Recently the stars aligned and my cell phone contract expired just as Apple unleashed its latest and greatest, the iPhone 3GS. The bump in features and memory was enough to finally push me over the edge and into iPhone ownership. One of the things that differentiates this model from the previous 3G is the new 3 megapixel camera with video recording capability. Maximum photo resolution is 2048 x 1536, while maximum video resolution is 640 x 480 (VGA). This thing is no HD camcorder or DSLR, but for a cell phone these aren’t bad specs.

It got me thinking… Given the best conditions, can a cell phone video camera and some basic editing with iMovie ‘09 make a decent video? I took a stroll along the San Diego harbor this afternoon to find out. I’ll let you be the judge, but I’m pleased with the results.

The only hitch I ran into throughout this process was that I imported the videos via iPhoto, but for whatever reason iMovie didn’t list the movies in the “iPhoto Movies” area of the event library, so I had to reimport the clips. This seems like a weird hiccup for Apple, as media integration is usually their forte.

Overall the iPhone makes a great camera and camcorder when the lighting is good and you’ve left your fancy equipment at home. The hardest part was keeping the video stable, but fortunately iMovie ‘09 includes an post-processing stabilization feature that actually worked quite well.

I’ve also put together a gallery of photos I took with the phone. Honestly would you guess these were taken with a cell phone if nobody told you? I’m quite impressed.

A while back I asked the question, “Can a camcorder beat a camera at its own game?” Apparently Nikon and Canon feel that I should have asked the opposite question, as they have just bust open a collective can of whoop-ass on the camcorder world with two new Digital SLR cameras.

Nikon landed the first punch with the new D90 DSLR, which can shoot 720P (1280×720) HD video at 24 frames per second. The camera can also take 12.3 megapixel stills and has fun features such as Live View and ultrasonic sensor cleaning. The D90 is available now and costs around $1,050 for the body only.

Canon hopes to land the knockout blow with its soon to be released Canon EOS 5D Mark II, which will bring a jaw-dropping 21.1 megapixel full-frame sensor to the game. The camera will be the first DSLR capable of recording “full HD” 1080P (1920×1080) video. The EOS 5D Mark II will be considerably more expensive than the D90 with a body-only MSRP of $2,699. It hits the markets in November.

So how do these showoff DSLRs compare to their camcorder cousins? Amazingly well, if the clips I’ve found on Vimeo are any indication. Take a look at pizza through the lens of the D90. (As usual, click through to Vimeo to view the clip in HD.)

And here we have some various footage from the heavyweight 5D Mark II:

These two cameras are game-changers. Their still image performance is exceptional as always, but now they allow photographers to shoot professional-quality video. The cameras may seem expensive, but camcorders with interchangeable lenses cost megabucks. The ability to shoot video through the wonderful glass from Canon, Nikon, and others is dream come true for many videographers. The cameras will open up the world of video to the hugely popular prosumer photography market, making cinematography more appealing for photographers with thousands already invested in lenses and other camera gear.

Obviously these cameras are still a bit too pricey for anyone but professionals and loaded amateurs, but the features from flagship models always trickle down to more affordable underlings over time. With the kind of flexibility offered by these cameras, you’d have to make a pretty good case for investing in a top of the line camcorder right now. Sure, the cameras do have downsides. The D90 uses the less than optimal Motion JPEG format for video. (The 5D Mark II records H.264 MOV files.) Also, HD camcorders feature built-in optical image stabilization, whereas the cameras will have to do stabilization on a lens-by-lens basis. Stabilization is very important when shooting HD video, as minor shakes are very obvious in the final product. It’s unclear how well lenses designed for photography will perform for video, and how the cameras will deal with video accessories like microphones and video lights.

Let me assure you, generous reader, that I am more than willing to conduct a full test of both cameras for you. Just send me your donation and/or evaluation units and I’ll get right on it!

Reader Mike e-mailed me asking for help deciding which HD camcorder to buy. Currently he’s trying to decide between the Canon HF10, HF100, HV30, or HG10, or the Sony SR11 or SR12. The truth is that any of these cameras will record stunning HD footage. The real differences lie in practical matters; which camera will fit best into Mike’s life? Here’s the questions he (or anybody else thinking about such a purchase) needs to ask:

1. Do you have an HDTV that supports the resolution of the camcorder? You’re likely to be disappointed if your HDTV can’t support the native resolution of your snazzy new camcorder. If you have a 720p or lower resolution TV, you may want to consider upgrading your TV or starting off with a lower-end HD camcorder like the $400 Sanyo Xacti HD700 or even the super-cheap $130 Aiptek A-HD.

