Insignia High Def Flash Camcorder

I bought this little camcorder when my Canon Elura 100 had to go in for repairs. I've been in the market for a flash drive high def camcorder for a while, since I wasn't sure if I wanted to repair the canon or replace it. When I came across this little guy, I thought "who could go wrong for $99?"

Pros:

It has a nice sleek black design, very slim, with a huge 3" lcd monitor. It comes with a boat load of accessories including a HDMI cable (charger, pouch, usb cable, strap as well). The screen is huge, bright and clear. All of the buttons are pretty well laid out on the back. The hardest part is figuring out a way to hold the little guy.


The battery and card slot are enclosed on the other side of the unit. It can be a little tricky sometimes to pop the card out, so keep a longer finger nail. An 8gb card will hold about 9 hours of non-hd video and 4.5 or so hours of hd video. There is no delay in "writing" to the card, everything seems instant (sandisk 8gb ultra II).

The sound quality is great for a little camcorder, and the onboard speaker is very loud and clear for replays.

The menus are laid out nicely and it's very quick and easy to replay your videos.

The device includes some extra features - a sound recorder, motion detection (which works pretty well), still camera and flash/led light (which suck).

It starts up pretty quick, only about a couple of seconds from opening the lcd to recording, but certainly not instant.

Cons:

The digital zoom is pretty useless, and you can't zoom in and out while recording.

You have to select the focus depth (ie, macro, portrait and landscape). If your recording in macro mode, things in the distance are blurry. But if you keep it in portrait mode it seems fine.
It would be nice to have it start up silently, it will always play a loud welcome chime.
The light/flash is useless. Some people complain about having a finger over the light when holding it, but since you have to go into the menu to activate it, you'll probably hold it differently as well. But really, you won't need to bother activating it at all (carry a flash light if needed).
The camera is terrible, terrible. Don't buy this for still shots.
Not a low light performer! Most video done inside, if you don't have all the lights on and windows open would be considered low light. You get a lot of "noise" on the screen with low light and picture quality drastically reduces... but what do you expect for $99? In a well lit scene, the video performance is great!
Playing the video's back on a windows xp system took some research. The video's are in h264 avi format so you need ffdshow to play it (special thanks to doom9 forum).
No lens cap - why? This seems like an important piece.

Conclusion:
For $99... you can't go wrong. The con list might seem long, but come on, this camera is only $99, you can't expect it to be perfect. So far, I'm really happy with it. HD recording, with a HDMI cable, large and bright LCD, in a pocket sized package...awesome!

Update - Cybersyncs fire the camera!

Hooking the reciever to my K10D (or K200d for that matter) will fire the camera remotely! All I needed was a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter (ala Radio Shack) and I'm in business.
Another plus for the cybersyncs!

Pentax K10D DSLR

This was Pentax's flag ship professional camera (now replaced by the K20D) about 2 years ago. I won't be going into an in depth review here, you can find those all over the web. If you don't trust it's performance simply look at all the awards it's won. In hand, it just feels right for me. It's the perfect size, just meaty enough to hand onto but not to heavy. It runs on a rechargeable lithium battery pack and can be boosted with a battery grip. When using this at a 10 hour wedding I've yet to replace the battery... not bad in my opinion!

All of the features are at your finger tips, you don't have to dig through the menu very much at all. It has 2 e-dials that work very well together.

Picture quality is outstanding! I've got the settings just right now so my JPEG's come out almost perfect, fresh from the camera.

The SDM focus motor is outstanding, whisper quite and quick (if not to dark)

The down sides for me: No sync terminal on the camera, I have to use the hotshoe or an adapter for all flash work. Focus speed in low light isn't the best. High ISO image quality is poor, if this doesn't get worked on by the time the K30D rolls around that might be my push towards Nikon. But that's about it. Sure it's frames per second is around 3 but since I don't use it for sports much, that doesn't really bug me.

Keep on trucken' Pentax, I want to see a sweet K30D in the next few months!

