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Vancouver
733 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2005 : 11:03 PM
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There is a class of hybrid, multi-function cameras available over the Internet, that are only beginning to show up in stores. Most of them include MP3 players. Digilife makes advanced camera gizmos in the Orient, that are only available here via the Internet.
Here's a detailed review of the Digilife DDV-S670, and a comparison to the Aiptek DV4500. This might make more sense to anyone interested if you review this first:
http://www.clubtread.com/sforum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8590&whichpage=2
Rather than list the camera's specifications here, this is the link to the manufacturer. Just say "no" to installing the language stuff.
http://www.wimi.com.tw
Build Quality
Compared to the Aiptek DV4500, the Digilife DDV-S670 is about 20% smaller and lighter. The Digilife has a quality feel better than the Aiptek, and much better than the various Musteks I've handled. But not as good as, say, a $500, metal case digital camera. It does not feel like a toy, but has pretty LED's.
Size
The DDV-S670 is larger than a pack of cards, but smaller than the standard Microsoft mouse. The Aiptek is about 20% larger.
Video Capability
Those accustomed to digital still cameras know that pretty well all the still cameras can take videos these days. But they are of extremely limited capacity, rendering the function almost useless. The key is MPEG4 video compression, which is starting to show up in the digital still cameras, giving them vastly expanded video capability.
The Digilife DDV-S670 does 640x480 at 30 frames per second, with two levels of detail available. It also does 320x280 at 30fps. The Aiptek DV4500 does 640x480 at 11fps, and 352x288 at 30fps. I would say that ignoring the fps differences, the Digilife either compresses less or smarter, allowing better detail at the same resolution. Unlike the Aiptek, the Digilife does not compress evergreen trees into blocky digital fuzz. I would go as far as saying some people used to typical video cameras would be satisfied with the DDV-S670's output.
Screen
The Digilife's 2" screen is almost twice as large as the Aiptek's 1.5", and is a joy to use by comparison. However, there is a longer delay to display movement than on the Aiptek's screen. The screen pivots and swivels, much better than the Aiptek's, which only opens 90 degrees.
When you pivot/swivel the DDV-S670's screen beyond a certain point, the display reverses side-to-side and top-to-bottom. That way the image doesn't end up upside down or backwards. Clever.
Using it in extremely bright conditions (all snow and sunshine), the screen was almost unreadable.
Stills Performance
I didn't do much of this, and will limit the comparison to saying the Digilife has a 3.1megapixel advanced "T4" CMOS sensor, while the Aiptek makes do with a 2.1 CMOS sensor. The Digilife will provide sharper shots with much less contrast.
Video Performance
I did some side-by-side video comparisons, using the highest resolution on both cameras.
The DDV-S670 handles contrast far better than the Aiptek DV4500. In the test, if the Aiptek was exposed for the brighter parts of the scene, the dark parts were almost black, devoid of detail. On the same scene, the darker area was not dark on the DDV-S670, and all subject matter in the dark area was clear and in color. No doubt it has limitations, but it's far better than the Aiptek.
When panning the DDV-S670, up to a certain rate of panning speed, all detail remained clear. Above a certain speed, the images became blurred, and of course this got worse the faster the panning. Rapid panning is a video non-no anyway. By comparison, the Aitpek's image was noticably poorer quality and "jerky" even during slow panning. The faster the panning, the much worse it got. So the DDV-S670 showed not just better detail whether panning or not, plus minimal or no "jerkiness". The Digilife's captured video looked tremendously better during playback. At 320x240/30fps, the Digilife had better contrast and smoother action than the Aiptek at 640x480/11fps, but was more grainy. Just what you'd expect.
I suspect the Digilife's image processing system can handle differences between frames up to a certain rate of change. Up to that point, panned shots and moving subjects will remain sharp. But over that limit, you start to get detail "smearing", which gets worse as the rate of change increases. The Aiptek doesn't seem to have a threshold - the faster the camera pans or the subjece moves, the worse it looks in a linear fashion. At any given pan speed, the Digilife videos look far better.