2. Do you plan on storing/editing the footage on a computer? If not, you’ll probably want an HDV camcorder like the Canon HV30, as you’ll be creating an instant archive on tape that can be stored in a safe place and easily played back. AVCHD camcorders record to hard drives or memory cards, meaning that archiving footage requires either a computer or an external DVD burner specially made for the camera, like the Canon DW-100

3. If you plan on editing, is your computer up to snuff? On the Mac side, you’ll need an Intel machine with at least 1GB of RAM (2GB or more recommended) to edit AVCHD, and you’ll need to set aside about 40 GB of hard-drive space for each hour of footage you want to store in the editable Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) format. You’ll also need iLife ‘08 or Final Cut Express 4.0 to edit AVCHD. (HDV can be edited with the previous version of each on a PowerPC machine.) On the PC side, you should have an 2.0+ GHz processor with 2GB of RAM, a good graphics card, and plenty of hard-drive space. For editing AVCHD in Windows XP or Vista you’ll need Sony Vegas 8.0 or Ulead VideoStudio 11.

4. How will you play back edited footage on your HDTV? AVCHD camcorders are a one-way street. Once you edit the footage, you can’t put it back on the camcorder. You will need to play it back on a computer connected to your HDTV or on a media device that supports HD, such as the Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, or Apple TV. Some Blu-Ray players can also play back properly exported movies. With HDV camcorders and the right software, you can export edited footage back to a tape and then play the tape back from the camcorder on your HDTV.

5. How important is portability? Are you the type of person who loathes the thought of carting around a camera bag everywhere you go? A small, flash-memory based camcorder may be your best bet. The “World’s Smallest Full HD Camcorder” champ is the Sony HDR-TG1, which promises to be a very good little camera when it is released in May. If it’s features you want in addition to small size, the Canon VIXIA HF10 or HF100 would be a great choice. Be warned though: These cameras sacrifice some features and usability for their small size. Neither has a viewfinder, which makes filming in bright light difficult, and only the Canon duo has prosumer features like an accessory shoe and microphone input.

6. How important are still photos? As shown in my article Can a camcorder beat a camera at its own game?, the Sony Sony HDR-SR11 and HDR-SR12 can take some darned good still photos. If you want one device that takes great video and good stills, these camcorders are for you! (The best still a Canon camcorder can produce is only 3.1 megapixels, compared to the interpolated 10.2 megapixels of the HDR-SR11 and HDR-SR12.)

Conclusion
AVCHD camcorders are new technology, and this is a double-edged sword. AVCHD is the way of the future and will eventually replace HDV, but you need a good computer and media hub to make AVCHD a practical choice. HDV is tried and true and is the best choice if you don’t mind the hassle of tapes and have older equipment to work with. Keeping all this in mind, here are my picks:

• Flash-Memory AVCHD Camcorder: Canon HF100 (Pros: Amazing video quality and prosumer features in a pint-sized package. Cons: No viewfinder, low-resolution still images. Conclusion: Best choice if portability is more important that features. Buy this and some cheap SDHC memory cards and forget the HF10.)
• Hard-Drive AVCHD Camcorder: Sony HDR-SR11 (Pros: Amazing video quality, great stills, built like a tank, viewfinder. Cons: Larger and heavier than the HF100. Conclusion: The best all around HD camcorder. Forget the more expensive HDR-SR12 unless you truly need all that extra HDD space.)
• HDV Camcorder: Canon HV30 (Pros: The benchmark in picture quality, viewfinder, manual controls. Cons: Smaller zoom, tapes, low-resolution stills, tapes.)

The new AVCHD support in Apple’s Final Cut Express (FCE) 4.0 makes the program seem like a good choice for use with today’s AVCHD camcorders. All the newest AVCHD models (including the Sony HDR-SR11) record true 1920×1080 HD video. But despite Final Cut Express (FCE) 4.0 advertising support for AVCHD, there is an important limitation: FCE 4.0 only supports a maximum resolution of 1440×1080.

“Wait,” you say. “I thought HD was filmed in wide screen, with an aspect ratio of 16:9 (1.7777). 1440/1080 has an aspect ratio of 4:3 (1.3333)!” Yes, that is correct, but 1440×1080 video is still widescreen HD! It’s just anamorphic widescreen.