Cyber Sync wireless controllers

My search for reliable and affordable wireless controllers led me to the CyberSyncs. It all started back with my ebay radio poppers (poverty wizards), which worked just fine in house, but when they failed me once on location...it was bye, bye. So then the search began. I was thinking about the pocket wizards, which are the industry standard, but I knew there had to be more options out there at better prices.
I was first attracted to the Skyports (http://www.elinchrom.com/), they where tiny, cool looking and you could group strobes into separate categories. But they just wouldn't work for me, apparently their triggering time is so quick they wouldn't reliably trigger my gear, so back they went.
I then came across the cybersyncs (while searching for solutions to my skyport troubles), and I'm very glad I did. First off, they were even cheaper than the skyports (score!), and they are smaller than the pocket wizards (not to mention way cheaper... double score!). To get them to work on my Sigma and Sunpak flashes (since they don't have any ports) I got the hotshoe adapter from http://www.flashzebra.com/. They fire all of my strobes, every time, and that is what I was looking for.
The receivers run on 2 AA batteries, which is nice since the are easily replaced when needed (skyports run on rechargeable lithium's). The transmitter works on a little watch sized battery. The transmitter slides onto the hotshoe and is very snug, there is no way to secure it in place, but it doesn't seem like it would go anywhere by accident (it's hard enough to remove when I want to).
It says that they will work up to 400ft, which is much shorter than the Pocket Wizards 1500ft but I can't image a time that I will ever need that. I haven't had a situation that they didn't work for me, through walls, etc.
They do have a couple millisecond "recharge" time between firing them, which might be a problem in some situations but I haven't ran into one yet. The Skyports could fire boom, boom, boom.
The down sides for me, so far are: no on/off button. Once you hit test, they go on and stay on for about 2 hours and then auto power down. In one sence it's nice since I will never forget to turn them off, but if they accidentally get bumped on in my bag, they will stay on for 2 hours. It would also be nice to be able to power them on and off and have to option to leave them on for as long as I want and not have to worry about them turning off. Next, and last down fall, no lanyard! This is such a simple add on I don't know why they didn't include one. I have had one fall and bust open from about 5 feet onto a hard wood floor, fortunately I put the batteries back in and it works fine (passed the drop test), but this shouldn't happen in the first place... with a lanyard.
Overall - I am very happy with these. Price is right and they haven't failed me yet.

Pentax DA* 50-135mm f2.8

I love this lens... LOVE it! It is perfect for wedding and portrait work. The 2.8 comes in handy for dark reception halls and depth of field in general. The SDM focus mechanism is whisper quiet and fast, it barely ever has to search (unless there is no contrast). The quality of the shots are outstanding. This lens is usually stuck on me all day at a wedding and the nice thing is it's relatively light (compared to a 70-200 2.8), the size is perfect. Occasionally I wish for a little more length in some situations, but then I would have to sacrifice on size.

Sigma 18-50 f2.8 For Pentax

This is my go to portrait lens for weddings, great for group shots as there really hasn't been a situation yet where I haven't been able to get everyone in. This lens is essentially on my K10D all day long. I have had has some trouble with sharpness at wide apertures, which I think is pretty common regardless of brand. The 2.8 comes in very handy and it can focus very close to the subject when needed (almost touching the lens). The biggest piss off I have with this lens is the fact that for whatever reason, Sigma designers decided to reverse the direction you rotate the barrel to zoom in and out... why?

Pentax K110D with 18-55 Kit lens

This is a great little camera, and my first digital SLR. I stuck with Pentax because that is what I learned on (back when I was 12), since then I've aquired more Pentax stuff. So when switching from film to digital it was the logical step. Even though Pentax is much less common than the big dogs.
The camera runs on AA or CRV-3's, the later will get you about 2000 shots (give or take) when you don't need the flash much. It does not have the Shake Reduction mechanism that other Pentax models have (I think all of which do now), and it doesn't really feel like a solid camera in hand. But the price is (was) right and the picture quality is just fine IMO.
The kit lens preformed just fine for my needs, although now a days it doesn't see the light of day much.

The Sunpak Auto 433D and 422D are versatile little power horses with full manual control and tilt swivel head. The only down falls are the high pitch noise when fully charged and the need for the special shoe adapter to fire off camera. The one thing I love about these is the fact that they won't "go to sleep" on you. Set them up wherever you need them, and 4 hours later, they will still be ready and waiting!

Get Started

I'm new to the blogging scene. This post is just to show that my site is now alive... I just need more time to get into it.
In the mean time, my website is www.picsbydan.com