Initial hands-on impressions of Sanyo's compact ground-breaking new hybrid digital still and movie camera

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To read the Sanyo press release, click here.

A camera big on features but tiny in size

Today at a press event in London, Sanyo UK formally launched the Xacti VPC-C1 hybrid digital still and video camera. The camera is not new to dpnow and it was launched in Japan at the beginning of last month, but today we got to see it for ourselves and learned more about the overall package.

We also have some Sanyo supplied sample images for you to download.

The compact and lightweight Xacti VPC-C1 looks different, is stuffed full of innovative features and makes a determined bid to be a respectable performer, both as a still digital camera and a digital video camcorder.

First of all, the VPC-C1 is really tiny – about as large as a typical compact mobile phone, though thicker to accommodate the 5.8x (38-220mm equivalent) f/3.5-3.7 optical zoom lens and 1.5 inch 110,000 pixel flip-out and tilt colour transflective (works both with its own illumination and in daylight) TFT LCD screen. The whole thing weighs just 174g, including battery and SD card. Compare that to 180g for a Canon Ixus v3 without a battery or memory card.

Most of the controls are in easy thumb-range

The body design is very ergonomic with a 113 degree pistol grip that was the result of considerable research, according to Sanyo. Most of the controls lie conveniently under the thumb of the right hand when the camera his held in the same hand.

Creative control is limited to some effects modes and +/- 1.8EV overrides in 0.3EV steps. There are no manual, aperture priority or shutter priority auto modes. ISO can be set to auto, which ranges between 50-200 or you can set it manually between 50 and 400. In video mode the auto range is ISO 200-800 or you can set it manually between 200 and 1600. There is no infra-red 'night-shot' mode increasingly found on conventional camcorders.

Note the slim profile of the pistol grip, plus flash unit unusually below the lens

A 1/2.7 inch 3.2 megapixel CCD sensor is fitted, providing a maximum native still image resolution of 2048x1536 pixels. 1600x1200 and 640x480 image modes are also available.

MPEG-4 video
On the video movie side, highest resolution is 640x480 pixels shot at a rate of 30 frames per second. Alternative rates include Web-HQ 320x240 15fps and Web-S mode 176x144 15fps. The camera records video to a SD card (128MB supplied as standard and a 512MB card is an optional extra) in ISO standard MPEG-4 standard.

In best quality mode, which Sanyo describes as DVD-quality, about 43 minutes of video can be accommodated by a 1GB card. With higher compression you can increase this to about an hour. 1GB SD cards are as rare as hens' teeth at present but 512MB cards are generally available, currently costing around £220 inc.VAT. Sanyo expects 1GB cards will be as cheap as £60-70 by the end of 2005.

The 1.5 inch LCD viewscreen is designed to work equally well indoors as well as outdoors in bright sunlight

Stereo sound
A point emphasised by Sanyo is that the VPC-C1 records its video sound track in stereo, something that apparently no other digital still camera currently on the market does. The camera can also be used as a digital voice recorder, capable of recording nearly 9 hours of continuous audio if you have a memory card large enough.

Shoot stills and video at the same time
It's possible to press the still shutter release button while shooting digital video. When the still resolution is set to 3.2 or 2.0 megapixels the video recording will freeze for a second or two at the point the still is taken. However, when the still resolution is set low to 640x480, there is no interruption to the video recording.

A neat circular recharge docking cradle is provided

Image quality
We haven't yet had a chance to test the VPC-C1, but Sanyo has supplied some sample images and you can download a selection of these at the end of this page. Assuming that these are unretouched images out of the camera, the quality looks about right for a typical 3MP digicam. There are some compression artefacts detectable, but nothing serious. Sharpness is good and there seems to be an ancouraging lack of the scourge of compact digital cameras, purple fringing associated with chromatic aberrations. Some credit may be due to the 11-element (2 aspheric) 5.8x optical zoom lens, which can also focus down to just 2cm in macro mode.

In movie mode quality looks much better than typical flickery video-clip offerings featured by most digital still cameras. Whether it's really DVD-quality is debatable, but it looks very useable for home video use.

The VPC-C1 connects to a PC via USB 2.0 Hi-Speed and an infra-red remote controller is supplied, along with a neat recharging cradle.

PictBridge
Direct printing via the PictBridge protocol is supported and Sanyo will be promoting its own-brand dye-sublimation printer.

Software
Some interesting software is bundled with the VPC-C1. The camera doesn't have a built in image stabilisation system but Sanyo provides in-house developed software that can stabilise your shaky video after it has been recorded, using a PC. The demonstration of this working was impressive, with only a small cost in terms of sharpness. A panorama stitching function that works from live video footage can be use to create simple Quicktime VR movies. Also included is ULead Video Studio 7 SE for authoring DVD or VCD discs, plus ULead Photo Explorer 8.0 SE for managing digital stills and MPEG4 video clips.

Some other notable features include multi-language menus and a speaking control navigation guide. When playing back movies you can also hear the sound track via a small built in speaker.

There is no denying the VPC-C1 is an attractive looking device to have and to hold

Pricing and availability
The Sanyo Xacti VPC-C1 will go on sale from next month, but only a few hundred units will be available until January, so if you are determined to get one for Christmas, you'll have to be quick. The expected street price is about £500.

Initial conclusion
Buyers looking for something that is genuinely small enough to slip into a shirt pocket are going to be tempted by the Sanyo Xacti VPC-C1. This is a credible, if certainly pricier, alternative to the likes of Canon Ixus, Minolta Dimage X or Olympus Mju Digital compact cameras. We reserve full judgement once we've tested a unit fully, but the VPC-C1 looks the closest yet to a 'proper' hybrid digital still and video camera with minimal compromise.

Sample images to download:
Click on one of the links below (right click for Windows users) and 'save target as' the file name of your choice. Each image will take between 3-6 minutes to download at typical dial up modem speeds.

Sample image 1 (1MB file)
Sample image 2 (1MB file)
Sample image 3 (1MB file)

www.sanyo.co.uk

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