***Read the update to this posting as the bottom...
For ages I’ve wanted a new video camera to take clips of the kids and life in general. With a holiday in Bali coming up and prompted by Carl’s fourth birthday – they aren’t going to be small and cute forever! – I bit the bullet and started to look into what I really wanted. Back in Holland we actually still have our first handy-cam, a huge brick of a thing which records onto clumsy tapes which then have to be painstakingly edited via your tv and 15 km of multi-coloured cabling onto old fashioned video tapes. It was so much effort it put me off using it. Every minute of footage required ten minutes to get it onto tape. And these days, who even has a video machine??
Living in Gadget Land means that we are bombarded daily with marketing telling us how much we need the latest thingy-ma-jig, and High Definition (HD) tv, camera, videos etc seem to be the way of the future. Having spent some time looking on the internet and reading specialist magazines about video cameras, I set off with great trepidation to Singapore’s electronics Mecca: Sim Lim Square. **Read the update to this blog below.
Living in Gadget Land means that we are bombarded daily with marketing telling us how much we need the latest thingy-ma-jig, and High Definition (HD) tv, camera, videos etc seem to be the way of the future. Having spent some time looking on the internet and reading specialist magazines about video cameras, I set off with great trepidation to Singapore’s electronics Mecca: Sim Lim Square. **Read the update to this blog below.
For those of you who are going to be visiting Singapore in future and want to buy cheaper electronics, here are some words of advice. Firstly, avoid the tourist traps on Orchard Road such as Lucky Plaza in favour of Sim Lim Square, a 7-storey shopping mall filled exclusively with electronics stores. Once there, avoid the shops located right by the doors filled with predatory sales teams and browse the businesses further inside the building.
Secondly, decide more or less what you want to buy before you arrive – saving $200 on a camera is a dubious bargain if it takes half a day of your valuable holiday time to make the deal.
Having said that, I turned up expecting to buy a Sony HD camcorder with either 30 GB or 60GB internal hard drive. The first shop I visited was more than happy to sell me the 60 GB model (“special price for the pretty lady”) for about $2200 with a ‘free’ UV filter chucked in. Hmmm.
Further inside I came across Square United Cam, a modest business in the corner on the 1st floor. A very helpful (ie not slimy) sales guy actually listened to what I wanted to use the camera for and what my expectations were, then recommended the Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG65. For those interested in the technical stuff, it’s MPEG-4 6 megapixel with a 60 x digital zoom. The lens is AVC (made by Sony)…and it’s NOT an HD camera. As the guy patiently explained, HD is fine but most people aren’t set up to work with it – it wouldn’t be possible to burn my movies onto DVDs without a special editing suite so I’d have to pay to have it done at a shop every time. Plus without an HD tv and DVD player you can’t see the benefits anyway. Also, can you imagine what your pc would do if you tried to download 60GB of video onto it??? A 4 GB card will record 5 hours of video plus different users can use their own memory cards so you don't mix up your holiday flicks with hubby's fascinating ship construction momentos.
At the end of the day I’m no expert and who knows if it was the best deal I could have got. But I am deliriously happy with my teeny weeny camera which also takes 10 MB photos (even while you are filming if you want!), has a voice recording function for when I’m doing interviews, and weighs about as much as an egg. Seriously. It’s the shape of a gun grip without the barrel and very simple to use. The fold-out screen is big enough to see what you are filming/photographing clearly with ease.
Secondly, decide more or less what you want to buy before you arrive – saving $200 on a camera is a dubious bargain if it takes half a day of your valuable holiday time to make the deal.
Having said that, I turned up expecting to buy a Sony HD camcorder with either 30 GB or 60GB internal hard drive. The first shop I visited was more than happy to sell me the 60 GB model (“special price for the pretty lady”) for about $2200 with a ‘free’ UV filter chucked in. Hmmm.
Further inside I came across Square United Cam, a modest business in the corner on the 1st floor. A very helpful (ie not slimy) sales guy actually listened to what I wanted to use the camera for and what my expectations were, then recommended the Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG65. For those interested in the technical stuff, it’s MPEG-4 6 megapixel with a 60 x digital zoom. The lens is AVC (made by Sony)…and it’s NOT an HD camera. As the guy patiently explained, HD is fine but most people aren’t set up to work with it – it wouldn’t be possible to burn my movies onto DVDs without a special editing suite so I’d have to pay to have it done at a shop every time. Plus without an HD tv and DVD player you can’t see the benefits anyway. Also, can you imagine what your pc would do if you tried to download 60GB of video onto it??? A 4 GB card will record 5 hours of video plus different users can use their own memory cards so you don't mix up your holiday flicks with hubby's fascinating ship construction momentos.
At the end of the day I’m no expert and who knows if it was the best deal I could have got. But I am deliriously happy with my teeny weeny camera which also takes 10 MB photos (even while you are filming if you want!), has a voice recording function for when I’m doing interviews, and weighs about as much as an egg. Seriously. It’s the shape of a gun grip without the barrel and very simple to use. The fold-out screen is big enough to see what you are filming/photographing clearly with ease.
The price: complete with 3 free batteries, a hard case, two 4GB memory cards and 1 GB card (for voice recordings), and a cleaning tool… $1300. Now that’s what I call a bargain!
***Actually that's what I call a rip-off: I was actually conned when I bought this camera. A few months later I bought the exact same camera for my sister as Paris Silk in Holland Village for about half the price. Ouch.
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