL CCD NS

Customer Review: Great, simple camcorder
I got this item from another store but wanted to leave my review here. This is an excellent camcorder and the picture quality is excellent for what you are paying for. i use TDK dvd-rw discs which work fine and i get no pop up telling me its not a sony disc. the Zoom is fantastic and i find it so simple to use that you have to be a monkey if you find it difficult(no offense to other reviewers….LOL.

I have ordered a compatible NP-fh100 battery off ebay for ?12 inc P+P. compared to the samsung camcorder i previously had (from amazon) this is much better. Love the superplus night shot…really spooky and works surprisingly well.

you should not be disappointed if you buy this camcorder. if you have more money to spend then get the 1 mega pixel one if not then this is a winner.

knocked off a star for the naff battery they include and the lack of any discs and case..come on sony how much money do you make each year!! LOL

Customer Review: Great Camcorder!
This is an excellent camcorder and really easy to use - no need to read any manuals, just pop a disk in and start recording. Amazing optical zoom, small and light.

Not 5 stars because found touch screen a bit fiddly and doesn’t come with a free disk.

***WARNING*** If you get an accessory pack make sure the battery is one from the ‘H series’ which are the only ones compatible with the Sony 106.

I bought the Sony ACC-DVDH DVD Camcorder Starter Kit, which another reviewer recommended instead of the ACC-DVDP because it apparently came with an ‘H Series’ battery. However the battery in both of these kits are incompatible with the 106. The ‘H Series’ include: NP-FH40; NP-FH50; NP-FH70; NP-FH100.

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Canon MV500I Digital Camcorder
Used Price: ?299.00

Philips Key019 128MB Wearable Digital Camcorder
Customer Review: Great portable camera
When i got this camera i was very pleased with it and would sugest it to anyone after a good portable camera/camcorder for going on holiday etc… It’s size and weight means that you can just slip it into a pocket and almost forget that your carrying it and hence you dont have to lug it around as you have to with most cameras. the LCD screen is great and its very good that you can play back your pictures and videos with sound aswell. The MP3 playback is OK but because of the memory size, i tend to use mine for taking pictures and videos and store only a few tracks on it. But i higly recommmend this to anyone looking for a useful portable camera/camcorder/MP3 for going on holiday/travelling etc….

Power Battery for Canon MV3iMC, LiIon, Li-Ion, Lithium Ion Technology, 100% fits, properly matching, Batteries, Camcorder, Video, Digital Camera
You will receive one Power Rechargeable Battery. This Rechargeable Battery 100% fits and is properly matching !

Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery (originally packaged factory-new merchandise)

This high capacity rechargeable battery definitely disposes of more power than the original rechargeable battery included in delivery of the unit. This rechargeable battery can be used instead of the original rechargeable battery without any problems and can be recharged with the available standard power supply. The rechargeable battery is protected and secured against overcharge and short-circuits.

Features of this rechargeable battery:

• safety due to heat and overcharge protection
• real lithium-ion rechargeable battery, more power than the original rechargeable battery
• no memory effect recharge your battery whenever you like
• excellent fitting accuracy, certified quality merchandise, not an original accessory
• the standard battery charger can still be used

Power Battery for Panasonic NV-DS27, LiIon, Li-Ion, Lithium Ion Technology, 100% fits, properly matching, Batteries, Camcorder, Video, Digital Camera
You will receive one Power Rechargeable Battery. This Rechargeable Battery 100% fits and is properly matching !

Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery (originally packaged factory-new merchandise)

This high capacity rechargeable battery definitely disposes of more power than the original rechargeable battery included in delivery of the unit. This rechargeable battery can be used instead of the original rechargeable battery without any problems and can be recharged with the available standard power supply. The rechargeable battery is protected and secured against overcharge and short-circuits.

Features of this rechargeable battery:

• safety due to heat and overcharge protection
• real lithium-ion rechargeable battery, more power than the original rechargeable battery
• no memory effect recharge your battery whenever you like
• excellent fitting accuracy, certified quality merchandise, not an original accessory
• the standard battery charger can still be used

JVC GZ-HD7EK HD Everio Camcorder
JVC expands its award-winning Everio hard drive camcorder family with the addition of the JVC HD Everio GZ-HD7, a new high definition camcorder that provides full HD 1920×1080i video quality combined with the convenience of hard drive recording. This camcorder is the first Everio to shoot in full 1080i and the first JVC consumer camcorder to adopt a Fujinon lens. Designed to enable consumers to conveniently capture and share their memories in full high definition without the need for removable tapes or discs, the HD Everio offers consumers the simplicity of a point-and-shoot camcorder combined with the features, technology and manual controls that appeal to the serious videographer.

