Customer Reviews

Sharp VNEZ1 MPEG-4 Internet Viewcam

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was suprised at the good quality this small camera will produce. It is very easy to use for beginners. Takes excellent still photos, But you will need to invest in a tripod for the best quality picture in still or video. Very easy to install on your computer, both the software and the smartmedia. A big plus is it is ready to use, you don't have to buy anything else for your computer or the camera.

This is a great product, and appears to be the only one in its class (filmless/tapeless camcorders). And, it's even smaller than it looks in the picture. It makes reasonable quality video recordings -- up to an hour long (with a 32MB SmartMedia card), or longer if you use the time lapse mode and an (included) AC adaptor. (You can upload the video files to the web; Sharp recommends POPcast, a free video hosting service.) It also has a still photo mode, although the resolution isn't so hot. Four alkaline AA batteries supposedly last for a full hour of recording time; my experience so far has been consistent with that claim, and I haven't bothered purchasing long-life (not nicad) rechargeables. You'll definitely want to buy a larger SmartMedia card than the 4MB that comes with the camera; SanDisk and other manufacturers make 32MB cards for about $60. I also recommend adding a USB SmartMedia reader for another $40 or so, although the included floppy disk SmartMedia adapter works on most PCs with internal floppy drives. And start watching for sales on alkaline AA batteries; you'll go through a lot of them with this great camera!

The picture quality isn't comparable to "regular" digital cameras, but then again - this isn't a regular camera! The Internet Viewcam is extremely small and very easy to handle (point and shoot). Barely OK for taking simple still images (640 x 480) and OK for making small MPEG-4 movies (max 320 x 240) that you can distribute over the Internet. It's really simple to transfer pictures and movies to/from the camera via the included smartmedia floppy adapter, but the bundled software is crappy. The Internet Viewcam is more of a toy than anything else (because of the poor picture quality), but I would recommend anyone to buy it as it's the coolest hi-tech toy I've seen in years.

I bought this about 6 months ago thinking that it was a great idea - combining digital still, video, and webcam. One thing I learned right away, though, is that it is NOT a fully functional webcam.

WHAT IT DOES:
-- Takes very mediocre digital stills - good enough for when you don't need very high quality.
-- Records movies - low quality and with audio that is hard to hear.
-- The software is very easy to use and you can indeed easily add videos and stills to your e-mail, etc.
-- Overall, it is a fun toy. But once the novelty wears off, you may feel like you should have invested in either (1) a real digital camcorder that takes digital stills or (2) a real web cam.

WHAT IT DOESN'T DO:
-- It does not work like a web cam. You can not have it attached to your PC to do videoconferencing or video e-mail. Its placement in the Web Cam section is misleading and I think this should be made much more clear.
-- The quality of pictures and videos is quite poor. So if you really want to take anything but the most amateur of photos, you better not buy this.

Net - this is a cute novelty toy. But now I am buying a digital cam corder with still capabilities and a web cam to really meet my needs.

The VN-EZ1 will never surpass its bigger brothers at Sharp, but for what it does... it is a nice unit. I wanted something that I can record, then email the video to friends and relatives. The VN-EZ1 fit my needs. I just got back from Las Vegas, and I took several shots around town. Most files were under 1.5 MB. I placed all the videos (and they look great)on my Yahoo Briefcase and emailed several to friends and relatives. Windows Media Player latest version is needed to play the .ASF format. The product is fine for internet use and I usually have it set on Super-Fine mode. The best feature is its size, (a bar of soap) sold it to me. I hate lugging a full size camcorder around Vegas. The VN-EZ1 fit in the belt pouch (included). The software and the floppy disk adapter make downloading easy. In fact, operation is so easy, I hardly used the manual at all. I recommend this little unit to those who want to put fun in your email and web pages.

This little viewcam stopped working right after the warranty. I did like playing with it while it worked. But when I tried to get it fixed, the cost was more than what I had paid for the camera. Sharp USA refused to do anything about it.

Now available in Japan are the EZ1s bigger brothers VN EZ3 and VNEZ5. Both are substantial upgrades! I own and all 3 and must say that each evolutionary step is incredible. I am not sure if the later models have made it out of Japan yet, so the down side is that the manuals and screen prompts are in Japanese. However, there is an English translation of the manual available from Sharp so there is hope for those of you who cant wait another year (or more?) until the upgrades are available in North America or Europe. ....

Yeah, the discription says for pc users, mac users are out of luck. Well I have a MAC, so I can break the rules! All you need to do is purchase a smartmedia flash card reader compatible with MAC and you will also have to download a free windows media player for MAC, thats it! I use a multi flash reader thats compatible wih my os9.2 . Unfortunately my reader does not work under osX.2, but, there are readers that will. I can still share my files with osX.2, or drag n drop into my Virtual PC, so whatever os I use, I can still view and send my visuals over the net!
MAC users, no need to worry, you have a MAC. And you know you cant stop THE MAC!

Sharp VNEZ1 MPEG-4 is a great little camera until the batteries fall out when the power is on, and then when you put them back in you find your menus are in Japanese. Then you get a Japanese person to look at it to change it back to English and they tell you there is no menu option to change the language selection - which rings a bell because I never saw an option to change the language selection when it was in English!!!

I bought the VNEZ-1 when it was in market testing before 1998, and there have been no changes. Six years experience.

It's petite size is ergonomically designed to still allow a feel to the hand that speaks of something larger. It is not so tiny that it feels flimsy.

The pixel count of 350k might send some running away, but look at full screen MPEG-4 product and you'll be surprised at the high level of quality. Just remember the microphone is "on top" if you shoot video, and turn the lens to parallel the microphone. The resulting video will also pleasantly impress those skeptics.

