This week at the PMA camera conference in Las Vegas, JVC announced a high-def hybrid camcorder, the Everio X, which appears to be a symbolic push-back against the recent video breakthroughs in cameras.
The Canon 5D Mark II brought beautiful high-end video to cameras for the first time last year, leaving many camcorders in the dust. Despite a significant price barrier that failed to place it in competition against mainstream camcorders, this camera offered people a high-quality video option (with the added benefits of better lens optics) that many saw as the beginning of a long-term feature raid by cameras.
So, it was only a matter of time before camcorders boosted their still-photo features to keep up appearances in that space, while still offering the best video bang for the mid-range buck.
On the surface, the compact Everio X (or GZ-X900) seems fully feature-packed for both video and stills.
It shoots video at a pixel resolution near 1920 x 1080, and is extremely pocketable and small at only .66 lbs. Using a 10.3-megapixel CMOS sensor, it takes nine-megapixel pics (see pic quality at right), has a rapid-fire mode that shoots 15 images a second, and promises simultaneous 5-megapixel still shooting during HD video recording (at a shutter speed of 1/4000.) It also has an interesting 10 x slow shooting mode (at three different speeds) that seems to combine both video and stills into a potentially seamless action scene mode (see pic sequence below).
Since it’s nicely designed for portability, the camcorder also has a ‘one-touch’ feature built-in that facilitates video downloads to YouTube, just like the iFlip.
At $1000, this camera is going to have to definitely push the hybrid angle. It could potentially suffer against similarly-priced camcorders that don’t have the HD camera feature but might surpass it in video-only quality. But for those looking to use only one device while traveling, this one has a lot of potential.
