Digital Handheld Camera

by Crystal Manillet Go Callano

The digital handheld camera or commonly known as the "camcorder", have become compact and lightweight. It is used to record videos and allows you to transfer these footage to you computer. Most also let you take digital still shots, essentially giving you a digital camera as a bonus. Newer camcorders offer a wide set of features such as the capacity to capture widescreen videos to match the aspect of widescreen HDTVs. The main advantage of having a digital handheld camera is that it allows the user to transfer the video footage to a compatible computer without loss of quality. Transfers are usually made through Firewire or using the USB.

Digital Camcorders come in a variety of formats options. Despite the growth of new non-tape formats, the MiniDV is still the most popular video camera format.The reason for this is because the MiniDV lets these camcorders be very compact, and extra MiniDV tapes are easy to find. Also, it has excellent sound quality but is reasonably priced.

Other digital handheld cameras are the DVD camcorders and the HDD camcorders. DVD camcorders record directly to compact DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW or DVD-RAM, and these discs can in most cases be watched directly on a home DVD player or computer. the HDD camcorders on the otherhand, have video data directly to an internal hard disk.these makes them more compact and sturdy (since there are not much movable parts).

Some terms used in camcorders:

CCD (charged-coupled device )-A CCD is a charge-coupled device, a light-sensitive chip that acts like film for capturing video.

Character generators - These allow you to add the time and date, titles, and other written information to the images that you are recording.

Fade In/Fade Out - Automatically fades the image from or to a black (or white) screen.

Pixel - One of the tiny points (or dots) that make up a video image.

Resolution - The ability to produce fine detail in a video picture. It is usually measured in horizontal lines.

References

http://products.howstuffworks.com/digital-camcorders-buying-guide.htm ; Accessed on 06 August 2009

http://techhook.com/img/canon_HG21_digital_camcorder.jpg; Accessed on 06 august 2009