Anamorphic technology was developed to squeeze widescreen video into a traditional 4:3 frame without letter-boxing. When anamorphic widescreen video is recorded, the widescreen picture gets squished so it fits in the 4:3 frame. When the video gets played back, the player takes each pixel and stretches it laterally by 133%, resulting in rectangular pixels that fill up a 16:9 aspect ratio screen.

Regular Widescreen Image

Anamorphic Widescreen Image with Square Pixels

So yes, this is disappointing, but it’s also understandable. AVCHD is new technology and FCE 4.0 is built upon very solid anamorphic foundations. HDV (High-Definition Mini-DV, the predecessor to AVCHD) and older professional HD formats including XDCAM HD, DVCPRO HD and HDCAM are all anamorphic by nature. Rebuilding FCE with native support for 1920×1080 was probably too substantial an undertaking for the 4.0 release; let’s hope it’s coming in the next version! The good news here is that when 1920×1080 support is added you won’t have to transcode all of your video again; FCE 4.0 transcodes 1920×1080 AVCHD video at its native resolution.

You can always export a true 1920×1080 video from FCE 4.0 using Quicktime Conversion, but this video will have been interpolated from the FCE 1440×1080 rendered video. And interestingly enough iMovie ‘08 doesn’t seem to have this limitation; there’s no rendering required when working with 1920×1080 video. I can’t confirm that the output from iMovie would be any better than what you get out of FCE.

The thing to take away from all of this is that anamorphic vs. non-anamorphic HD video editing isn’t going to make a huge difference in the quality of the final product. Some people still prefer HDV to AVCHD in terms of video quality, despite the fact that HDV is anamorphic. A bigger concern is encoding the output, as a poorly encoded movie will dramatically decrease the quality compared to the source footage. In fact, to share our edited HD movies we often chose relatively low bit rates to decrease file size, and this choice instantly negates any discussion of anamorphic vs. non-anamorphic due to the amount of quality lost to compression.

Thanks Michael for bringing this to my attention!

As you know by now, I recently got a Sony HDR-SR11 camcorder. This model proudly proclaims in big bold letters “10.2 MEGAPIXELS Still Image Recording”. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? A camcorder with more megapixels than most digital cameras! So can a camcorder really beat a digital camera at its own game? Let’s find out.

The Megapixel Game
Digital camera manufacturers would have us believe that the more megapixels a camera has the better photos it will take. Even today’s dinky point and shoot digital cameras post megapixel numbers that would embarrass DSLRs from a few years ago. But I guarantee that the old DSLR will take a better photo than that new-fangled point-and-shoot camera. Optics, sensor size, and onboard processing are all a lot more important to overall image quality than megapixel count. Sure, more megapixels means bigger prints, but who among us ever makes sheets of wallpaper from our vacation photos?

Sony felt that they had to join in on this game with the HDR-SR11, and in order to insure an astounding megapixel number they actually cheat! You see, as I mentioned in my first impressions review, the camcorder has a 5.66 megapixel sensor. So how does a 5.66 MP sensor produce a 10.2 MP image? Simple, the same way you’d create a larger image in Photoshop: interpolation. The camera uses onboard processing to automatically stretch the image. Cheesy, no?

What to Compare?
Despite the fact that Sony are big-time cheaters, let’s go ahead and compare the images from the HDR-SR11 to a digital camera. I don’t think a DSLR would be a fair comparison; the still-photo feature of the camcorder is more akin to a typical point-and-shooter in terms of features. Luckily, I happen to have a decent point-and-shooter handy. It’s the Olympus Stylus 770SW, which is a 7.1 megapixel ruggedized digital camera. It takes great pictures despite its small size and robust nature, and since the HDR-SR11 doesn’t really have 10.2 megapixels it seems like a fair comparison. I took a bunch of photos simultaneously with both cameras in full auto mode. To aid in comparison, I’ve resized the images from the 770SW so they are the same resolution as those from the HDR-SR11. You’ll see some difference in zoom due to the fact that the 770SW has a wider angle lens. Okay, enough tech talk, on to the photos…

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Yesterday was a big day… As soon as 5:00 PM hit, I was out of the office and on the road to go pick up my new toy. It arrived at my house on Friday but nobody was home, so the meanies at UPS held it in their warehouse all weekend. Waiting was painful, but it was certainly worth it. This is one awesome piece of kit!

