I’ve just come back from a two day jaunt to Byron Bay courtesy of the nice Mr Canon  and his excellent PR team. While there, we (a group of journalists) got to play with some new cameras, both still and video.  Some of us also went hot air ballooning, were ferried around in stretch limousines, lunched at a brewery (beware the Billy Goat brew!) were amply fed and watered and altogether had a jolly nice time.

Our group’s main task, to demonstrate the flexibility of the new range of cameras, was to create an advertising campaign in print and video extolling the virtues of Byron Bay. As the only video oriented person in my group of four, the job of making a 90 second commercial went to me.

This gave me a very good excuse to not only critique the camcorder I was using, but also muse on the way camcorders are being built these days. And I have discovered there are certain things a vendor can do to really annoy me, both as a user and as a reviewer.

1.      Don’t include a viewfinder, but instead rely on using an LCD panel to frame shots

2.      Make the aforementioned LCD unreadable in sunlight

3.      Have an HDMI out port, but don’t include an HDMI cable in the box

4.      Have an SD card slot, but don’t supply and SD card

5.      For waterproof camcorders, make sure no wrist strap is included

6.      Place the D C power in port behind the battery

7.      Make the battery re-chargeable in-camera only

8.      Don’t supply a proper paper manual

9.      Don’t have an integrated lens cap – or any lens cap at all

10.   Make the footage file format something no known editing package can read apart from the usually crappy underpowered thing supplied on a CD

11.   Remove all in-camera filters (B & W, sepia, old movie etc).

That’s all.

By David Hague

David is the owner and publisher of AusCam Online. He has a background in media dating back to 1979 when he first got involved with photojournalism in motorsport, and went from there into technology via a 5 year stint with Tandy Computers. Following that, he ran a software distribution company on the Gold Coast and was one of the first to recognise the potential of Microsoft Windows.

Moving back to WA, David wrote scripts for Computer Television for video training for the just released Windows and Office 95 among others, and was then lured to Sydney to create web sites for the newly commercial Internet in 1995, building hundreds of sites under contract to OzEmail including Coates Hire, Hertz Queensland, John Williamson, the NSW Board of Studies and many, many more.

He went back into full time journalism as the Managing Editor for Channel 7's 'Gadget Guy', Peter Blasina's publications VideoCamera and Pixelmag, before starting Australasian Camcorder magazine when these publications were shelved. He lives at Sydney's Avalon Beaches nearly on the ocean front with dog Budweiser and in his spare time is a nut for motor sport, road safety, fishing, science fiction - especially Dr Who - and technology.

David can be contacted via david@auscamonline.com 

Comments(1):

1. How to NOT make the perfect camcorder

   I love this article Dave. It's great to be able to let the manufacturers know what users want in a camera. I would like to ad to your list if I may: 1. Remove as many buttons as possible from the camera body (for sleek looks) to ensure that the camera can only be set up for shooting VERY slowly using as many menus as possible (on the illegible LCD panel of course). 2. Don't offer a White Balance Offset (for 'warming' the factory preset Automatic WB function) so that all video shot will have a nice blue tint.

   Tuesday, April 05, 2011 Peter