Aiptek IS-DV2 Flash Media Camcorder

Do you remember the Kodak Instamatic camera series? An evolution of the Brownie Box camera, these gems started to appear in 1963 and reigned camera king for many years, eventually dying with the introduction of the pocket instamatic that used inferior 110 film, with a final death blow given by the 35 mm point-and-shoots.

In the working class Chicago neighborhood that I grew up in, family events and milestones were chronicled in two ways: the yearly school picture and the Kodak Instamatic. I was craftily given mine for my 6 th grade Confirmation. My boxlike Model 104 was a plastic lens, fixed focus, point-and-shoot box that featured the large format 106 film and the revolutionary "magic cube" photo flash. Nicely boxed and typically under $20 it made an impressive, yet inexpensive gift.

With the acquisition of the 104 I instantly became the family photography as we no longer had to borrow my married sister's camera. Usually a 12 exposure role of film would be parceled out for several events over many months and it was always a surprise to find pictures that I had forgotten that I took.

The Instamatic was not a great camera or even a particularly good camera, but it did the job easily and cheaply for families that had bigger concerns (like putting food on the table).

Aiptek recently sent me an offer that I couldn't refuse on an IS-DV mini-cam. For a little over $100 they promised me a USB drive, MP3 player, Voice Recorder, Webcam, Digital Camera and Camcorder. In addition they threw in another little camera bag and a stuffed monkey (who thinks of these promotions?). I didn't expect much, but as a gadget nut I had to take the bait. In the back of my mind I thought, "Could this be the Instamatic for the millennium?

The camera:

The Aiptek IS-DV is very small, roughly the size of a thick deck of cards. It addition is a feather weight at about 5.5 ounces. It is pleasant to hold, thanks to its curvy design and in many ways it looks like a miniature (toy?) camcorder. Controls are few and very easy to figure out. There are separate video and still capture buttons making it easy to switch back and forth between these two functions. The side panel folds out to reveal a 1.8 inch color LCD panel that is surprisingly bright (i.e. you can use it even in bright sunlight) and conveniently swivels. On the back of the LCD panel is a little mono-microphone for audio pick up. The front of the camera sports a glass protected, fixed-focus (regular or macro) lens and a flash unit. The unit is so light that you really forget that you are wearing it on your belt (using the included carry case). The camera uses a common rechargeable NP-60 lithium-ion battery. There is also a tiny/tinny speaker and various ports for USB, video/audio out and stereo headphones. Optional SD cards can be up to 1 GB in size. On the con side, the SD card is protected by a rubber plug that constantly falls out and the door to the battery compartment seems on the cheap side.

Accessories:
You really get quite a few accessories with this camera including an install disk, camera bag, mini-tripod, wrist strap, stereo ear buds, cable to connect to your TV, USB cable and NP 60 battery with a small separate charger.


Software:
Let's face it; camcorders and many digital cameras no longer provide any free software. The Aiptek gives you the mother load…but is it any good?

IS-DV utility software: basically the drivers for the webcam with an interface that allows you to record a picture or a short video clips directly to the computer's hard drive.

Ulead's Photo Express SE: An amazing value when you buy it for $29.00 but here you get it free. This is really a wonderful piece of consumer editing photo software which offers tons of automatic corrections as well as manual overrides. You can also add all sorts of effects and text effects, toss in a picture frame and even compress your image for email. Great stuff and FREE!

Ulead's Photo Explorer: I have been taking digital photos for some time so I have developed my own simple minded way of cataloging photos, yet I was pleased with the capabilities of this program. It allows you to view and rate your photos and search for them by all sorts of criteria (like rating, date or name). PE also has its own little editing module that allows all of the basic corrections like color balance and red eye reduction. You can also look at a picture's meta-data (hidden info in the JPEG file) which will tell you neat stuff like what camera took the picture, the f-stop and shutter speed. Did I mention the software is FREE!

Cyberlink Power Director 3.0 SE: I had gotten an early version of this program with a DVD burner and it was pretty lame. Cyberlink has done its homework with version 3.0 and it is much more robust including both storyboard and timeline editing, lots of transitions, a track to do a voice over and one for background music and even some advanced features like slow/fast-motion and PIP. The SE version does not allow burning a DVD but you can burn a VCD (on a CD-ROM) which will play on many DVD players. You can't save a file in MP4, you have to convert them to one of the many other formats available including AVI, MPEG1, WMV and RM. Cyberlink offers a $50 upgrade to their version 4.0 which offers DVD burning and many other additional features. Power Director is still not at the level of programs like Pinnacle Studio or Ulead's Video Studio, but it does the job and (did I say) it is FREE!

The Test:

I decided to use the IS-DV almost exclusively on a two week family vacation. We were going on a road trip, traveling several thousand miles and visiting a bunch of historic sites. In addition I brought my regular travel camcorder and digital camera but I only used them very sparingly (they did provide a point of reference).

The Swiss Army Knife Features:

USB drive: Let's face it a cheap RAM drive is the way to go to transport files from computer to computer, but this IS-DV drive function does have some utility. It allows you to access your camera as a separate hard drive on your computer making it simple to pull image files off or to toss MP3 files on.

