My Travel Optimizer

My next Costa Rica trip is only four weeks away. I bought my first HD camcorder a couple of weeks ago. I researched for a few weeks and chose the Canon HF100 for the following reasons

• I have a Canon digital camera.  Its been incredibly reliable and I found the interface very intuitive.
• Its $550 which I find incredible for an HD camcorder.
• Saves to smart cards so there is a minimum of moving parts
• Small size. Not much bigger than a coke can.
• Its storage format AVCHD is compatible with Sony Vegas (my editing software).

I’ve been tinkering with it recently. I’ll upload some videos soon. The Canon interface suits me. It is a smart design which to me means that its easy to use. The quality of the videos blows my mind. Its such a step above the older generation of camcorders. There are presets in the camera for certain filming conditions(nightime, far away, the beach, etc) and this is an incredible time saver. There’s a lot more to filming than just pointing and shooting (as I am quickly learning).

I took the smart card out, inserted into the card interface in my Dell (quadcore pentium, 4 gigs RAM) and transferred the files to my hard drive in less than a minute. The files opened up with no problem in Sony Vegas. Modern technology is such a marvel. Ten years ago all this technology was not available and anything similar would have been out of my price range. Twenty years ago I would have had to go down to Costa Rica with a camera team and miles of film. I would have had to come home, develop it and edit it with a razor blade. If there was any digital editing sofware back then it could only have been affordable to major Hollywood studios.

I also got a telephoto lens, wide angle lens, filters, tripod, etc. I’m going to Costa Rica on Dec 22nd and I’ll be taking lots of pics and filming tons of stuff. You’ll be able to see the results here in my blog and I’ll put some stuff on Youtube. I’ll give you a full review of how it all worked out and what I used. I love to travel but I’m also a technology geek and I appreciate it when people post reviews of new gadgets.

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