November 19, 2007

The Handy Little Camcorder, And More

I blame McQ. He and I met for the first time on our tour of Chevron and the Blind Faith facility in Texas, courtesy of the API. McQ brought a nifty little camcorder, which miraculously survived a beating on the rig, and it looked intriguing enough to investigate once I returned home.

The Aiptek IS-DV2+ will not have anyone dumping their more substantial video cameras any time soon. However, its low cost and flexibility makes a nice addition to the blogger toolbox. It combines several key functions into a package no bigger than a fist, and only takes two AA batteries to run it.

The IS-DV2+ (the model shown below is the IS-DV2) takes 8-megapixel digital photographs, as well as digital video. The quality of the latter is not quite as good as one might want for treasured family events, but for blog videos, it does just fine. It has an adequate stabilization feature, which given its size is a necessity. It includes a strobe flash and most of the basic functions of any digital camera, including a selection of densities from one megapixel to eight.

It also functions as a digital voice recorder and an MP3 player. It uses SD memory cards; I bought a 2 GB card, and that will hold 25 hours of voice recordings. I'm not certain of how much video it would hold, but based on the charts in the book, it appears that one can store more than 2 hours of video on a card of that size in DV format -- and more in other formats, of course.

I bought the IS-DV2+ at Walgreens, which is where McQ bought his as well, for $99. For the traveling blogger, this looks like a great tool at a reasonable price, allowing a single, small unit for most of needs. Just be sure to have rechargeable batteries, because I suspect that this will grind alkalines down in a hurry.

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