Sony ACC-DVDH Accessory Kit For DVD Camcorder [Contains H-Series Battery, 1 x DVD+RW]
Accessory Kit - NPFH50/Case/DVD+RW

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DC50 CAMCORDER 10XOPT.ZOOM 2.7 LCD OIS UK
Amazon Price: ?404.98
Customer Review: We’re sooooo in lurv
Did a lot of research before buying: looked at mini dv’s, but tape seems so old-fashioned and fiddly now, and besides they’re on the way out. Hard disc drives didn’t convince on reliability, and reviews of earlier dvd camcorders criticised quality of recording compared to tape. And then the DC50 came along. Canon have obviously learned lessons along the way and produced a truly fine new-generation DVD camcorder. It has an extra-large CCD sensor to let in lots of light, which was a big factor in my buying it. Also a factor were the number of excellent customer and official reviews. Can’t do a teccie’s review, as I haven’t got to grips with the software yet and haven’t done any editing. However I’ve just come back from the Edinburgh Festival and really put it through its paces, both on land and sea. It feels good and solid in the hand, and the main buttons are well positioned for one-handed use. The wide screen is great, and of course for playback in-camera you just jump from scene to scene, as opposed to tedious rewinding and fast-forwarding with tape. As a point and shoot it’s dead easy, but this camcorder will do so much more (like fading in and out of scenes), and I’m still getting to grips with all its functions. I’m not bothered about using it as a stills camera, but there’s 5.3 megapix for you to play around with! Battery life (BP208) is about 90 minutes for recording, longer for playback. You can recharge it in-camera using the supplied charging lead, but I would suggest a spare battery (about ?30 for a proper Canon one) and battery charger (I got a good one on the internet for about ?12, including an in-car charger), then you can recharge both at once prior to going out. You will get about 25 - 30 minutes of recording time on a disc, using standard play. Both disc and battery are quick and easy to change. You can do either some editing in-camera, or just simple deleting, depending on which of 2 modes you initialise your disc in (something I’m still trying to get my head round), but it’s also easy enough to download to your pc using either USB or the disc itself. And the real beauty of this system is that you can just finalise the disc and pop it straight into a dvd player for immediate viewing. Most importantly of all, the quality of the movie is simply astonishing. The colours are vibrant and sharp, and even in low light situations (such as the Tattoo or inside pubs etc) I didn’t have to change to a low-light programme. That huge CCD sensor did its job. The Tattoo looked fantastic, and even inside a dark shop was almost as light as day. Sound quality is excellent too. Replaying the disc on our lcd television, my teccie husband and I could’nt believe the quality: as good as anything on tv. Even the camera shakes of a nervous newbie operator (me) didn’t matter too much, thanks to the superior image stabilisation system. I cannot tell you how good this camcorder is: I think it’s probably one of the best on the market, and answers all previous criticisms about dvd camcorders. It’s worth every penny, and there’s nothing to disappoint. If you’re thinking of buying one, if possible don’t economise with a cheaper one (with smaller CCD): this is a case where you really get what you pay for. The quality is truly outstanding, with all the advantages and ease of use of dvd. And I find Canon consistently excellent anyway (2 digital cameras and a photo printer - all brilliant).
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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

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Amazon Price: ?178.70
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Sony DCR-HC45 Handycam Mini Dv Camcorder with 2.5” LCD screen
MINIDV CARL ZEISS 2.5 LCD INA 40X OPT. ZM 2000X DIG. ZM NS

Customer Review: Compact and good value
A great little standard definition dv camcorder which fits comfortably in the palm of the hand and produces good quality footage for general home&family use.

The supplied software from Sony will only allow capture to PC via Firewire/iLink which means you have purchase an extra cable because its not included in the box. However you can capture video to PC via USB (cable included), just turn on the USB Streaming option through the onboard menu (set off by default) and then use a suitable third party program which can detect it (I suggest Virtualdub, its free and fully featured).

I definitely recommend this camcorder to anyone on a sub ?200 budget - from my own research, I could not find another model that could beat it for value in this price bracket.

Customer Review: Sony Software does not support USB Streaming
The Picture Motion Browser software that comes with this doesn’t have tool to download video using USB streaming. The only option that comes with it is iLink . So, if your PC doesn’t have iLink then this handycam is useless. Even the iLink cable is not supplied by Sony.

I was really surprised to see that USB streaming is not supported. Sony used to supply Picture Package software previously, which had USB streaming and it was really good and now their latest handycams with latest software doesn’t have this feature.

So don’t go this if you rely on only USB2.