It's important to point out that when you're playing with these cameras using the display screens, the Digilife will show lots of smearing. But that's because of the slow response of its screen. Output to a computer or tv will look far better. The Aiptek has a faster-reacting screen.
Low-Light Performance
The Digilife has far better low-light performance than the Aiptek. The Aiptek DV4500 was almost useless for videos indoors, while the Digilife is fine in typical lighting.
Lens
The glass over the Digilife's lens is very exposed. But for the same reason, it's very easy to clean, and only the very center overlaps the lens inside. The Aiptek has a better protected lens, but it seems to suffer more from lens flare.
The Digilife's lens has three focus adjustment positions, which is better than the Aiptek's two. The Digilife has a display on the screen when the lens is in the closeup mode, while the Aiptek has none. This reduces the chances of accidentally leaving the lens in the wrong focus, which, believe me, I have done with the Aiptek and spoiled a lot of footage of unrepeatable scenes. You can't tell if you've done this until later since the small displays always look "sharp". However, the Digilife has no on-screen indication if the lens is in its middle, portrait position, which will result in blurred distance shots.
As for lens distortion, I have noticed that on some of my videos taken with the Aiptek. However, I pointed both cameras at a grid pattern and moved them around in circles while videoing. Neither showed any distortion of the grid in this test. Maybe it's only a problem in close-ups.
Using the camera in very bright sunlight, pointed in the same direction as a low winter sun, determined that the lens has very little flare. I don't think I'll need a lens hood for it, or need to shade the lens with my hand, as I did with the Aiptek.
Digital Zoom
The Digilife has an 8x digital zoom, compared to the Aiptek's 4x. Now, after using the Aiptek's zoom you might assume it's pretty useless because the shots are so grainy to begin with. Well, the Digilife's better detail allows conservative use of the digital zoom without compromising quality too much.
The Digilife's zoom zooms smoothly and slowly, while the Aiptek zooms in steps and rapidly. Thus, you tend to click through the Aiptek's zoom stages so you can control how much zoom you stop at. This results in "clicks" on the video soundtrack. Clicking the Digilife's zoom buttons also records loud clicks on the soundtrack, but you tend to press and hold the zoom buttons because the zoom reaches where you want it more slowly.
Exposure Control
Both cameras have a manual exposure control for videos. It seems to have no effect on either camera, probably because there's no way to turn off the automatic exposure control. I really don't know why they provide a totally non-functional "feature". The lighting control seems to "not" work either.
The DDV-S670 has a "night" mode for stills. This is not available for videos. It greatly increases the brightness of very dim subjects, but also introduces light-blue specks and lines on the image. It seems to me it would be better to take a picture in dim light without the night mode on, and brighten it up using software, than to brighten it with the camera and end up with these artifacts. I'm so happy with how the Digilife handles video at normal indoor light levels, I'm not worried about whether it can video in dark conditions.
Screen Icon Shutoff
The screen icons on the Digilife can all be turned off for replay or taping. This is unlike the Musteks I've seen, on which nothing could be turned off, and on the Aiptek, where one of the two lines of icons could be turned off.
The screen icons on the Digilife can only be turned off BETWEEN shots, not during them.
Controls
While the Aiptek DV4500 could be prepared for use and operated with one hand, the DDV-S670 cannot. While the Aiptek's tiny and clustered controls often resulted in operating mistakes, the DDV-S670's controls are larger and well-spaced. It has two shutter buttons for convenience. Also reducing hassle is the fact the DDV-S670 turns on when the screen is opened. The Aiptek has a difficult tiny power button. The Digilife has been designed to accommodate vertical shots, while the Aiptek has not.
During playback, the Aiptek's volume control is available for the soundtrack of videos, while the Digilife lacks this control, and the low volume output of the miserable little speaker sounds lousy.
The Aiptek allows you to skip forward and back during playback of videos, but the Digilife lacks such controls.
Date/Time Function
There is a date and time function on both cameras. The Digilife retains the date and time if you open the battery door, but the Aiptek does not. So you don't bother with it on the Aiptek, since you end up opening the battery door so often. The Digilife's clock doesn't keep very good time, and although some ads for it say you can date/time stamp stills, I haven't figured out how to do that. The Aiptek can't.
