Reviews |
Quick Review Camcorders : Fisher FVD-C1
by Matt CullerPublished on December 16, 2004
The Fisher FVD-C1 looks like a dolphin. With one fin. And its mouth open. The only problem here is that the fin is only 1.5” diagonally, with 110K pixels, and behind the mouth is a lens with only a 5.8x optical zoom, and an extremely loud motor noise. Nonetheless, Fisher’s FVD-C1 is pretty portable and kinda cool if you’re going for that spy look. In fact, we were surprised that this guy didn’t shoot out a grappling hook or include a lock-melting laser beam option. One thing that didn’t really surprise us though was this camcorder’s low light performance. Even with its ½.7 inch CCD with 3.2 gross MP, the FVD-C1 scored low in both the video and low light categories producing noisy, dark images.
The FVD-C1’s massive imager can take stills at 2048 x 1536, which, while pretty impressive, cannot do much for the camcorder’s video performance. The FVD-C1 takes MPEG video at TV-SHQ (640 x 480 resolution, 30 frames-per-second, 3 MB-per-second), TV-HQ (640 x 480, 30fps, 2mbps), TV-S (320 x 240, 30fps, 640 kbps), Web-HQ (320 x 240, 15fps, 384 kbps), and Web-S (176 x 144, 15fps, 256 kbps).
There is a serious lack of manual control on the FVD-C1 as well. For example there is no manual white balance, manual focus, or shutter speed. While we didn’t expect every option in the word from this little spy cam, for a hybrid camcorder to put forth half of its energy towards still picture recording and not include manual white balance, seems a bit strange. Mediocre manual exposure is available from EV-1.8 to EV+1.8, and it is pretty easy to access as well. Also, automatic shutter speed/exposure settings are available for preset environments. In photo mode, there are options for manual ISO settings from 50 to 400.
The FVD-C1 includes a docking station with an A/V out and a USB port. And if you haven’t guessed it already, the FVD-C1 records to SD card, the bigger the better. The FVD-C1 comes with a big one too, check with the individual dealer for information on what size card they are including.
| Fisher FVD-C1 - THE BOTTOM LINE
Rating: 68.47 |
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| Likes |
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- Portability
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| Dislikes |
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- Low light and video performance
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Fisher FVD-C1 Compared to the...
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Panasonic
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Canon
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| Better | Better |
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- Low light and video performance
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- Low light and video performance
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| Equal | Equal |
| - Ports |
None |
| Worse | Worse |
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- Portability/ Handling |
- Portablity
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