MPEG-4 compression is the MP3 of video at present. It can be very very good with proper lighting. It's a CCD pickup for data in the lens, and too much or too little light can present skewed color. There is an aperature adjustment that allows great shots in bright sunlight. Low light sensitivity is not its strong point, but the resulting sepia movies are not unpleasant, reminding one of old movies. Another lens adjustment for closeup and distance shooting exists which does a good job. Not all vidcams can say even at their worst they're good.

This is also a STILL camera. I took this to Chicago in 2000 and shot photos of the city which I dropped into a software editing program allowing brightness, contrast and color correction along with cropping and further compression. My nursing colleagues at the get together saw their own walking tour online that night. Fireworks in the sky. The murals, sculptures, dancing water fountains, architectural artworks and diverse myriad peoples of all kinds mingling on the streets. Panhandlers sleeping on benches, a wedding in a public square. The result was professional quality in terms of internet compatibility and ease of use for still photography.

I took this to a family get together at Thanksgiving one year. Everyone filled a plate and sat "somewhere" and chatted back and forth catching up on the year past as they gathered from all over. I sat the camera down flat on a table with the mic and lens drinking on the entire room. Literally the microphone definition is good enough to listen to the result four times with a new experience each time; a group of twelve people involved in four separate conversations and no one conversation drowning out the others ... the result is a timeless heirloom to a family with older members.

A tool in audio history and video history.

A 32 MB card with close to thirty minute video potential is a true internet compatible device. I have a dial-up internet connection with 14.4 kilobyte per second transmission speed. I live "way out in the country" and DSL is just not possible. Local offers of DSl discuss transmission speeds of 50 Megabytes per second transmission capacity, similar to many cable offers of service. Sending a half an hour of family video to someone with a half second of internet transmission time is good news to family who want to keep in touch. To family with others in the military who are hungry for news from home, or students who can't get back for that Sunday get together that so many enjoy. A half a second transmission of the event and those far away can munch power bars while in the video someone serves the chicken and mashed potatoes. No muss, no fuss, no software jungle to struggle through. Shoot it, transfer it to the computer, add an event name by changing the file name, attach it to an email and it is there ready to play in an internationally available format. This is an MPEG4 ENCODER on the fly, as the experts say. It's what it does.

Still photographs are in the industry standard, JPEG.

I have yet to discover equipment failure. Everything gets old and I expect to need to take it for repair some day. I am licensed as an electronics engineer and can say that this equipment gets a very very good score on my private rating in terms of durability and reliability.

I have not yet had an accidental drop test occur.

Evenings out for a walk at sunset, a great camera to have in one's pocket when suddenly the vista becomes one of breathtaking beauty no one would believe could happen in your own backyard. The rendered color is great.

The parallel to film speed is rather slow. One cannot do stop-action still photography. Moving subjects do make blurred pictures as a still camera.

Videos do not show up as jumpy in MPEG4. Very smooth, a full 32 frames per second at least. I have seen MPEG2 cameras do less adequately at five times the price.

I grew up using 35mm Exacta and Leica and of course the Kodak brownie 120 camera. The highest award I ever won for photography was with the Brownie camera. Super effects work is just run of the mill among experts and geniuses, thus not always art, not aklways a winner. Super effects can also be difficult to set up with any camera. But the super subject at the super time is the winning photograph, and this camera catch those moments and make that adage of "cherish the memories" easy and meaningful with a quality that can endure.

I'd like to see the company re-issue the camera with at least a one gigabyte card potential. One gigabyte cards were not even made when this camera was designed. Still, the ability to go to a party and shoot still shots all night while others run out of memory is impressive. Thirty minutes of video on one card that reliably has zero flaws is impressive. I have had a couple of hundred stills on one card before. Daunting task to edit all of them. Worth it. Usually I run out of subjects to shoot before the camnera reaches a limit to its ability to shoot them.

There is a camera back preview screen of thumbnails for the stored product when the lens is "retracted" or turned to face into the camera.

When it is switched to "still" the user see the pictures and can thumb through those with the rocker button. The thumbnail that will display full screen if the user pushes the shutter button has a highlight border around the thumbnail picture. Choose the thumbnail desired to be seen, push the shutter button and it displays full screen on the back of the camera.

Likewise there is a preview of the videos shot when switching to movie mode, with the first frame of the video as the thumbnail. One can also thumb through those and select one to see from among the rest.

In both preview modes, one can thumb from one to the next in the back of camera screen full view mode and see and listen to all of them, one after another as determined by rocker button and using the shutter button to select the desired thumbnail to display.

I do recommend a card reader for computer use. An easy move from card to hard drive on the computer and the card can then be refreshed and used again. I also recommend a spare card when going out to shoot photos or videos.

Battery life is excellent. I have shot four cards full without losing power. I have used it to shoot fifty stills and then let it sit for six weeks and shot fifty more without battery dropout. I still recommend carrying a spare set of batteries with one when one does go out to shoot away from home.

While in use of the camera, between shots, one can select change between fine and superfine photo quality. An intuitive easy access setup mode allows one to choose picture quality, add or take away beeps with shutter use, turn on or off the back of camera display, erase individual videos or still shots or erase the entire disk, formatting it fresh.

This is not a camera which has a steep learning curve for users to struggle against. You get it, you just start to use it, you don't have much to relearn the next time.

Keep it clean. Don't bang it around. Don't let it cook on the dashboard. Standard advice for anything electronic.

The designers of this device connected well with the ideas of utility, reliability, quality of result, ease of use, ease of manipulation of product after the fact, and costs. If there were comparisons to be made, this is a spaceship compared to gliders. When it came upon the market the future looked good if this was the product beginning to exhibit.

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