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Canon MD101 Digital Video Camcorder
MD101 CAMCORDER 30X OPT.ZOOM 2.7 LCD UK
Amazon Price: ?141.80
Used Price: ?140.00
Customer Review: Might be a dodgy batch
Read the earlier reviews about problems with hearing the motor whirr whilst using the built in microphone. Fore armed I tried using 3 different mikes as a test before recording my only public presentation in five years, but when I plugged in the mike, no sound was recorded at all. Spoke to Canon who said to send it back, and Amazon were very good and immediately replaced it on the day before the presentation. Unfortunately plugging in a mike stopped this one recording too. Checked the manual again (just plug in mike and go) but it should have worked. Had to record the talk with a buzzing motor and this one is going back as well. Good picture, easy to use - poor sound no matter what I tried.
Customer Review: Excellent Value for Money
A nice little camcorder at this price. This is my first camcorder and I’m quite impressed with it. Quality at low light levels isn’t great but at this price you don’t expect it to be. Features are standard but it has got an external mic socket which you don’t see in many other cameras in this price range. Build quality is fine, LCD display is great, you can hear the tape through the mic a bit though. I’ve bought a bigger battery and seperate charger to compliment (generic models off ebay) as the battery provided only lasts about an hour.

Sony DCR-VX2100E Professional Digital Camcorder
Customer Review: TV quality
This camcorder whuch I have had for just a week does everything!!copies from other cannon, tv video etc. I am just ordering a charger ( only downside) as time is spent on charging battery, being attached to camcorder. but it truly is as it says in the book !tv quality! I love it!
Customer Review: A stunning piece of kit - what more can i say??
I purchased this camera for amateur filmaking and it has been excellent, quality is second to none outdoors and also in low light, but its manual controls help it really shine. Its built very well, metal body, not very heavy but is strong, balances well in the hand. The LCD screen is very sharp and stands out well outdoors, the viewfinder is chunky and the large eyecup makes it very easily viewable outdoors. Alround this is a fantastic camera, superb image quality, rivals the XL1s, my opinion indoors in low light its even better than the Canon. Buttons and controls are very easily accessible and in easy reach, the camera can be held in almost any position and angle and you’ll still have easy access to one of three Record buttons. The battery pack is sunk into the back of the camera so even the largest battery doesn’t make it look too bulky. Bottom line is, if you want a very high quality camera with a vast range of professional features that is capable of shooting excellent low light scenes and sharp, vibrant images outdoor then this is the camera for you. 10 out of 10!!!!

Samsonite Trekking Digital Video Camcorder Camera Case Black/Blue D-V1

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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Amazon Price: ?6.95
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A high-quality compact digital camera that packs 6.1 megapixels and a range of easy-to-use functions into a slim, sophisticated wave-surface body, the COOLPIX S9 has the style and capability to let anyone shoot with greater confidence. Featuring a 1/2.5-inch CCD that offers enhanced precision and 6.1-effective megapixel image resolution, the COOLPIX S9 captures true-to-life color and delivers sharp, fine detail. And because it features a 3x Zoom-Nikkor ED lens with a 38-114mm range (35mm equivalent), it gives users broad compositional freedom to shoot anything from expansive scenery to tight portraits.
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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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Digital Hero 3 Waterproof Sports Wrist Camera
The Digital HERO 3 is the ultimate waterproof action camera, waterproof down to 30 meters. As featured in Stuff Magazine September 2007! Not only is it a 3 mega-pixel waterproof camera that can take still photos, it is also a waterproof video camera! With built-in 16Mb internal memory, expandable to 2Gb using an SD Card, it has the capacity to shoot 54 minutes of colour TV resolution video (640×480 pixels), also capturing sound! It is easy to use and lightweight enough that it is hardly noticeable. It can be strapped to your wrist, kayak paddles, handlebars, roll bars, etc.
Customer Review: Not sure what you are talking about!
This little camera is just superb for photos and video recording. It is completely waterproof, however you do need to make sure the clasp is firmly closed, and we have found it to be extremely durable. Only slight criticism is that it is quite big, however to be waterproof and do everything that it does, we really cant fault it. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to take photos / video footage while on or in water or biking.
Customer Review: Disappointment - but mine was faulty…
Update: Since initially writing my review I have since been told by GoPro that the camera I had was faulty. They have been very quick to replace my unit with a new one which should arrive soon. The customer service has been excellent from this point of view. The review of the old camera remains below - I’ll update the difference when I get the new unit. The main problem with my unit was the battery life. If you take a couple of short (ie ten second) clips of video the batteries will be drained and then I was stuck with a camera on my wrist for the rest of the session that can’t do anything. Problem two was the picture quality. I appreciate it’s only 3 megapixels but the quality was pretty poor. Particularly if the sun is not shining (very, very dark photos and video with no sunshine). The worst however was the video. The quality was pretty poor, but when I played back the video’s I’d shot at home they either hadn’t come out (often you’d get a couple of frames and then it would stop when you knew you’d shot ten seconds worth) or you’d get your ten seconds worth but with multi-coloured lines through the middle of it, blocking the view of what you were trying to film.

Kid-Tough Digital Camera - Blue
Price: ?59.99