After spending a significant amount of time mulling over all the pros and cons of HD camcorders, I finally settled on the Sony HDR-SR11. It is an AVCHD camcorder that records to a built-in 60GB HDD. It features a 5.66 megapixel 1/3″ CMOS sensor, 12X optical zoom lens, 3.2″ touchscreen display, viewfinder, 5.1-channel mic, and plenty of other fun features like Nightshot and Slow Motion Recording.

Handling
The first thing I noticed when taking it out of the box was that it has a bit of heft, much more so than the Sony DCR-HC48. This is not a bad thing; it feels very solid and well-built. All of the ports are covered by very robust doors, and the on/off/mode switch, zoom toggle, record button, and other controls feel very substantial and well placed. I like the knurled metal knob at the front for doing manual adjustments of focus, exposure, AE shift, and white-balance shift. The touch screen is beautiful; it’s larger than most and has 921,000 pixels, over four times as many as typical camcorder displays. The touch-screen interface seems straightforward, but it can be difficult to find certain settings at first.

Video Quality and Playback
Video quality is stunning; I took it out in the yard and made some quick videos of flowers and trees, then plugged the camcorder’s USB port into the Playstation 3. I was able to play back the AVCHD files via the PS3 without a hitch, and Mel (my wife) and I were both blown away by the beautiful picture. Color representation seemed very good, as did contrast and sharpness. The zoom is also excellent; at 12x optical, it bests most HD camcorders. The amazing thing is that the digital zoom seems completely useable up to 25x. I noticed no picture degradation, likely because the camera is using the sensor’s extra pixels for the zoom. (Remember, HD video only requires 2.1 megapixels, and this camera has 5.66.)

Editing on the Mac
Without loading any software or drivers, I simply plugged the camera’s USB port into my MacBook Pro, which is a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo “Santa Rosa” model with 2GB of RAM and OS X 10.5.2. Since I took a few still photos, iPhoto launched automatically and offered to download the pictures to my library. That process went very smoothly, just like with any other digital camera.

Next I launched iMovie ‘08, which immediately recognized the camcorder and showed a thumbnail of each clip on the camcorder’s HDD. iMovie also allowed me to play back previews of the clips and to deselect any unwanted clips prior to transfer. This sure beats tape-based camcorders! I recorded only 1 minute and 20 seconds of video, but it took around 5 minutes to transfer and transcode. So far this seems to be the only real downside to AVCHD. The video also ate up a whopping 1.36 GB of disk space… Ouch! Once the video was on my computer, editing was very snappy; moving clips around and adding transitions and effects seemed as fast as with SD footage from the DCR-HC48. The only time I noticed some slight hesitation was during transitions when previewing the movie full-screen.

I used Quicktime to export the movie at 720p for upload to Vimeo using the instructions found here. Exporting the 51 second movie took about 10 minutes and resulted in a 32.2 megabyte file. You can watch the video in SD Flash below, or click the link to go to Vimeo and watch in HD Flash or download the Quicktime file (bottom right corner of Vimeo page).

Overall I’m very pleased with the camcorder so far. I’m looking forward to spending more time with it this weekend. Because this camcorder touts “10MP still images”, I plan on doing a little write-up on the still photo performance soon. Hopefully someone out there is interested in all this gobbledegook, but at least I’m having fun being a geek and playing with my toys!

UPDATE 3/31/08 The still image testing of the HDR-SR11 is now available here.

As you may have noticed, I’ve made a few videos with my Sony DCR-HC48 camcorder. This model is a middle of the road Standard-Definition (SD) unit that records to Mini-DV tapes. I chose this model because the High-Definition (HD) versions are pricey, and at the time I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make a huge investment in videography. After spending some time with it, I can safely say that the little Sony is a perfectly good camcorder, but I’ve been completely spoiled by watching HD movies and TV. Although the videos look decent at the resolution shown on this site (500 x 281), they look blurry and pixelated on an HDTV or full-screen on a computer monitor. Video can convey a lot more information than a still photo, but (to me) a good photo from a nice digital camera still has a lot more visual impact than an SD video clip.

So photography wins? No way! I really enjoy videography; it adds new dimensions to all the things I like about photography. Add that to the fact that latest HD camcorders produce stunning footage at resolutions higher than a typical computer monitor (1920 x 1080), and videography in HD starts to become pretty darned compelling.

But making the leap to filming in HD raises a lot of big questions. So what’s involved? Here’s what I’ve found out.

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