My girlfriend owns a Samsung Digital8 camcorder which, while it has great image quality, is a bit on the large side and a little weighty. We took it to New York two years ago and it was a bit of a hassle what with the carry-on luggage we needed and carrying around the bag and everything was a bit of a hassle.

We are going to New York again this March and she expressed interest in a very compact camcorder she saw on the JCPenny website as her Christmas present. It's a 3MP digital camera/camcorder that records in MPEG4 video compression. It has 32MB internal memory and can use SD memory cards.

Both of us are video enthusiasts and realize that this will not be a superfine image quality. I was also going to purchase a flash bracket and video light like I use for my Panasonic PV-GS15 so that she can record in low light. Mainly she was interested in the color and being able to have a camcorder to record spontaneous video in New York and everyday without lugging around The Beheamoth.

Basically what I'm asking is two-fold:
1) Would this be a good choice for what she wants? We're not looking for a blockbuster here, just a video record of our trip

2) What's the memory to video ratio on something like this? How much video could she conceivably put on, say, a 1 GB SD card?

Thanks for your help.

1)I'm no professional in the field, but first a suggestion, don't buy the camera from JCPenny, please. When digital cameras are categorized under "housewares" along with barstools, cutlery and kitchen carts, you can't expect much more than cellphone camera quality. Especially when it costs 170. Even Walmart could do better.

Also, when it has a 2" LCD screen, onboard light, and is as small as it is, the battery couldn't last more than an hour.

2) I honestly have no idea, but the closest camera I own to the one you're looking at costs about 3.6 MB per minute. However it's a mini DV, not flash card.

They just keep pushing the conveniency envelope, you can't even call these thing pocket or minicams anymore, they're keychain cams.

I say pick up a cheap Canon ZR100. It's tiny, miniDV, and takes decent video. The ZR200 takes stills as well, but they're not great and thus I would use a digital still camera.

Recording video in Mpeg4 isn't really watchable. For a 2 minute video, it's about 10 megs. Maybe around 200 minutes of video on a 1 GB SD card? I don't do math, I make movies, and the two rarely go hand in hand. Anyway... A screen shot from the footage on an SD card and the footage from a tape.


This is from the Canon ZR200. It's not the greatest image quality in the world in low light, but it's small, portable, and gets decent battery life. (Sorry I couldn't get a better still, I just grabbed one from the first thing I happened to be working on... someone's music video. That's a shot from my second unit for anyone interested.)


Here's from the mpeg4 from my camera, less than stellar. I wouldn't record a New York vacation with it, but that's just me.