with the battery on my mini-dv camera only lasting about 20 minutes now, and with a baby on the way, i decided to replace my camera with the sony mhs-cm1. I’ve always liked making small little movie clips of us wakeboarding or just goofing around, but the process of uploading the video to my computer from mini-dv is always time consuming and kinda complicated. The video was also pretty low resolution to begin with and by the time it made it to youtube, it never looked very good.

so i got a got a great deal on the newly released CM1. i’m not sure why they market it as a “webbie” camera, because it does 1080p/720p. i mean it is cheap, and i’ve already noticed it’s short comings in the small amount of time i’ve used it, but for the price (retails for $199), i’m still impressed and pleased.

so here are some things i like about it. first of all, it’s small. it’s not much bigger than the point and shoot digital cameras that most people are carrying around. it’s also very fast. as soon as you flip open the screen the camera turns on and is ready to go. it’s all flash media (stupid sony proprietary memory stick) so there’s no tape or dvd to cue up. the form factor and controls feel good, and it feels pretty solid for something so inexpensive. the video quality is good, particularly for the amount of data they’re able to get at that resolution. at 720p and 30fps you get 2 hours of video on a 4gb memory stick.

but this is a $200 HD video camera, so sony had to make compromises somewhere. the main problem is that the focusing is slow. it might have had to do with the fact that most of the video i’ve tried shooting so far has been in doors in low light. when i pan around the room, you can see it focus once you stop. it takes less than a second but i notice it. this isn’t a deal breaker for me, but it’s a bit annoying. i’ll have to play with the settings and try it in other conditions to see what the deal is. taking an annoying cue from apple, the battery is entirely internal, and seems pretty unserviceable, so it means no matter what, i can only get 90mins of recording time in per use (making anything larger than a 4gb memory stick kinda pointless), and eventually the battery will die and this thing will get tossed. i don’t usually keep electronics like this for more than a few years but i always like to imagine that i will.

i made this cool video yesterday that i was going to upload, where i put the camera on the rear deck of my car, looking out my front window and also my speedometer and shifting, and while it was sweet, i realized it showed me exceeding speed limits, so i thought better of uploading it. i’ll find something to shoot and upload soon.