Sanyo Xacti VPC-C4 Review

The live viewfinder display:   In the upper left are the still image settings - 4.0Megapixel, High quality, 770 pictures available. In the upper right are the motion video settings - TV-SHQ is 640x480 @ 30fps at the highest quality bit rate, we can record 41 minutes and 42 seconds of action. The "hand" icon indicates that the image stabilizer is enabled. The zoom lens gauge is displayed for a few seconds whenever the focal length is changed.

When you half-press the still image shutter to achieve the focus and exposure lock, the AF target marks will display and show what area it is focusing on.

Here's the "Lamp" Scene mode which allows you to use slower shutter speeds for flash-less photography in low light. The image size is automatically reduced to VGA (640x480) for this particular mode because it uses very high ISO values.

Select the scene mode from the menu: AUTO (default - camera automatically selects the scene mode), Sports (faster shutter speeds), Portrait (optimized for "people" pictures with blurred background), Landscape (infinity focus), Night View (flash illuminate close subject but also capture background night scenery), Fireworks (fireworks at night) or Candle (low light non-flash photography).

Record Menu options:

Video Clip - Size/quality for movie capture (see below) or Audio recording mode

Photo Resolution - Size/quality for still image capture:

8M (3264x2448 interpolated), 4M (2288x1712), 2M (1600x1200), 0.3M (640x480)

Scene Select - Auto, Sports, Portrait, Landscape, Night View, Fireworks, Lamp

Filters - Cosmetic (enhance skin tones), B&W, Sepia

Flash - Auto, Forced, Off

Self-timer - 10 sec., 2 sec., or Off

Image Stabilizer - On, Off

Focus - Total, Standard, Manual or Super Macro

Noise Reduction - On, Off

Flicker Reduction - On, Off

ISO Sensitivity - Auto (50-200 stills / 200-400 video), 50 (200 in video), 100 (200 in video), 200 (400 in video), 400 (800 in video)

White Balance - Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Fluorescent or Incandescent

The C4 has a very respectable macro (close-up) focusing range. The default "Total" focus mode covers normal and macro range / 4 inches to infinity in Wide, 32 inches to infinity in Telephoto. The Super Macro option covers from 0.79 inches to 23.6 inches, the lens is locked in wide angle only.

Pressing the SET button lets you quickly review or delete the last still image or movie clip that was captured without leaving REC mode.

You can record high quality MPEG-4 encoded motion video with 48kHz, 16-bit, 2-channel (AAC compression) stereo sound. The optical zoom can be used during recording. There is a Digital Image Stabilizer, a Wind Noise Reduction filter and a Flicker Reduction filter (helps eliminate the flicker effect from fluorescent and vapor lights.)

While recording video you can also capture a still image. Note that if the still image size is greater than 0.3M there will be a momentary interruption seen in the motion video stream.

There are five different movie size/quality settings you can select from:

• 640 x 480 (SHQ 30fps, 3Mbps bit rate) up to 1 hour
  
• 640 x 480 (HQ 30fps, 2Mbps bit rate) up to 1 hour
  
• 320 x 240 (S 30fps, 640kbps bit rate) up to 2 hours 30 mins
  
• 320 x 240 (HQ 15fps, 384kbps bit rate) up to 3 hours
  
• 176 x 144 (15fps, 256kbps bit rate) up to 3 hours

Storage Capacities (approx.)

• Up to 9 hours of continuous audio recording is possible