Customer Review: My first camcorder
I did a lot of research and soul searching before parting with my pound notes for this camera. I am new to the Camcorder arena so I guess my comments are true lay-terms as opposed to other experienced users on this page. Delivery was right on the button, thanks Amazon. The Camcorder is stunning stuff, great build quality compared to other makes in the price range and it works ‘just like it says on the tin’ The picture quality is great, the instruction manual gets nine out of ten for accuracy and the software that’s supplied works fine even on my old cranky laptop.(a bit slow though.) I took time to read some of the help files in the software suite and the .tod issue is not a problem if you use the JVC software, so I haven’t found the need to buy other editing software to produce DVDs etc. Everything I need was in the box except an iLink/firewire cable to download the pics to my recorder. I went to the camera shop and they wanted fifteen quid for one (Dick Turpin rules)so I got one on Amazon for under five quid. Happy filming.

Customer Review: A good first attempt - next year’s will be better
I took advantage of the exchange rate (thanks, again, DM) to pick up one of these for ?750 and ordered it in April just before the ‘it’s not quite as qood as we thought it was going to be’ consumer feedback started to come from the US.

Having had it for six weeks, I can say I love the build quality, the balance and the size. It’s a well-made product. And the image quality is just great. Not the best, (apparently that’s the tape-based Canon HV20) - but a million miles better than DV and more than good enough for my needs.

I had wanted an high-def Hard Disk camcorder for visualising scenes/general filming and this seemed a reasonable bet. I had looked at the Sony hi-def hard drive model in January (SR1?) - but decided to wait because none of the editing packages at the time supported the new AVCHD format the Sony used.

To deal with the OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) issue which is taking a lot of time on the US Amazon review boards… Yes, the camera is skittish at high-zoom and there is shake. But, remember, this is a prosumer model camera with lots of manual features; so, if buying it, you should be also considering investing in a tripod. Additionally, using the viewfinder rather than the LCD screen, helps steady the camera.

The .TOD issue is fairly easily dealt with by manually renaming the files .mpg. I edit in Sony Vegas, which pulls the files in very happily. Vegas is multi-core capable (uses all four processors on my machine) so editing seems pretty smooth. Even the cheaper versions of Vegas are pretty capable beasts.

So, all in all, I’m very happy with this as a buying choice. Canon HV20 sounds very nice - but there’s that tape issue. With this, I can shoot, select, watch, delete - fast. I’ll be happy with the Everio for the next couple of years.

NB: A key thing to consider, when buying an high-def camera, is the need to have a computer powerful enough for editing. The no-brainer is a Mac. By comparison, I picked up a 2x dual-core Xeon 2Ghz on ebay (Precision 690) for just over a grand. And a Dell 24″ A03 screen for ?400. Which makes the Mac an expensive no-brainer.

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Power Battery for Minolta Dimage Xt Biz, LiIon, Li-Ion, Lithium Ion Technology, 100% fits, properly matching, Batteries, Camcorder, Video, Digital Camera
You will receive one Power Rechargeable Battery. This Rechargeable Battery 100% fits and is properly matching !

Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery (originally packaged factory-new merchandise)

This high capacity rechargeable battery definitely disposes of more power than the original rechargeable battery included in delivery of the unit. This rechargeable battery can be used instead of the original rechargeable battery without any problems and can be recharged with the available standard power supply. The rechargeable battery is protected and secured against overcharge and short-circuits.

Features of this rechargeable battery:

• safety due to heat and overcharge protection
• real lithium-ion rechargeable battery, more power than the original rechargeable battery
• no memory effect recharge your battery whenever you like
• excellent fitting accuracy, certified quality merchandise, not an original accessory
• the standard battery charger can still be used

Power Battery for Fuji Finepix F31fd, LiIon, Li-Ion, Lithium Ion Technology, 100% fits, properly matching, Batteries, Camcorder, Video, Digital Camera
You will receive one Power Rechargeable Battery. This Rechargeable Battery 100% fits and is properly matching !

