Christmas shopping today, finally got myself some toys…it was a bit touch and go, cos I couldn’t find anything I wanted apart from a camcorder but then there was a nagging question about whether that was PAL or NTSC and I decided it wasn’t worth spending that much to find out that it wouldn’t be much use when I get back home anyway. Not that it makes *that* much difference ‘cos mostly anything I do film will be shown on computer, but I need to know that its going to be OK, whatever I get.
Yesterdays trip to Akihabara demonstrated that actually it is not the cheapest place in Tokyo to get such high-end devices anyway, sure theres lots of shops but for the camera I was considering (Panasonic NVGS70ENT/K/B, dunno which version) they’re about 20k (100 quid) over the price you’d pay in Shinjuku. Then the PAL version is another 40k on top of that, its 1.7MPixel rather than 1.2, but is it really worth paying nearly twice as much to get one that’ll work back home?
So todays exercise was to find something else cool that I could call a Christmas present to myself. First up was a WiFi network finder, which will be very handy if I ever hit the road with this chunky old laptop…it transpires theres coverage in my flat, but its a bit intermittent and I can’t work out which direction its coming from… might be worth a Wifi dongle just to see… maybe someone heres got DSL I could piggyback.
But thats only got one button and three lights so thats not very satisfying as toys go. I figured I’d do a trial run with the video camera and got myself a cheap (~80 pounds) solid state video camera which records mp4 .AVIs onto an MMC or SD card. It comes with a 128Mb card which should be good for about 25 minutes of reasonable quality video.
So far I’ve only had a quick play with it but the quality looks OK considering its cheapness and you can hook it straight to a TV. And plugging it in to USB it automatically gets recognised by WinXP and mounted as a drive, no messing about with drivers or anything.
Expect some more serious video footage once I’ve figured out how to use it a bit more.
Oh, and its not normal to be followed down the road by someone dressed as a tiger in a bunch of flowers with a ghetto blaster on their shoulder, is it?
8 comments