Customer Reviews

Sanyo Xacti VPC-C6 6MP MPEG4 Digital Camcorder w/5x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I just purchased a C6 and took it to Disneyland to video the kids. Bottom line is that I love this cam. Here are my thoughts after using it for one week:

Without a doubt, the size makes this camera so much more usable than larger models for "on the go" shooting. I have a mini DVD cam that fits in your palm, but you can't put it in your pocket. For me, its a pain to have to get it in and out of a fanny pack or whatever and I miss shots. For a trip like Disneyland, it was so nice to be able to have this thing in my pocket and be able to take it out fast and discretely shoot all kinds of great shots on rides, etc. After a few hours, I could literally take it out of my pocket, flip the screen up with my thumb and be shooting in about 3 seconds! And being able to go back and forth between pictures and video gave me way more shots that I wouldn't get by having to dig out the camera. I just hate having to carry around all the gear.

As far as quality, the photos turned out pretty good. I expected less based on the other reviews. I have not enlarged anything yet. My only complaint would be a bit overly saturated colors. I may be able to fix that setting in the camera. The best shots were bright sunlight at the pool.

Video quality is decent, better than I expected at low light. It focused pretty well at low light. I got some good results on indoor rides. My favorite thing to do is hold the camera out and shoot myself and my son on a ride. The size makes this easy to do and of course you can turn the screen around so you can see yourself. I can do it with my DVD cam, but it gets heavy and is bulky.

The anti-shake is not that great. You really have to watch how much you move it around. It works, it just could be better. I didn't have a problem with stills even when zooming.

Like others, I found that you get lots of camera noise when taking a picture during a video. The wind reduction works much better than my other cam (a Panasonic DVD model). The sound is decent overall.

The flash is very weak. About 6' max I would guess. Weaker than my Pentax Optio digital camera. I did not take a lot of indoor/night shots though.

I really like how fast it warms up. When you turn it on or flip up the screen, it is ready to go in just a few seconds. This is why I don't like the DVD cams, the warm up is really slow...Like 30 seconds on my Panasonic VDR. I lose lots of shots becuause of this.

I like that the buttons are all on the front and can be accessed with the thumb. It took a bit to get used to its small size. There is a slide type switch to go back and forth between viewing and recording so you can do it fast without the menu.

I forgot to buy an extra battery which was a mistake. I don't know how much life I got, but I started out each day at 8:30 am and by noon it was dead. But I took lots of video and flash pictures.

I really like the docking station becuase you don't have to take the battery out to charge it and you can plug into a TV and watch the videos. Another cool use of the docking station is that it doubles as a table-top tripod. I used it to video the fireworks show with pretty good results. The remote worked OK, but one bad feature is that if you are paging through a bunch of clips on TV and you stop for about 10 seconds, it goes back to a different screen and you have to page all the way back through the clips to get to where you were. Maybe this can be changed in the setup, but I don't know. Also, there is now battery level indicator on the screen. The battery just died. I think you can check it from the menu, but that is a pain.

I got two, 2 gig SD cards. The SanDisk Extremes (or Ultras I think). It writs to them super fast. No issues so far. Each card gave me about 80 or 90 minutes at the hights quality. I didn't fill them all up in 5 days at Disneyland.

The lens cap is cheap plastic and kind of hard to get on and off but I got used to it. It is working OK, but I bet it will crack before long. They should figure out how to integrate one that slides on and off.

Bottom line: If you are like me and don't like tons of gear hanging around your neck or in a fanny pack or whatever, this camcorder is for you. I was able to get more cool shots becuase of its speed and size than using my DVD model. I don't put so much weight on quality, becuase for family vacations its way more important to get that once in a lifetime shot of my kids doing something cute than having the image quality perfect. Now I just need to learn how to use iMovie to put all these clips together!

I like this because it is small and ergonomically well designed. I am keeping it. However, there are many tradeoffs and issues that anyone should note:


1. The movie function is better in quality than stills for almost all conditions.

2. The movie function sound picks up faint noise from absolutely everything the camera does, from zoom to auto adjust the focus. This can only be heard under quiet conditions, but it is there, and in fact mentioned in the manual.

3. The low light still is very poor, except if it is pitch dark and you set it for that condition. I find taking pictures indoors without the flash superior than with it on.

4. The camera is very sensitive to shakes during still...and the image stabalizer only works for movies. This really needs a good image stabalizer for stills, since slight motion ruins the image, particularly in zoom.

5. It is true you can take a still while recording a movie. However, what is not mentioned, is that the movie is interrupted during the capture and that sounds of shutter clicking at quite high level invade the audio

I love the camera for convenience and remarkable capability.

From other reviews, the new HD version solves none of the issues I mention.


Well-taken stills with the Epson Picturemate printer are excellent.

Just be patient and have a very very steady hand.

This is a camcorder for the digital age. Tiny, multi-functional, and flexible. No ancient-technology magnetic tape. As with any product on the leading edge, there are many shortcomings.

