toyzilla
Attack of the uber toys! First up we just picked up two Audiovox 6600 PDA Camera Phone’s. Woot, I’m slowing being consumed by the world of Pocket PC goodness.
Ok now why these PDA’s? Well first they built in keyboards that light up, good for our constantly evolving research space. On the past three projects we were collecting data in dark rooms, these would of rocked! Cameraphone goodness is a bonus for getting reference pics to associate with data being collected. Its got bluetooth to boot. Now I read online the batteries suck, but luckily in China we wont be using these as cellphones, mainly for PDA’s, so we plan to turn the cell phone part off and just in case we picked up 2 more batteries.
While I was there waiting forever to get them all setup etc, I wandered over to the camera section and spotted the Sony DSC-M1, which i’ve been reading about online and well the money has been burning a hole in my pocket lately to get something new.
I like digital cameras but I like taking digital video more. The M1 is really more of a digital movie camera than it is a still cam. Still its good either way. Its got some cool little modes on it. Twilight, fireworks, snowboarding.. lol some strange modes. Just optimizations for what you are about to capture but hey I’ll take that. So we’re talking 5.1Megapixel for stills and MPEG-4 for camera video.
Hybrid mode is one of the more interesting modes ive ever seen on a camera. Its still shot mode that basically upon hitting the button to capture a still, the camera grabs the 5 seconds of video before that still, and then another 3 seconds after the still. This could be handy in research gathering really. Often we capture a still of something of focus but dont get the real feel for what was happening regarding that still. With this hybrid mode, you are basically capturing that moment in time and have the related video of the event to help provide true context. I love the idea of the camera in hybird mode essentially caching as far as i understand it, caching whatever is in view and poised to shoot and capture.
The ergonomics of the camera are different too. In fact I had to have manager de-secruity the demo one so i could tell how it felt in my hand. Thank god for managers cause the sales people gave me nothing but static. Another thing I cant stand about buying things in electronic stores is the dreaded hard sell on the extended warranty crap. Typically I just say “nope not interest” and its done, i’m free. The only time i’ve taken advantage of the extrended crap is when I bought my first sidekick from Compusa, and I will say that was worth it, I paid $40 bucks extra to have a no questions asked return policy for a year. The same sorta goes for this camera. I pay a bit more, more than I thought I wanted to pay but I get an all access pass to fixing whatever outcomes i run into this camera for 3 years. Ok fine.