Gadgets for Christmas

Rob Beattie ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 03 Dec 2003

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Pocket DV 3300
£149.95


Pros
Inexpensive digital jack-of-all-trades
Cons
SD cards are still expensive
Verdict
Good starter camera suitable for shooting short videos


This is primarily a digital video camera that records onto SD cards at up to 20 frames per second (fps) at 320 by 200 pixels. It’s also a reasonable still camera (with flash) and an MP3 player. The video specification makes it eminently suitable for creating short movies, copying them across to something like XP’s Movie Maker, and editing the footage together to produce short, highly compressed home movies for broadcasting over the Web or sending to friends and colleagues attached to emails.

Physically, the Pocket DV is the size of one of the ultra-small Sony/JVC DV cameras, with a fold-out 1.5in. colour LCD for framing your shots and playing back footage you’ve captured. The built-in 16MB memory can record nearly two minutes of video at 10fps, and around 40 seconds at the faster frame rate. Since the storage can be increased by adding SD cards (up to 256MB) this isn’t an issue.

You’re not getting a proper MiniDV camera for this price, but you are getting an excellent starter camera that’s more than capable of shooting short videos in or out of doors. And given that you’re also getting a half-decent stills camera, an MP3 player (with headphones), plus a case strap, mini-tripod and four AA batteries, it’s a very good deal.

Firebox.com

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