Here's a quick clip I shot and edited yesterday as a test of my new still camera's video ability.
Surfing Snapper Rocks, Feb 23rd 2009 on Vimeo
With my Lumix TZ15 on backorder I was getting itchy to try out it's water housing, so I hit up ebay for a cheap refurbished TZ4. It doesn't shoot 720p like the TZ15 but virtually everything else is identical. I took it out for a swim at Snapper Rocks on the Gold Coast and managed to get a few clips.
I was impressed by the colour rendition this little cam could produce and also by the accuracy of all the auto-functions. The optical stabilizer would've been alot more effective if i'd used swim-fins but because i didn't i had to swim with one hand and hold the cam steady with the other and as a result the cam was shaking all over the place. I can't wait for my TZ15 to arrive (could be a few months, I've been told) so that the footage will look a little bit better.
The only problem I had with this cam was some severe smearing from the CCD. When pointed anywhere near the sun I would get huge vertical streaks through the image. Avoiding the sun is easy enough to do when shooting a planned scene from a tripod, but damn hard when swimming around, dodging waves and surfers!
February 24th, 2009, 07:26 PM
