Waterproof Sanyo Video Camera

I was wondering what the gurus of video cameras thought of Sanyo products in general and of this camera in particular.

For outdoor photography, waterproof seems like a good idea and the camera also takes stills. The price is also hard to beat.

I am fairly picky about photo quality and don't mind paying more if there is something significantly better.

Reviews for it are mixed, most Pros have complained about the proprietary formating/codec

In my experience, you are better off using a digitical camera for photos, and a video camera for videos.

I have not come across any camera so far that can fill both roles.

We went to the Maldives, and one friend had the new Nikon D90, which can take HD video. I had the canon SX 1IS, which can also take HD video, but at the higher resolution - 1920x1080 against 1440x720 for the Nikon.

I also had the Sanyo HD 1010, with an underwater housing for underwater video. And a Canon G10 with an underwater housing for photos.

And finally a Canon HF 11 video camera.

We used all the above cameras, taking extensive number of photos and footage, to see what comes out.

The photos from the Nikon D90 were absolutely great. The video, seen by itself, wasn't bad at all. But, compared to even the Canon Sx 1IS, was very soft.

The canon Sx 1IS video was better than the Nikon's, but the photos were no where as good as those from the small Canon Ixus 870 IS!

Video taken underwater with the Sanyo HD 1010 was great, its photos were not.

Photos taken by the Canon G10 underwater, and over, were great. The video from this camera wasn't bad, but, at 640x480, it did not compare with the Sanyo'd.

The video from the Canon HF 11, was totally superior to all.

Both the Sayo and Canon HF 11 use the AVCHD format, which is rather hard to edit as it requires a good computer, and takes time. But, almost all editing programs now support it.

I was one of the earliest adaptors of the AVCHD format when it came out. And wasn't impressed with it because there was no way one can edit it or play it back except from the camera itself.

That has changed, and now I can edit it, and put it on normal DVDs by down converting it, put it on Blu-Ray disks, or convert it to WMV HD.

The end result is far superior to HDV.

Actually, if one thinks back, there was no way one can output HDV footage taken on DV tapes fort destribution as HDV except on tape, or comverted to WMV.

I like the AVCHD format.

Sadly, Premier Pro 4 finds it rather hard editing it if footage is taken at 24 MB/S.

But, if anyone is going this route, please make sure you have a powerful computer to edit it.

We are currently using two desktops for this.

An HP workstation with twin Intel XEON 3.2GHz CPUs, 32 GB DDR2 RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4700 graphic card.

The other is a home built with Intel i7 965 Extreme CPU, 12 GB DDR3 RAM, Nvidia Quadro CX graphic card.

The i7 processor seems to process videos faster than the HP workstation.

I am not sure whether this due to the new CPU technology, or the Nvidia CX graphic card - which is supposed to work faster with Premier.