A couple of years ago I bought DV video camera. I was looking forward to capturing and editing Ruby’s first steps and bought a good one, albeit not a very compact one. Big mistake. My daughter almost four years old now and I’ve less then one DV tape to show for it (besides 3000+ photographs). Because it’s in it’s own bag and rather bulky, it’s just never around when fun stuff happens. On top of that I hate being the party pooper with the camera.

So I decided to check out those really nifty solid state video cameras and see if prices would drop. But they didn’t, really. What I did notice was that the video capture of regular still cameras was improving. Higher resolutions, better frame rates and things like MPEG4 compression, allowing for longer continuous recording on flash memory cards. So I bought a Kodak EasyShare C643 to compliment my also rather bulky Fuji S304 as well as pretty much replace my DV cam. It records video at 30 frames per second in VGA resolution (640*480), does 6 megapixel stills and is extremely easy to operate.

The S304 definitely has the better lens and produces the images to prove it. But its at home most of the time. Although not a truly ‘ultra compact’ camera, the C643 fits in my coat pockets and is inexpensive enough for me not to worry too much about it getting a little dirty. It produces adequate images for a compact camera and does well indoors without using the flash. I hate those typical flash pictures.

VGA resolution isn’t HDTV and are video results resemble YouTube more than they do broadcast PAL. But I never expected anything beyond that, and a least I have some moving images now. Ruby actually asks me to film her and performs silly little dances in front of my C643.