Just before the Christmas, Chiinavasion, an electronics wholesaler, sent me a unique little video camera to review. It’s their MPEG4 digital video camcorder with “telescope style 8x optical zoom lens”, and it turned out to be more than I anticipated at first glance.

(You can see all the images here)

The box everything came in was nondescript, small, and was packed with everything needed to get started. Included was the camera, the 8x optical zoom lens with a lens cap, a US plug converter, an AC power cable, battery, USB cable, TV out cable, remote control, headphones, software, manual (in Chinese and English) and a carrying case. The camera includes a built in microphone and speaker, a 3 inch TFT LCD screen that folds out to view and can be flipped 180 degrees for self-protraits, a 5 Megapixel CMOS image censor and a 12 Megapixel max resolution (interpolated).

The big marketing draw for this camera is, of course, the 8x optical zoom lens, so I started playing with that right away. I quickly reminded myself how useless that level of zoom is in my house, so I headed to the top of a building. The camera’s built-in lens is threaded, allowing the zoom lens to simply screwed in. Once attached, the lens focus is adjusted to get a clear picture. In the video below, I pointed the camera at a nearby neighborhood, attached the zoom lens, and pointed it back at the neighborhood, revealing a lot more detail than before. I tried to edit the video, but Windows Movie Maker hates me today. You can also take a look at the unaltered video file right here (22MB). This camera also has built-in 4x digital zoom controls on the back. Unlike the attachable zoom lens, which is 8x or nothing, the digital zoom is adjustable, but I generally dislike using digital zoom as it tends to pixelate the image.

The camera does more than just video. When you turn it on, you can switch it from “Video Camera” mode to “Camera” mode for some pretty decent still images. I took a few to show the color and clarity with and without the optical zoom lens attached, but I also wanted to know how this camera measures up against my Sony DSC-P41 point-and-shoot camera and my new Canon Rebel XTi DSLR camera. None of the pictures below will win any awards, but they offer an interesting comparison. The LED flash from the Chinavasion camera puts out a pretty bright, whiter, light, leaving me with a whiter photo.

Sony DSC-P41	Chinavasion	Canon DSLR

One thing I found unique with this camera is the included remote control. With it, I can take a group photo and be in it without trying to sync up to a timer. Better still, I can take 4 or five in a row without moving, just to make sure I get it right.

Beyond video and still image capturing, this camera includes four additional functions. You can play back videos and images, record just audio, and play MP3 audio files, essentially making it a full personal media player as well as a video and still camera. The MP3 player doesn’t offer any special features beyond choosing a track and playing it back, but it IS a video camera, so just playing the MP3s seems like it should be enough. The audio recording is simple enough, as well. You enter the “Record” mode and hit the shutter release button to begin recording. Then hit it again to stop. Since the audio files are stored in the same folder as still images and video, you have to head to “JPEG” mode to review what you’ve recorded.

A final mode is “Setup”, which allows a lot more custom settings than many cameras. In the Setup mode, you can change the flicker frequency, beep alerts, time, media selection, language, power settings, TV mode (NTSC/PAL), logo display, brightness and format the storage. Additionally, you can hit the menu button to reveal even more settings for resolution, frame rate, audio and white balance when dealing with video capture. The still image capture menu allows you to modify capture mode (with timer option), date stamp, flash mode, scenery, EV (for a darker or lighter image), quality, resolution, white balance, color (normal/sepia/B&W), and quick preview. In JPEG mode, you can rotate, lock or delete images from the menu, and the menu button changes the playback mode for MP3s.

The camera itself has a good weight to it but it’s still comfortable enough to carry around. Because of the weight, I’d hate to drop it as I’m guessing the plastic casing would crack if dropped from standing eye level. Although the zoom lens comes with one cap, I’d love to have one for each side, or maybe just an extra space in the carrying case for the zoom lens to keep it protected. After two weeks, I still haven’t tried every feature and function, but I’ve seen enough to consider it a pretty good deal for the price (about $110 wholesale from the site).