Li-Ion Rechargeable Battery (originally packaged factory-new merchandise)

This high capacity rechargeable battery definitely disposes of more power than the original rechargeable battery included in delivery of the unit. This rechargeable battery can be used instead of the original rechargeable battery without any problems and can be recharged with the available standard power supply. The rechargeable battery is protected and secured against overcharge and short-circuits.

Features of this rechargeable battery:

• safety due to heat and overcharge protection
• real lithium-ion rechargeable battery, more power than the original rechargeable battery
• no memory effect recharge your battery whenever you like
• excellent fitting accuracy, certified quality merchandise, not an original accessory
• the standard battery charger can still be used

Nextgen Digital Video Camcorder and Digital Camera in one
Record and play your own video and still pictures AND view them immediately with this portable, easy-to-use Digital Camera and Video Recorder. It comes with just about every accessory you’ll need plus the software you want to make your own video and picture creations. Package contents Digital Camcorder Camcorder Bag USB Cable AV Cable Strap Installation CDs User Guide
Customer Review: Battery compartment a problem
Nice little compact movie camera - good for outdoors - seems to take time to adjust to light indoors and needs some strong artificial light to take good indoor movies. I liked it a lot, but after only a few months the sliding cover for the battery compartment/SD slot has broken - the small plastic lugs on one side have broken away, so if you buy one, be very careful with that part of it. I was very happy with mine until then.

Panasonic NV-GS15EB Digital Camcorder [24 x Optical , DV in / out]

Removing Spot Scratches in Your Treasured Photos - 5 Minute Digital Fix

Probably one of the most common problems you will be faced with in doing any type of digital photo restoration work will be to do with spot scratches on your old photos.

When we first look at those old black and white or early colour photos they often have small scratch marks and spots on them from being stored incorrectly.

These small spot scratches are easily perceived by your eye when you are looking at the photo, detracting from the overall subject matter.

Here is a very easy quick fix using Adobe Photoshop’s History Brush tool.

Our example “before” image on our web-site has numerous small spot scratches on the old sepia toned photograph.

The basic removal method described here can quickly and effortlessly bring those scratched photos back to (almost) their former glory using the History Brush Tool found in Photoshop.

This basic technique works extremely well for those types of images that have spot scratches in areas of the photo that do not contain a lot of detail.

As you can see in our example image on the web-site, the spots tend to be primarily on the background of the photo, making it ideal for this correction method.

Step - 1

Having opened up the image in Photoshop we will first apply the Dust and Scratches filter by selecting Filter->Noise->Dust & Scratches …

Set the Threshold to between 1 and 4 (I generally start with 1) and then increase the Radius until you see the spot scratches disappear.

Our example image on the web-site finally made the largest spot scratch on the left hand side of the photo disappear at a Threshold of 3 and Radius of 10.

All well and good but our image is now totally blurred!! Not really what we wanted to see is it?

This is where the History Brush tool comes into play.

Step - 2

Open up the History Palette by selecting Window->History if you cannot see the window already open.

We are going to create a “Snapshot” of the current state of the image in question by clicking on what looks like a little image of a camera at the bottom of the History Palette window (see the red arrow on the web-site image).

After clicking you will notice that the History Palette now shows an extra image icon called “Snapshot 1″.

This is a snapshot of the image that includes the effect of apply the Dust & Scratches Filter in Step 1.

Now click on the little square box to the left of Snapshot 1.

You will see a little “brush” icon appear which is now telling us that the “Snapshot 1″ image will be used as our “source” when we paint with the History Brush.

Remember … this snapshot image actually has none of the spot scratches on it because we made them disappear by applying the Dust & Scratches filter in Step 1.

Step - 3

Make the original (un-touched) history snapshot active by clicking on it (in the case of our example image this is “Restore-Before-Image.jpg”).

Select the History Brush from the main toolbar (this has the same icon as the little “brush” icon that appeared in the History Palette window).

We are now ready to “paint away” those spot scratches!!

Step - 4

I’m going to zoom in on the largest scratch on the left hand side of the photo to show you how we use the History Brush.

We selected the History Brush in Step 3.

Select an appropriate brush size and soft edges.

We now need to decide how to apply the brush to the scratches in question.

