Double Feature

Look! There's a video camcorder inside your digital camera.

If you're shopping for a digital camera, chances are you aren't paying a lot of attention to the digicams' video capabilities. You are, after all, a still shooter. But don't let the megapixels and your obsession with prints keep you from seeing the action- and sound-grabbing power of today's digicams. You'll be surprised at what they can do. Some compact digitals even rival digital video camcorders in image quality.

While a video enthusiast might laugh at the idea of using a digital camera to shoot video, a still-camera shooter is likely to chuckle at a camcorder with anything more than low-resolution snapshot ambitions. A DV camcorder that can serve up even 2-megapixel stills is the exception, and can cost $2,000 or more.

But the digital camera crowd might be able to laugh loudest...and all the way to the bank. A 5MP-6MP still camera that makes great 11x14-inch prints and captures full-motion, high-quality video with sound costs hundreds-not thousands-of dollars.

Though we don't want to overstate the digicam's video strengths and downplay its weaknesses, even a low-priced digicam that captures lower-quality video has strong points.

Digital cameras are typically a lot smaller and better looking than camcorders, and most have optical viewfinders that are easier to use in low light, in addition to large LCD monitors for live composition. They use durable, small memory cards, include built-in or pop-up flash (a few also have dedicated hot-shoes), offer a choice of still-capture resolutions and color options, and may have a docking station for quick hookup to a computer.

But when looking at digital cameras, how do you sort out the various video storage formats, resolutions, sound capabilities, and display options? One rule of thumb that holds here is You Get What You Pay For. Under $200? Expect a 3MP-4MP camera with a 3X zoom lens that also captures video clips. At the opposite end of the price spectrum, $800-$1,000 buys a compact digital camera with 6MP-8MP, 8X zoom, and lots of video horsepower. The differences between these two extremes is dramatic.

To help you sort it out, we compare five cameras that represent the best of the breed in five price categories from $200 to $800 (on page 83). As you'd expect, some cameras trade video quality for digital still quality (or vice versa), so study the features before you buy.

Where to start?

The major qualifiers are video resolution and frame rate. (See the dictionary sidebar.) On a DV camcorder, video is captured at a resolution of 720x480 pixels per frame, and there are 30 frames captured per second in the progressive scan mode (the National Television System Committee [NTSC] standard is actually 29.97 fps, but let's round it to 30). Freeze frames taken from DV footage are usually stored on digital cards or on the computer at 640x480-pixel (also known as VGA) resolution to compensate for the rectangular shape of video pixels.

By comparison, most new digital cameras in the $200-$400 range capture quarter VGA resolution (QVGA) video with 320x240 pixels per frame, at rates between 15 and 30 fps. Others limit video clips to 15 or 30 seconds, or overcompress the video to squeeze it onto the tiny memory cards that ship with cameras.

Some low-priced cameras don't even record sound with the video clips. While this keeps the price down, it limits the camera's usefulness-unless you add a sound track later. Sound-recording capabilities and the quality of built-in microphones also increase with price. But even the highest-priced digital cameras can't record stereo sound, a feature found on every DV camcorder. (For more DV advantages, see sidebar on the next page.)