Battery Life
The Digilife gets 2-3 hours usage, with the screen on, from it's rechargable NP60 1000mah battery. The Aiptek gets about 3 hours from 2-AA 2000mah NiMH rechargables.
Secure Digial Memory Selection
The camera is rated at a thoughput speed of 8.8Mbps. This equates to a 60x SD card, which is a premium level card such as the Sandisk Ultra II 512Mb I bought for it. It has a write speed of 9Mbps, and a read speed of 10Mbps. I ran a test, filming moving car traffic using that card, and a Sandisk 256Mb that is rated at 4Mbps, or about 25x.
The results were interesting. In both cases, the movement of the cars going past was smooth, and if anything, they seemed just slightly smoother with the 256Mb card. What I was expecting was that the frame rate would slow down for the slower card, so the detail would be the same on both, but the motion would be smoother with the faster card. But in fact the detail appeared sharper using the faster card.
I think what's going on is that the camera maintains the 30 frames per second regardless of the card, and uses more compression to reduce the volume of the data stream to match the ability of the card to accept data.
I know when I did similar tests when I bought the Aiptek, it was easy to see that the consequence of using a card that was too slow was very jerky motion, missing frames and sometimes intermittent sound. So the two cameras are very different animals when it comes to handling memory card speed.
A 512Mb card will hold about 35 minutes of the highest quality video, and an hour of medium quality.
Manual Etc.
The manual packaged with the camera is in many languages, but is a severely shortened version of the full manual on the cd-rom. There was no warranty registration card, or who manufactured the camera.
File Format
Both cameras record stills as .jpg's. The Aiptek records videos in Microsoft's proprietary .asf format, while the Digilife records videos in the less constrained .avi format. If you insert a memory card containing a .asf file into the Digilife, or copy one to its internal memory, it will hang as it powers on. Format the used card in the old camera before using it in the Digilife, or get a new card. DON'T try copying a .asf file to the Digilive's internal memory - you may only be able to fix this by connecting it to your computer and formatting the internal memory.
MP3 Player
The Digilife has no background whine like you get from the Aiptek's amplifier, and to my untrained ear, the Diglife sounds "cleaner". Unlike the Aiptek's painful earphones, the Digilife's are comfortable. The Aiptek has a much better speaker than the Digilife, which is very cheesy. The Digilife's volume with earphones is LOUD. I always used the Aiptek at full volume, but I can't turn up the Digilife all the way. Since the earphones use different plugs, I couldn't check to see if the difference is the earphones themselves. The Aiptek has controls for bass and "depth", while the Digilife does not have controls for anything like that. Both of them turn off the screen if you close it while in mp3 mode.
On the DDV-S670, the mp3 mode display shows what track is playing (twice in fact) but does not display the song's name, nor the overall length of the song. It does show how long the song has been playing - which is kind of silly if you can't tell how long the song is. The Aiptek displays that, plus information such as the song's name and its duration. Advantage: Aiptek on this one.
Voice Memo/ Audio Recording
I compared them in Voice Memo mode. Side by side, recording my voice at the same time. Replayed through their speakers, both sounded like crap. If anything, the Aiptek had lower volume. Played back through the earphones, they both sounded loud and clear, with the Digilife's higher output allowing even greater volume. The Aiptek's background whine was annoying in voice mode. On either one, a 512Mb card will allow you to record many hours of sound.
Speaker/Microphone
The Aiptek's speaker does a very good job playing music or the audio portion of videos. It does a much better job and provides more volume than the Digilife's tiny speaker. I do a lot of videos outdoors, and I've been amazed at the Aiptek's ability to pick up very quiet sounds, like a bird chirping that you can bearly hear yourself while recording, and also being able to handle loud noises like thunder. Obviously, its a compressing microphone. So I expect the Digilife will be able to handle outdoor sounds well also.
The Aiptek had a lot of trouble with wind noise, while the Digilife's front-mounted microphone has far less wind noise.