MP3 player: Here again, there are cheaper, better solutions for a trip to the gym. However, the MP3 player could be used for those traveling light on a trip. There is no MP3 ripping software included but you can get it for free, including using Microsoft's free Media Player 10. Unfortunately, I found that the fidelity was sub-par and the volume, even at max, was pretty weak. These problems could be easily corrected with a firmware fix. The MP3 player would only do in a pinch.

Voice recorder: The IS-DV can record up to an hour of .wav audio files using its 16 MB of internal memory (more with an SD card). I initially thought that this was a useless function, but I found myself using it. Since the camera was so light, I carried it everywhere on my trip and I could use the voice recorder to jot down ideas along the way that I later used in my vacation video.

Webcam: Specs of the web cam are fine; however it has terrible low light performance. In my home study (incandescent lights) I could barely see myself. In my much brighter office at work the camera worked fine. With that said, if you are looking for a dedicated webcam you would be better off buying a good one from Creative or Logitech unless you have a lot of light where you computer is located.

Digital Camera: The IS-DV took surprisingly good photos; many look as good as pictures taken with my Pentax Optio S4. Despite the fixed-focus lens many pictures were amazing sharp. Color balance was good, but programmed more for European preferences. Using Photo Express made it easy to bump up the warm colors that Americans (like me) like. The flash is small, but worked fine for close up pictures but sometimes the color balance was a bit on the orange side. Here again, PE easily corrected the problem. The digital zoom on this camera (as well as all others) only degrades the picture and should be avoided, do your cropping in an editor. You have few manual controls but you can adjust the lens from regular to macro, manually adjust the white balance, use several flash options, pick several different image sizes and add a few special effects like sepia. The CMOS sensor is actually only 3.0 MP and 5.0 MP images are interpolated. You can't mathematically add more detail by interpolation but the additional pixels can be useful when cropping a photo. One major flaw with the camera was the slowness of the lens. Even in bright daylight, movement resulted in blurs. I also had some flash pictures that blurred in a strange way. I'm not sure if I moved slightly or if the problem was secondary to low batteries. I would say that less than 5% of my pictures blurred, and this number dropped as I got used to the camera and its limitations. BTW, my office manager saw some of my vacations shots taken with the IS-DV and said, "Wow, what kind of a camera do you have."

Camcorder: The camcorder functions like any other one, except it records to the SD card rather than to tape or disk. The camera uses MP4 compression and the files have Microsoft's ASF extension which can be read by Power Director, Microsoft's Movie-Maker and other commercial NLE packages. Overall, it was simple to shoot and the digital image stabilization (the IS in the IS-DV) did seem to make a difference. There is a jerky 4x digital zoom which should be avoided. The camera can record about an hour at VGA resolution (30 fps) and much more at QVGA. Overall, the video was smooth and not herky-jerky. It was pleasant to watch and quite acceptable, but it lacked the detail and color saturation of DV. I would say it looked similar to VHS. The vacation DVD that I made (using my own NLE software) looked very good indeed on a 27 inch TV and no one noticed that it wasn't DV video until I told them. The audio was slightly on the woolly side and the reason became evident when I examined the audio waveforms. Even at moderate audio levels the ARL circuit clips the audio. Here again, a simple firmware update could correct this. I tried to write Aiptek tech support about this, but they never responded to my emails. Light sensitivity is poor and this is truly the weak link in this camera. I was able to take decent video outdoors and in brightly lit rooms but video taken at night using only incandescent lights was basically unusable. A faster lens would add to the cost of the camera but the extra cost would be well worth it.

Conclusions:

I have to say that I had a lot of fun with this Swiss Army Knife Camera. It is very cheap and did a decent job, especially with digital photos and video. It certainly has its weaknesses, but at around $100 it is a great value (even more so when you consider all of the accessories and software). I hope Aiptek corrects some of the firmware problems and it would be nice to see a faster lens (perhaps a slightly more expensive IS-DV Plus). So who might like this camera?

- A gadget freak like me. Its small size definitely gives you the "gee whiz" factor when others see it. In addition it was so light that I would forget that it was on my belt. I can't say this when I take my usual camcorder and camera on vacation.

-Someone who needs digital pictures and some video but wants a camera that is super simple and very cheap (for what you are getting). I'm talking about someone who would have liked a Kodak Instamatic in the 1960s. Sure, you can get a digital camera for $100 that will shoot video, but it won't take VGA video at 30 fps.

-A young married couple who wants to email Grandma pictures and would like to video their family's events (baby first steps). The camera is cheap and does the job so short-supply cash can be allocated else ware.

-An older child who has expressed an interest in digital photography or digital video. If the camera gets lost it is not a major disaster. In addition, you won't need to buy extra software.

-A college student that needs an inexpensive digital "multi-tool" webcam, camcorder and camera. This camera could be great when traveling/studying abroad, especially if the student brings along their laptop to dump and edit files.

Perhaps the IS-DV is the Kodak Instamatic for the new millennium.