Sanyo Xacti DMX-CA100 joins the 'waterproof pocket HD camcorder' crew

Sure, Sanyo's PR claims this camera is the "world's first waterproof full HD camera," but unfortunately for them Kodak beat them to the punch. A caveat at the bottom of the PR clarifies that this claim was merely meant for "Full HD video cameras for consumer use with optical zoom lenses," which naturally makes everything better. Plus there's no point in getting down on Sanyo, since it's essentially delivered its classic Xacti form factor and middle-of-the-road image quality in a waterproof (up to 10 feet) chassis. The DMX-CA100 will be launched at the end of June for some unnamed price, and shoots 1080p video to H.264, 14 megapixel stills, and offers a 6x optical zoom augmented by a 6x "Advanced Zoom" that crops the image sensor instead of just blowing up the pixels like a regular digital zoom.

Sanyo Xacti DMX-CA100 press shots

[Joseph9307 Posted May 31st 2010 1:10AM]

Cool beans.

[cdf74dc9 Posted May 31st 2010 1:15AM]

Hello Mr. shaky. At least it's better than Mr. Blurry cam.

[pika2000 Posted May 31st 2010 1:16AM]

Will it do iFrame?
LOL. Advanced zoom? *sigh.
Anyway, the problem with Sanyo camcorders is that they lack optical IS. We'll see if the price is decent enough.

[redkamel Posted May 31st 2010 1:31AM]

if you crop the sensor, won't you still have to blow up the image to make it display the same size?

[Gordonator Posted May 31st 2010 1:50AM]

@redkamel

That's what I was thinking. Wouldn't it just be a smaller image?

[SlimSpaceman Posted May 31st 2010 1:51AM]

@redkamel No, Instead of capturing a full frame at 14MP and scaling it down to 2MP (about enough for 1080p), you just use the pixels at the centre of the frame. My canon 550D can do that for an extra 6X magnification when shooting VGA video. :)

[SlimSpaceman Posted May 31st 2010 1:52AM]

As soon as I read 1080p (as opposed to 1080i), I didn't close the page immediately. :)

[izmar Posted May 31st 2010 2:00AM]

Price....?

[Son Goku Posted May 31st 2010 2:02AM]

Good for underwater voyeurism.

[sonicwind Posted May 31st 2010 2:02AM]

They need to forget about adding pixels and work on low performance, anti-shake and sharper stills. Without that stuff more pixels mean nothing. I've had several Xacti models and they are good cameras, but the still pictures are about like a good phone camera.

[MAS Posted May 31st 2010 3:14AM]

Kodak wasn't the only one. The Pentax W90 is also waterproof to depths greater than the Sanyo.

[pika2000 Posted May 31st 2010 3:45AM]

@MAS Well, the Pentax only does 720p, and uses MJPEG instead of the more efficient H.264. But yeah, plenty of digicams that can go deeper (eg. Panasonic TS2).

[atc9000 Posted May 31st 2010 4:32AM]

Its going to be bad in sun light, I had a sanyo and just about everytime it was used there was bad lens flare, so had to get rid if it...

[fubarweb Posted May 31st 2010 5:45AM]

"6x "Advanced Zoom" that crops the image sensor instead of just blowing up the pixels like a regular digital zoom. "

Pixels don't have an intrinsic real world size to them... This sounds like marketing nonsense to me.

Surely this is how all digital zooms work...

[WarMerc Posted Jun 1st 2010 11:40AM]

Looks just like one of those disposable flashlights I had as a kid.

[mahadaalvi Posted Aug 5th 2010 5:11PM]

CTFx FTW