The soundtrack of the Digilife's video system records excessive white noise when recording in silent surroundings. I believe this is due to the compressing microphone going to full amplification as it attempts to find sound to record. This needs some fine-tuning. The Aiptek, instead, has its whining noise.
DDV-S670 Problems
A common use of these cameras is to take a mix of stills and video clips, during, say, a vacation. When you go to do a presentation, or record the images to video, you want to present the mix in chronological order. This is no problem with the Aiptek. Unfortunately the DDV-S670 is programmed so that you have to go back to the menus to switch between playback of stills or videos.
As if that weren't enough of a problem, when you switch to video playback or stills playback, the camera always goes back to the start of the list of files. This means that to switch back and forth between stills and videos, you have to change modes, and then search for the file you want. What a stupid hassle! I hope it's corrected on future models.
The Aiptek uses one folder for both stills and video clips, numbers them sequentially, and can sense the difference between them. The Digilife uses separate folders for stills and videos, and handles them differently.
I found that when the camera is connected to your computer, you can copy stills to the folder used for videos, and copy video files to the folder used for stills. You can play them back from those locations, but the stills are at 640x480 and look lousy from the video folder, and the videos show up, but won't run from the stills folder. By comparison, the Aiptek DV4500 has no problems mixing stills and videos.
The DDV-S670's screen, when you start recording a video, goes blank for a second. Unfortunately this is being recorded, so when you play it back, every video starts with a black screen for a second. This is an unwelcome characteristic. Apparently you can use Video Studio to clip off that blank bit, but that's a nuisance.
Misc Comments
The current version DDV-S670 doesn't have motion stabilization. Apparently later production DDV-S670's have motion stabilization for the video mode only. I don't know how a consumer could tell which version they are getting. The newer DDV-720 has motion stabilization plus a remote control.
There is a third, older version of the DDV-S670. It has a 1.5" screen, "3T" sensor, and the screen folds but does not pivot. You can distinguish it from the newer DDV-S670 by the handstrap attachment point that sticks out of the top of the camera. The DDV-720 is also called a DDV-7000, and there's a DDV-6000, which is a DDV-660 with motion stabilization.
Although the on-line manual refers to using a tripod to improve filming, the DDV-S670 has no tripod socket, and the package did not include a tripod. The Aiptek DV4500 came with a tripod, and has a socket.
Because the DDV-S670 uses the same socket for earphones and the a/v cable, and is not auto-sensing, you have to go to a menu to select between them. This is inconvenient. The micro jack would be easy to damage.
Although both cameras have 16Mb of integrated memory, the DDV-S670 uses almost all of it for camera operations. So it's deceptive to advertise it as having that memory, when only 4Mb is available for use. This is 12 seconds of 640x480 video at 30fps. Pretty useless. On the Aiptek, 15 of the 16Mb is available, giving over 3 minutes of video capture.
The DDV-S670 also has a "sharpness" control, but the output looks so good I'm not going to bother using that. It probably is the same as the sharpness correction on image editing software, which highlights the edges of things at the cost of some detail.
The case designs allow the Aiptek to easily stand up by itself, while the Digilife is very unstable.
I discovered there are two surprisingly strong magnets in the outer corners of the DDV-S670's clamshell screen. These aid in keeping the screen closed, but may possibly pose a risk of interfering with memory chips etc. Something to know about, anyway.
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Meet you at DYE-II? |
Edited by - sgRant on 04/02/2005 9:14 PM
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 Alberta-based choss climbin', flame throwin', rappel lovin', ass talkin' hater who doesn't like "Gumby" for a descriptor
1100 Posts |
Posted - 02/26/2005 : 11:12 PM
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| The only thing I can really say about both is that they are cheap...in price and in make. Poor quality....but low $. |
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Vancouver
733 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2005 : 7:39 PM
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Should I ask if you've handled either of them?
Before I had any experience with these cameras, I had the same doubts. Would it quit or fall apart? Would the digital stills be acceptable? Would the videos be a waste of time? How could something so versatile yet cheap not be a toy?
