Camera, Action!

The rush to open the box and test the product before reading the accompanying brochure-instruction is always my pitfall. I did it again on the flash memory videocam, see previous discussion on this link on Plants on a Tire/ Digital Media dated July 5, 2009. That was the offshoot of my comment about figuring out how to extract the pictures without installing the Picture Motion Browser.
So I calmed myself, the adrenalin and rush to test first the capabilities of the camera suppressed, I spent some minutes reading twice the slim handbook that came with the product which completely wiped out unanswered personal queries. That was easy after all. Before the purchase I browsed extensively the Sony website for info and comparison of the same and related products just to get a better perspective.


The Sony HDR-CX100 features a max still photo resolution up to 4MP megapixels with a dimension of 2304 x 1729, already huge in size and disk usage that starts at 1.52MB per shot, I eventually set it to 1.9MP after a series of tests. This setting alone with a dimension of 2016 by 1134 consumes a minimum of 803 kbytes and up, depending on the elements and artifacts captured in the photo. With a zoom capability of 10x optical and 120x digital, it was good buy for me. In comparison, digicams now are out which starts in the 10 megapixel range. I cautioned myself for web purposes, a respectable photo is one in which you can see details without sacrificing bandwidth. Besides I'm not printing poster sized pics.
For video purposes, I set the default recording to the internal 8 gb flash memory while the stills are saved on the removable 8 gig memory stick pro duo. Capturing HD action while taking still shots at the same time was a breeze.
The unit has an Exmor CMOS sensor imaging device using Carl Zeiss® Vario- Tessar® optic lens.

Here are edited sample pics , as always I prevail myself on posting large files that are overwhelmingly huge, in terms of storage and image viewable width-length dimensions. These are shots using the auto setting taken at a distance of about 30 paces. Good enough, I had a close-up of the boughs!
Oh, yes, I did not install the Picture Motion Browser, as I was able to make a work –around in the transfer of videos and photos to my media center PC, much safer though than endangering the camera unit by connecting it to the computer.