Video cameras

I remember first seeing Star Wars and thinking how cool Luke Skywalker’s Macrobinoculars were (think Episode 4, scene where Luke’s looking for Obi-Wan Kenobi but runs into Sandpeople). Well, it’s taken 35 years but Sony has brought them into reality with the new DEV-5 3D camcorder binoculars. The DEV-5 capture 1080p (1,920 x 1,080-pixel) video in 2D or 3D mode to SDXC or Memory Stick storage.

Roughly thumb-size, the Swann Sportscam is a USB rechargeable mini video camera that records 30fps 640 x 480 AVI video (or 1,280 x 960 JPEG stills) to microSD and comes bundled with a seemingly endless array of attachments to clip it to anything (your bike, your face, your dog?), as well as a clear casing for work up to 20m underwater.

Handheld camcorders of the type exemplified by the Flip are nothing new, but it’s interesting to see Sony attempting new things with the form. The Sony Bloggie Duo is named as such for its key selling feature. Where the Duo stands out from Sony’s existing Bloggie line is the inclusion of a secondary LCD screen on the front of the camera. The idea is that it allows you to record video blogs while watching your recording, for walking down a street or similar. It does work, but seems a little niche to us.

Depending on what you want to use if for, the Toshiba Camileo BW10 SportsCam is either a fun adventure camera or decidedly sub-par. This full HD 1080p waterproof camcorder is admirably rugged and reacts well to the light and colour challenges of casual underwater use, but isn’t quite so great as an everyday video camera. It’s pretty terrible at still photography for a number of reasons. Good points first: the BW10 is solid and waterproof to 2m, which is about right for snorkelling and probably a little conservative — in our testing, we dove around a little deeper and didn’t have any issues.

The JVC Picsio GC-WP10 is a pocket camcorder that comes stacked with features, the most prominent of which is that it’s waterproof up to 3m. It’s also capable of 1080p video capture and supports HDMI output. While there are simple buttons down the side, it’s also fully touchscreen-enabled from its 3in LCD. The one thing that JVC hasn’t cracked with the Picsio GC-WP10 is ease of use beyond simple recording. The startup time for the camera is a leisurely six seconds, which makes it less useful for capturing on-the-spot video, as you may miss action waiting for the unit to start up.

The Flip UltraHD is a smaller, sleeker cousin of the existing Flip MinoHD portable camcorder, making it feel good in both the hand and the pocket, although under the bonnet, not too much has changed. Flip’s other main statement with the UltraHD is that image stabilisation has improved, but that wasn’t immediately apparent in our tests.