Let's dispense with the obvious. This device is all about compact go-anywhere flexibility and ease. For best image quality, a dedicated mini-DV camcorder and dedicated digital still camera is the only way to go. In fact, buying a separate camcorder and still camera may likely be less expensive than the Sanyo C6 while resulting in superior quality.

Overall image quality is best described as "OK". The poor lens zoom and aperture is more befitting a $100 digital camera than a $400 device. The flash is weak and will not light many scenes that any other still camera would light. In addition, since the flash is not offset in any way from the lens, red-eye is virtually guaranteed at any range. This is not a problem with digital touch-up being common practice, but plan on touching up more often. Low light conditions drag down image quality dramatically in video mode. Virtually any digital camcorder at any price will outperform this Sanyo in video mode in any situation, but a little day light goes a long way towards improving video quality with the Xacti C6. Also, to be clear, the video quality is still superior to anything seen in the best of analog camcorders.

For all these negatives, the convenience can be truly revolutionary. One can wear the tiny VPC-C6 around the neck all day. This causes an amazing change in attitude towards video. Since the Sanyo is so compact, no one would think twice about bringing it along on any minor travel. Being freed from the chore of "packing up" a camcorder means a corresponding willingness to bring the Sanyo on so many more occasions, such as a visit to the park instead of just weddings and birthday parties. And whereas a mini-DV camcorder requires one hour to transfer one hour's worth of video to your computer, the Sanyo transfers video as fast as the SD card and USB 2.0 interface will allow. That means five minutes or less to transfer one hour's worth of video to a computer. This ease increases willingess to create video and share video. No more procrastination over dragging out the camcorder wiring and the manual task of initiating video transfer to a computer. With the Sanyo, just place the camera in the docking station and pictures and video files are available just like files on a USB flash drive. It is difficult to overestate the significance of this convenience. Video becomes an everyday pleasure, if one so wishes, rather than a special occasion chore. If one values this convenience over absolute image quality, this is the product to own.

This is a leading edge product. To get the most of this product, I highly recommend doing the following:
1) Sanyo has provided an updated firmware on their website. This fixes a fatal flaw in the audio processing that some people have noted as excessive distortion - this update makes audio quality competitive with other camcorders. In addition, this firmware update adds compatability with 4gb SD cards (the limit is 2gb without the update). Kudos to Sanyo for the continuing support. (Note that the instructions are a littled distorted in the translation - what they meant to write is that you need to push the SET button to the LEFT to enter the firmware update screen.)
2) The video is in MP4 format and is playable only with Quicktime. For Windows users, this limits video editing to the included programs or Quicktime-specific programs. There is an easy solution. First, download the Divx codec (a freeware commercial product) or Xvid codec (a free open source product - my preference) or ffdshow (a free open source product) - use your search engine of choice to find these. Second, download a utility called "MP4CAM2AVI" (a free open source software found easily with your search engine of choice). With these two programs, the video becomes compatable with any Windows program, including just about any media player (such as Windows Media Player) and any video editing tool (such as Windows Movie Maker).

I look forward to seeing how this market segment evolves. The freedom from bulk and digital tedium is addicting and I am sure the image quality will continue to improve. For now, I am happy capturing the memories that would have otherwise been lost had I continued to own a conventional bulky tape-based camcorder.

We owned the previous Sanyo Xacti C5 and thought it was great. Since my son needed a camera for college, we sent him off with the C5 after we purchased the C6. While they look quite similar and noticeably, the C6 has been upgraded to 6 megapixels, I can tell you that the quality of videos and stills on this is dramatically improved. The C5 was great, but this camera is one of the best.

The camera is great for shooting both live action video (Up to 1 hours with a 1GB SD card - sold separately) as well as still images (6 MegaPixel). You can actually shoot a still image while you are shooting video - Yes, both at the same time!!! Camera is ultra compact and ultra cool in looks and style. MPEG-4 recordings playback flawlessly on either my Mac at home or my Windows at work and I've copied a few over to my iPod Video and am constantly singing this products praises to people at the gym when I show the videos on my iPod. MPEG-4 movies also e-mail quite easily. It is so light and convenient that I shoot more with it since it is always with me.

Great camera!

I really wanted to love this camera. The camera is compact and could fit into the pocket of my jeans!

I did plenty of research before choosing to buy this camera so I expected all the quarks of the unit mentioned in other reviews. The 30 frames per second uninterlaced video is good - of course it's not as good as full resolution 60 fields per second video... but the unit fits into my pocket! Another huge plus is that each "shot" is an individual file that can be dragged off the unit and onto a PC using a USB cable. No further processing - the file just copies and plays in Quicktime, etc. Another great feature is the ability to zoom while recording a movie, which most point and shoot cameras that record video will not allow you to do.

Now the sad part; Amazon has shipped me two units - both with bad pixels on the LCD and CCD. The bad pixels on the LCD, according to the manual, are expected and "Not a malfunction"; I disagree with that. For the cost of the unit there should be no bad pixels on the LCD monitor. The HUGE problem is the bad pixels on the CCD! This results with white pixels being recorded on the files; this is compounded by the "image stabilization". The image stabilization shifts the image the CCD receives around in attempt to stabilize a shot of video - and it works great! However, as the video is shifted and stabilized the white pixels are shifted around the screen as well. It's almost like there are flies moving through every single shot you record.

