Hi all here’s some footage and stills from a Xacti HD2 taken over a few very windy days. The lighting was changeable by the second with fast clouds and changing light to clear blue sky. All footage is taken with the camera as it came out of the box all settings to auto and no anti shake to give me a feel as to what it is capable of. Some of the panned video footage is a bit jerky due to a small accident with my cheap tripod and the car door; I told you it was very windy :~) the footage & stills are as they were taken with no editing. I’m only an amateur and hope this helps anybody to make a decision on a HD2 purchase or not as the case may be. I’m very happy with my purchase and can see a great improvement in video quality compared to my Cannon MV10 and the fact that I can carry it easily in my pocket whilst on my regular local walks is a great plus.

Thanks to Larry Hitz for the info on uploading this footage & stills.

Video
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=S50NFDCP
Pilot boat

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QI8IXB2V
Flower-stream

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GCG9118T
Violet-stream

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DGFP1Z8X
Bee-flower

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=K3D227HX
Industrial Pan

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SZOFC9VX
Daffodils on path

Favourite seat on my walks
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OQNBFB42

Stills
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=N9FJE54U
Fly on flower

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D4GXIOX0
Blackthorn Blossom

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HPEJU3FO
Old Horse chestnuts

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0WEA20OC
Seed head

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KCRF1EDK
Toad

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H97WPTUC
Wild Violet

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=W75L529B
Tree

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=I7P46AOP
Fields vista

A big "Thank you" to Ken for those samples !!!!

...now we can view some footage of people, if it was possible, for the complete review...

bye, bye

Fabio

A few more and people to follow in the next few days Fabio.

Video

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OQNBFB42
Favourite seat on my walks

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SCZJWVGZ
Horse

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FV85S3AW
Comma Butterfly

Church-Backlight
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GZC2NFDD

Hi ken and thx for the file which i'm downloading now.

you said that they are all original files direct from the HD2 but i could see one of then ends with .avi (SANYO010.avi), which means you have converted it to this format

thanx anyway...i'm being picky lol

Hi Ken English,

Thanks a lot for all your samples, great stuff, kinda reinforces my original decision of why not to buy the HD2 (based on Canadian price point vs quality of image).

Thanks

John.

My daughter Louise and Ava the new addition to our family. This was taken on a very bright day and I noticed a small amount of lense flare with the HD2 on Ava's dress in this and the following footage
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DFCVXG1Y

Ava's first experience with flowers.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CR8LEO0E

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the wonderful footage; you have a beautiful new addition to the family. :)

John

What I would to see is video from an HD1 and an HD2 taken side by side at the same time in a DARKENED room to see if the HD2 really has improved low light ability ? anyone happen to have both ?

What I would to see is video from an HD1 and an HD2 taken side by side at the same time in a DARKENED room to see if the HD2 really has improved low light ability ? anyone happen to have both ?

There is some low light footage shot with the HD1 and HD2 at http://c-kom.homeip.net/review/blog/archives/2007/03/xacti_hd2_vs_hd.html, although I'm not sure whether the clips were taken under exactly the same conditions.

Hi,
many thanks for all these new wonderful HD2 sample movies !

I must say, the jaggies problem is now gone with the HD2.
There are now very small "jaggies" not anymore diagnoal
as they were before , but now they are only very lightly showing
in the vertical rows, so you can see them only, if you look very
sharp on standing rods or houseswalls with sharp edges...
But this is almost not visible anymore, so it is indeed a great
progess with the HD2 compared to the HD1.

I also just downloaded a few samples of the new Aiptek HD
camcorder and I must say, it almost has the same jaggies
as the Sanyo HD1, but there the codec is the new Ambaralla
AVC H264, so the datarate is still only 4 to 5 Mbits/sec !

Maybe also these Aiptek HD samples have been shot
with automatic settings, where the sharpening of the
video is too much ?
Maybe one could manually adjust this and get a softer
and less jaggies having image quality ?

But definately the HD2 is now very nice in picture quality.

But the question is, are the 700 to 800 versus just 300 US$
from the Sanyo HD2 compared with the Aiptek HD worth
buying the HD2 if you can live with a few jaggies ?

I think the Aiptek HD for around 300 US$ has still got a great
video image for this price tag !

Regards, Stefan.

After viewing some samples from Aiptek I'm quite impressed with the quality. It is not quite far from that of HD2, and I think it has slightly better dynamic range. I don't see white burning as much as xactis. I don't know enough about either cameras to make any judgement but for the price/performance it seems Aiptek might have upper hand.

@Ken English
in which mode did you take your videos with the HD2 ?
Was this the standard automatic mode or did you use
any manual tweaking ?

Many thanks in advance.

Regards, Stefan.

Hi Stefan the videos are all auto settings.

Hi Stefan the videos are all auto settings.

Many thanks Ken for the info.

Did you try to use already manual settings ?

Could you try with softening the image a bit ?
So try to go into manual mode and try to lower
the sharpening settings and try to shoot again
some slow moving things...
The contrast also was pretty big in some of your videos
so the yellow flower was too bright, so one could
not see any surface detail, a bit overexposed this way.

Also in the heavy sunshine versus dark flower scene
with the baby..

Maybe one can enhance this, when one uses manual
settings ?

Many thanks in advance.

Regards, Stefan.

I have uploaded a few example clips from my new HD2 to my homepage. I literally pulled the camera out of the box and snapped this stuff on the way home from work. There is HD, SD and still shots all with default settings.

Bought this camera to take on my Hawaii vacation next week, should have more footage and possibly a review after the trip.

check it out at: http://homepage.mac.com/hayaf/

Within 2 days of posting this I got an email from Apple warning that my bandwidth limit was about to be exceeded! Had to take down the samples but I'll look for a better solution when I have something worth downloading after the trip.