I’ve seen the CANON DC40 and I am impressed. Canon DC40 is very attractive with a functional design It was built with solid quality. The videcam is very decent daytime and surprisingly solid low-light video quality and has a broad set of semimanual photo and video controls.

However,the videocam also has its boo-boos. It has small LCD and it uses Mini SD cards rather than standard SD. It has a blinding video light and there’s no S-Video input for converting analog video to DVDs.

The important bottomline here is that the Canon DC40 definitely deserves a spot on your short list of DVD camcorders.

Getting the right features in a camera is important. It’s also vital to make sure the camera you are buying fits you. Can you hold the camera steady while shooting video? Is the video camera comfortable in your hand? Are the buttons placed in a way that makes them easy to press without jostling the camera during recording? Is the camera a size you’re comfortable taking with you, or is it too big so you’ll never use it? Will the camcorder fit in your purse or do you need a separate bag? All these are questions that help determine whether a digital video camera is a good fit for your needs. –Jake Ludington

The Sony HDR-CX7 is a compact HD camcorder that records directly to Memory Stick Duo. It can record SD video and take good images with a 6.1 MP still camera. The HDR-CX7 has optical image stabilization, 10x optical zoom, and a 2.7″ touch panel LCD. You can play back your video on the PS3. With its Super NightShot mode, it can shoot in total darkness up to 10 feet. It is best for those who want to record high quality videos but need a light video camera without too many trimmings. The HDR-CX7 will set you back between $800-900 at most online retailers

It seems that everyone creating videos online has tried making spoofs or parodies of pop culture at some point or another. Give your videos a twist by swedeing, a genre seemingly invented for the Michel Gondry film Be Kind, Rewind starring Jack Black. Swedeing takes the film tribute to the next (lower) level using low-tech techniques and stand-ins for effects that are out of the reach of amateur videographers. The result: homemade goodness that is funny and endearing. As a marketing ploy, swedeing was effective on YouTube. All that’s left for you to prove now is that it can touch your home audience, who will have to tolerate your use of household items as props and costumes.

These symbols are used in Creative Commons licenses. It’s very helpful to know what they mean. The symbol on the left stands for attribution (BY), which lets other people use and distribute your work for as long as it is credited. The second symbol means noncommercial (NC), which lets other people use your work for noncommercial purposes. The third symbol is no derivative works (ND), meaning others cannot make derivative works and must keep it as is. The last symbol is share alike (SA), which sets the condition that the derivative work can be used only with the same license as the original work. One or a combination of these conditions can be in the same license. For example, you can indicate that your home video is BY-SA or BY-NC-ND. You can also choose which jurisdiction’s Copyright Law will apply to your work.

Have you ever given a thought about licensing your videos? Even if you’re not particular about how your videos are used by other people, it would be helpful to make it clear what can and cannot be done to your uploaded videos. There are traditionally two extremes in terms of copyrights. On the one hand is all rights reserved (c), giving only the copyright owner the right to use the material as he wishes. On the other hand, there is public domain (pd), where anybody can use the material however way he wants. But this is now changing to accommodate licenses somewhere in the middle, which specify how a material can be used. These are the Creative Commons (cc) licenses.

Image from www.creativecommons.org

If you’re missing the UK and just want to see what videos people are producing over there, BBC Video Nation has various sections to feed your need and inform you about British society today. In Filming Skills, they give the ground rules for filming with a video cam. When lighting a shot, for example, don’t stand against a bright window or turn on the light to minimize shadows. Among the top five tips are not relying on the built-in microphone of your video cam, avoiding the use of zoom, holding shots for at least five seconds for safety, keeping to static shots whenever possible and getting yourself in the shot.

Sony couples their HDCAM cameras together under the name CineAlta. They cover a broad range of prices and features, ranging from the XDCAM HD models and the F350 to the widely used and widely popular F950.

The XDCAM HD cameras record directly to Sony’s professional disc media, which is physically
similar to Blu-ray discs. These cameras can also record various quality levels of 1080i and 1080p, along with regular SD DVCAM. Unlike other HD cameras from Sony, the XDCAM HD supports i-Link for file access and DV output.

Near the high end of the Sony HD solutions is the F900. It captures both 1080p and 1080i at
various frame rates, including 25p and 50i. This is also the most expensive camera from Sony, as it costs around $80,000!

One of the small generation of video recorders from Kodak, it is small and suited for use in all weather. Shaped like a mobile phone, it uses SD/SDHC memory cards for data storage which can go up to 10 hours of 720p HD video. It can record video in bright light as well as low light though some improvement may be needed in the audio recording due to dismal performance. Some reviews also found the lowlight video recording abilities a bit too exaggerated. The device is well suited for teens and their irresponsible ways, being weatherproof and small enough to fit in most pockets, they can withstand quite a lot of abuse. They can use 2 standard high-capacity double AA alkaline cells but for constant use, a good pair of rechargables(or more, ) would do better for those whole days of fun out on in the sun. Full Story »

Continued from the previous post…………
The video camera has a built-in GPS sensor allowing geo-tagging with a simple time-zone adjust feature that can be seen easily on-screen. One other nifty feature is the smile sensor which takes still images when the subject does smile, letting you capture better pictures at 8.3 Mega Pixels. The built-in software also automatically creates scene highlights instead of painstakingly getting you to do it by yourself. It features a proprietary Professional Quality Sony Lens and the unit comes with smart-interface for mic and other accessories. It also has the ability to capture images at a recording rate of 240 frames per second compared to the normal 60 FPS allowing smooth slow motion even in the swiftest of action. Recording can be achieved with either the hard-drive or the built-in memory stick slot. Sony has continued to improve on their video camera’s and they are some of the most popular consumer electronic goods in the world. Reliable and with excellent quality they will continue to do so for the coming years.