The bad CCD is the reason why I can't love the C6... I gave up hope and sent both back to Amazon. I'm not sure what I will buy now.

My wife and I are expecting a baby, and I got this camcorder because I was looking for something small. This camera is very small and portable, smaller than many cell phones, and that was its main selling point for us. That said, I was not expecting great video quality from it. However, I was positively surprised: its video quality compare to the low end MiniDV cameras, with perhaps a little better performance in low light than the cheap ones. You can still see the artifacts of MPEG4 compression, and the quality is not the same as a MiniDV when ideal conditions are met, but I certainly got a better video performance than I expected.

I cannot say the same about still pictures. Since it is 6 MP, I expected it to excell when taking stills. The still pictures are ok, but nothing to write home about. To save battery and perhaps space, the flash is quite weak, and night pictures that need flash require close distances.

Pros: miniscule size, reasonably good quality pics and movies, hability to take stills while filming, reasonable low light video, good interface.

Cons: bad low light stills, hard to stabilize (downside of being very small).

Botton line: If you are looking for portability, you can't beat it; if video quality is a must, you can get better cameras for cheaper.

this summer i was to travel to Palestine and attend a wedding . the last thing i wanted was to hall around an ostentatious camera that would break my back as well as be a problem at check points and border crossings.
i picked the Sanyo Xacti C6. it was great. the size is amazing, its as big as my cell phone, and i laughed at first becasue i didn't find it when i opend the box.
the video quality is great, **FOR IT'S SIZE** i was expecting the picture to be realy blurry and pixulated but it wasn't that bad, and more suprizing is the indoor videos at night. However, the still picture capabilities is inferior to the movie capabilities. and don't even think of taking a picture at night.
On my trip the camera fulfilled its duties with flying colors. But then my family used it to film a highschool graduation...boy was that a disaster. movies of the wedding weren't very celebrated, but the behind the scenes were great. again don't use it for family moments!

now you might say why should i buy a flawed camera for that price, its because you will use it maybe 1000x more often than a regular bulky video camera. many a times did i capture great vacation moments with this camera in situations where a bulky camera wouldn't have been carried, just because this one can be placed in the pocket of your pants.

In theory, this camera is perfect. Fits into your pocket. Video quality is definately good considering it records in the compressed format of MPEG-4. Pictures are good if you know how to finesse it. Perfect all around anytime camrea, right?

Here's the thing. I got the camera mainly for video. I just had a daughter and wanted something for those candid moments that I could always have on me. Also, I did not want miniDV because uploading to the computer is real time. I wanted the SD card as film, even if it would sacrfice some video quality. But the thing that ruins this camera for me is the mic picks up the lens motor/ auotfocus nosie. On the playback I cearly hear the zooming in and zooming out and every time the lens focuses. It sounds like someone smoking a hooka. And get this, it even says so in the instruction manual, page 35, "CAUTION During video clip playback, the sound of a motor is audible....During recording, the sound of the optical zoom movement or autofocus movement was recorded. This is not a malfunction."

Awful.

By the way, the take a picture while recording video function is worthless. It leaves a pause on your video image while the sound keeps recording, and the still image captured is usually blury. Whats the point anyway, I think the camera has a built in function to extract a still from the video. Or you can do it with whatever editing software you use.

Oh, and one last thing. I have to keep the still camera in sports mode to get a clean pic. My hand shakes too much. There is a digital stabalization for the video, but no optical stabilization for the stills.

Its a big shame, too. The camera is very cool. If not for the audible motor noise, I would have given this at least an 8/10. But the lens motor noise is unacceptable!

ps. all cameras today should have a built in lens cover. This is one has a cheap plastic one, that you'll probably lose!

This camcorder has an excellent form factor and conveniently transfers clips to PC via USB. However, the camera picks up the sound of its own zoom and auto-focus, which makes the video unacceptable in my opinion. The clicking and whirring is louder than the level of normal conversation.

We returned the first unit that we got thinking that it may have been a production defect, but the second unit had the same problem. Apparently, according to the manual, this is "not a malfunction".

I think a lot of people underestimate this camera, i bought this for 250.00 at radio shack around Christmas of 2007 on sale, also the display. The warranty was about 55.00 dollars for two years. I think that a lot of users just don't know how to use this camera. If you go into the settings and change the filters, or image size or even the mode, auto,fireworks, sports, etc. I typically use the sports setting making picture virtually clear. Also when taking a picture you slightly press in on the camera button do the green box shows up, there's no flash delay. I love taking pictures with the Black and white filter with the sports setting,the sports setting allows no blurriness. Pictures look professional and a lot people ask me where i get my pictures done. When outside take off the flash, let the sun do it for you. The video setting lets you upgrade your picture setting to HD-quality. People need to just have fun and explore this camera. Like I said before, this camera is so underestimated.