SANYO CA6 Active Xacti Camcorder Silver

The first thing that hits you about this camera is the size! It's much smaller than I expected, but in a good way. I can see it's going to be very useful to carry about and use discretly. The design is great, it's modern and slick. The curved edges and round corners make it very comfortable to hold and use. The lens sits in a little recess so hopefully should avoid scratches. The controls are all conveniently located in easy reach of your thumb. The only problem I found is that they are a little bit too low, so you get pretty bad camera shake when you press the photo button for example when you are zoomed right in, but this isn't a huge issue. You just have to hold it firm and move your thumb carefully. I love the way that the camera turns on when you flip the screen open, this is a boon for when you are in an active situation and pressing and holding the top button isn't practical. I got this camera primarily to make some DVDs to show my family some movies of myself and my girlfriend snowboarding in January. The waterproof nature of this camera really drew me in, it will be great to not have to worry to much about getting snow/rain on it. I haven't had a chance to try it out in the snow yet so can't comment on it's ability to protect from moisture, but it all seems well sealed and the battery/SD card slot has a rubber seal and a pleasingly firm catch which shouldn't pop open accidently. The camera come supplied with a faux-leather hand strap that snuggly fits over your hand and will prevent accidental dropping. It feels comfortable but also has a loop of strong cord that connects it to the hand strap. This is great as you can drop the camera and it will dangle under your hand leaving you free to use your hand. I can see this being great whilst using a button drag lift out on the slopes. Everything has a very sturdy build quality. The flip screen would have to take a serious battering for it to break. My only negative about the screen is that it doesnt allow 180 degree rotation, or any rotation for that matter so won't be great for taking movies when you can't see the screen, but this doesn't concern me that much. The Screen quality it great! It's very crisp and the colours are vibrant. It's big enough to see small details. The camera mode is good. The quality is actually pretty respectable. I'm not counting on using it for high end stuff, but snaps out on the mountain will be great. I don't fancy risking my Canon 5D out there!! The small microphone is actually quite good. It seems to pick up sound well. I'm not sure what it will be like in the strong mountain wind but it's good for indoor stuff. I love the fact it uses SD cards and not tapes. Copying the files to my Mac couldn't be easier. Plug in the card reader, insert the card and copy the files off... bosh.. they're right there in the file I want them all numbered in chronological order. I'm intending to create my movies using After Effects which is perfect as I can just drag and drop the files right in there. The quality is actually pretty good for a camera of this size and price. I share a studio with a company who create all sorts of TV graphics for the likes of MTV, Nike, Channel 5 and they were all pretty complimentary of the quality and these guys know their stuff! It's not going to hold up well to 16:9 widescreen but for regular 4:3 TVs it will be fine. The zoom it good and can focus on objects quite far away. Once the optical zoom has reached its limit the digital zoom kicks in (you have to let go of the button and press it again, which is good so you don't accidently zoom right in if you hold the button down). I've never been keep on digital zooms as I'm a bit of a purist. The quality when zoomed right in is pretty rough but I guess is ok if you really have to capture something a long way away. The image stabiliser at full zoom struggles to stabilise some times and the results are a bit jerky. If you zoom out a bit the problem is resolved a little. The stabiliser is quite effective considering the size of the thing! I would have liked the inclusion of a tripod screw hole so I could use a tripod, but This isn't where Sanyo are aiming this camera at, it's very much focused on the active/ point and shoot kind of person. It's also good that it shoots in MP4 format. I can shoot a movie, copy it to my Mac then Bluetooth it to my mobile so I can take my best clips with me where ever I go and can show off my mad air that I'll be getting when I go snowboarding in Jan (hopefully!). Overall, I'm very happy with this little gem and I look forward to giving it a good run for its money over the next few months.