You will notice that the scratches in our example image are “lighter” than the surrounding image.

Step - 5

We need to paint “darker” pixels and as such we set the History Brush Mode: to “Darken” (Top Menu Bar option when you have the History Brush as the active tool).

This has the effect of “telling the History Brush” to only replace pixels on the original image with pixels from our snapshot if the snapshot pixel is darker.

Start to paint over the scratches and see what happens.

The scratches start to miraculously disappear as you paint over them.

They are being replaced with the underlying snapshot image pixels you created in Step 1.

The benefit of using this techniques is that you have complete control over which parts of the original image you “paint over” so as not to blur important details of the image had you just applied a Dust & Scratches filter to the whole image.

Now what if your scratches are darker than the surrounding image, I hear you ask?

Easy!! … just use a History Brush Mode: of “Lighten” instead of “Darken”.

You can experiment with all of the History Brush options - Mode, Opacity and Flow until you get the desired result.

The resulting “After” image has had all of the spot scratches removed easily without compromising on the photographic detail of the image.

And there you have it!!Less than five minutes of digital image manipulation to remove those unwanted spot scratches.

If you find the steps taking are a little hard to understand in this text based article, you can click on the link at the end of this article to see the same method explained on our website with the aid of example graphical images.

? Gary Wilkinson 2005 - All Rights Reserved

You can see this removal method complete with example images at Basic removal of Spot Scratches in Photos

Feel free to re-print this article provided that all hyperlinks and author biography are retained as-is.

Gary Wilkinson is a photographer, photographic restorer and the owner of a photographic retail business.

He is also the publisher of the http://www.restoring-photos-made-easy.com website, where other methods of correcting common photographic restoration problems are discussed.
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Colour: Clear Frost - Made for i-nique Stylish silicone skin for your Canon Ixus Camera The cover has a secret anti-dust/static coating to ensure it keeps foreign agents to a minimum. Screen protection included
Read more..

Just posted! Our detailed in-depth review of the Canon EOS 40D. Sixth in line from the D30 announced back in 2000 the 40D features a ten megapixel CMOS sensor with Live View capability, a ‘14-bit’ image pipeline, six frames per second continuous shooting, a larger viewfinder view and of course a three inch LCD monitor. All joking aside the EOS 40D has a lot to live up to and a lot of competition coming its way, see how it performed and how it compares in our thirty page review. Read more..

Optimize Your Photos for the Web

It doesn’t matter if your emailing photos of your grandson or putting images of your latest product on your online store. Too many people don’t consider optimizing their photos for the web. We’ve all been on too many web pages where it seemed that the photos would never load, and sometimes they didn’t. So here are some steps to make sure that your photos show up on your site.

1. Always have a back up original format copy of your image. Never alter the original. Believe me you will regret it.

2. Crop to size. Make sure that you crop out any extra information that isn’t needed. Remember the larger the photo the longer it takes to load or send.

3. Resize to reduce pixels. There should be an option to resize according to pixels. You’re going to want the largest size to be no more than 250 pixels or you can reduce the dpi to no more than 96.

4.Reduce the color palette. Many images have millions of colors so the first thing that you need to do is reduce the colors to 256. You will lose some depth with this.

5. Save the file in a standard format. JPEG is the most common for photos and you can compress the image with a JPEG for further reduction in file size. It’s not unusual to see GIF or PNG as well.

Remember that with a 56k connection a 150k file will take 20 seconds to load. If you’re creating a web page every photo that you add will add to the time it takes to download all of the images. If you keep the images small in size the smaller resolution will not be as obvious.

About The Author

Copyright 2004 Kelly Paal

Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.

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sony msx-m2gs

Nikon EN-EL1 700mAh battery

Datacolor launches new Spyder3 calibration and profiling tools
Datacolor has updated its Spyder monitor calibration and print profiling system, featuring the only seven detector color engine on the market and boasting 400% extra light sensitivity for increased accuracy. Other new features include a built in ambient light sensor, combined desktop cradle and tripod mount and ‘before and after’ SpyderProof proofing capability. Initially available as the $279 Spyder3Elite which deals with displays only or the $599 Spyder3Studio with printer profiling, the range is compatible with Mac OSX (10.3 and higher) as well as Windows 2000, XP and Vista 32/64.