The pictures from my daytrip to Lake Garibaldi last weekend were taken with the Digilife, then scaled down to 640x480. Given the scaling plus the challenging degree of contrast, I don't see what's wrong with them, even in the sense of a $250 digital still camera.
It's easy to miss a point I made in the Aiptek DV4500 review. We don't expect a Palm Pilot to do what a desktop computer to do, but people find them insanely useful anyway. No one calls them junk. Exactly the same way, the size, price and versatility of these cams makes them more useful in inobvious ways than larger, more costly, and better performing cameras. Can one think of any web or work use for such a thing?
I have footage (LOTS) I simply would not have if I had a regular still OR video camera. Sure, it's not broadcast quality, but people found the Aiptek's output ok, and the Digilife does much better. For instance, the technical quality is as good as the best AFV clips. I just heard back from relatives back east who watched the vcr tapes I sent them of the Aiptek's recordings of our outdoor adventures and their great-niece. Junk? No, rave reviews. As for build quality, the Aiptek has racked up several thousand stills and videos, been dropped on the floor a few times, and soaked enough to malfunction until it dried out. It still works like new. A friend's Mustek survived a 3' drop onto concrete with no damage. The Aiptek's case is a thick plastic box I bet you could stand on without breaking it, although I wouldn't try that with the Digilife. Better than some more costly cameras I've heard about, and they may in fact be virtually unbreakable. How many cameras could you say that about?
I've been on trips with people with regular video cameras. The cameras are so large they think twice before even bringing them along. Because of what the delicate cams cost they are carefully packed, which makes them a time-consuming hassle to prepare for use. Or the batteries go dead. So they don't get used. (I KNOW there are exceptions, but the generalization is fair.) The tape drives are notoriously unreliable. They don't take stills plus videos, so two cameras are carried. Whereas, I carry these things in a belt bag or pocket. I'm not afraid to break or lose them. They're at hand for use all the time. One camera suffices for stills and videos. Oh, and they're mp3 players too.
How about the Pentax Optio MX4? A hybrid a little farther up the price/performance scale. The fabulous Sanyo Xacti VPC-C4? The JVC Everio GZ-MC100? The really cheap Mustek DV-2000? At what point do you think they're not junk? Shift_paradigm.
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Meet you at DYE-II? |
Edited by - sgRant on 04/02/2005 9:19 PM |
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154 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2005 : 9:21 PM
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Talking about paradigm shifts. When is cheap good and when bad. It's been decades since men bought razors out of metal that lasted themselves decades (I've got one that's 30+ years old). What about throw away film cameras or even throw away cell phones. What's the difference with those and digital cameras.
I don't have the stats but I bet that close to 99% of photos fall into the snapshot category and not fine art. Why pay hundreds of dollars for a camera that is used to take snapshots. That too is "posing".
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Vancouver
733 Posts |
Posted - 03/01/2005 : 8:03 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by dcongrav
I don't have the stats but I bet that close to 99% of photos fall into the snapshot category and not fine art. Why pay hundreds of dollars for a camera that is used to take snapshots. That too is "posing".
Not sure what you're saying here. Could you elaborate?
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Meet you at DYE-II? |
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154 Posts |
Posted - 03/01/2005 : 8:26 PM
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Sorry for the obfuscation.
I'm simply stating that I agree with you. You did a review on an economical digital camera and some thought that means "cheap" as in crappy.
I believe that it's necessary to have the right tool for the job. It's not necessary to purchase a camera for hundreds or thousands of dollars if the only photos to be taken are snapshots as 99% of them are. Plus it doesn't hurt as much when the camera gets broken, lost or stolen.
The reference to posing is due to a rant many months ago by one of the elders where he expressed his great displeasure on posers (poseurs).
I hope that this clears things up and I didn't put my foot in my mouth in any way.
best regards
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Vancouver
733 Posts |
Posted - 03/01/2005 : 8:46 PM
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I'm certainly glad I asked instead of posting the response I wrote to what I mistakenly thought you were saying.
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Digilife DDV-S670 Review
