Posted on July 23rd, 2008 by Matthew Sparkes

Testing camcorders. In a fish tank.

A lovely blue Sanyo Xacti VPC-CA8EX just landed on my desk to be reviewed, which is great, because it has one particularly exciting feature – it’s completely waterproof. Eager to test this out I ran down to reception where we have a huge fish tank, and I dropped it in.

It worked perfectly – as you can see in this underwater test video – even recording decent audio of the filter bubbling away in the tank.

The camera can record video at 640 x 480 pixels at 60 frames per second, storing files to SD cards. Because this matches the Sanyo VPC-CG9 I tested in the recent camcorder labs it’s likely that much of the hardware is shared and that they will both give similar results. Keep checking back for a full review to find out more.

I’m currently trying to convince my editor that a trip to the Bahamas on expenses is the best way to extensively test this out – please lend your support in the comments.

Thanks to tarotastic for the image.

Tags: sanyo, underwater, waterproof, xacti

Posted in: Just in

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4 Responses to “ Testing camcorders. In a fish tank. ”

David Wright Says:
July 24th, 2008 at 5:08 am
Just a quick question, why the heck is the video hosted on Auto Express? :-O

I opened the link to the video page and it was blank, so I viewed the source, to see which site I would need to enable to view the video and it was Autoexpress…
Matthew Sparkes Says:
July 24th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
It’s one of the many wonderful mysteries of our website.
Ian Manning Says:
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:11 am
Okay, so I’m a complete dummy! I can open the still image, but where is the link to see the video? This review really does make me feel stupid! Am I looking right at the link? Am I going blind?!!

Finally, if the still image was taken on the xActi, I am amazed at the quality as my school has just received one of these cameras via the Tesco Schools scheme and in normal video mode in air, the quality is poor: average webcam stuff.

Lastly, getting the images off the camera in an easily useable form is a nightmare using the awful Adobe Elements 4.0 Premiere. I have yet to use a more complicated, non- intuitive piece of software – so disappointing as I am a great fan of Elenmts 2.0 (a stripped down version of Photoshop).

Cheers,

Ian
Ian Manning Says:
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:19 am
Hi, Matthew.

Okay – found it! I suppose I am a dummy, but when I first viewed this page, the link text – as you can see in this underwater test video – was in the same colour as the rest of the text, so I didn’t notice it until my cursor went over it just now and showed the link. After viewing, the link text is now red!!

As for the video, I have to say the quality is as poor as I expected after my in air tests. In school, I will recommend this camera is only used for still shots, which are pretty good. I assume that was how the blue fish was taken.

Cheers,
Ian