The Right Camcorder Battery

The other evening I went to BestBuy and got the correct Sony Camcorder Battery for my new little Sony camcorder. After pulling one from the shelf, I flagged down an employee and brought him over to the same camcorder that I had purchased and asked him for sure if this was the right camcorder battery for this camcorder. He assured me that it was and when I got home I plugged it in and it works. Yea!

My Camcorder came with a NP-FV30 Camcorder Battery, but for the extra one, I bought a NP-FV50 Camcorder Battery. This battery stores a lot more juice, which will run the camcorder much longer on a charge than the original does, so I've made it my primary battery!

There was so much unnecessary confusion over buying the right camcorder battery for my application, especially with batteries that look the same. Do all manufacturers produce too many variations of batteries for their cameras and camcorders?

Camcorder Battery Returned to Store

When I got the Sony camcorder the other day, I also bought an extra Sony camcorder battery for it. Unfortunately it didn't fit so I had to return it to the store today. This is one of my pet peeves! There are a bunch of batteries that all look alike but won't interchange. I hate this 'lack of interchangeability' in all forms of manufacturing and this practice tends to waste a lot of peoples time and money having to contend with these issues.

There's just is no good reason, other than trying to bilk more money out of consumers, that they have to make so many different varieties of components for everything. The manufacturer, in this case Sony, could have made two or three batteries in different capacities that would plug into and operate any of their cameras thus creating less complications! Do you hear that Sony?

Slide Show

I took these pics on April 24th, 2010 of the Union Pacific's No.844 4-8-4 Northern steam locomotive when it stopped in Wagner, OK. These were taken with my little Kodak digital camera. I took some others with my 35mm but haven't had them developed yet.

Camcorder Shopping Review

Today I'm going shopping for a small camcorder to take with me on my Lionel Collectors Club convention trip in Denver, the last week of July. We will be riding several trains and I'd like to take some video of the trip!


7/11/10
This blog is supposed to be about cameras, 35mm and digital, but I've seemed to have hi-jacked the blog right at the first to chat about camcorder shopping. I'll try not to dwell on this issue but I just want to share some of what I've learned.

I purchased a Sony DCR-SX44 mini camcorder this weekend. I chose this model because of price, quality and features. I won't say where I purchased it but several stores carry it like Walmart, Target and Best Buy!

The first issue was price! Since I have a limited budget I chose to hold around the 2 to 3 hundred dollar price range. This leaves out any High Definition camcorders. Average price of this unit is $269.00. I paid less because it was on sale!

As far a quality goes, I talked to several different salespeople in several different stores and the consensus was that Canon and Sony were the top two in that order. The others were JVC, Panasonic and Samsung. The reason I chose the Sony over the Canon was features. I thought the JVC looked cheap in my opinion and was not attracted to it. Panasonic had the best anti-shake stabilization but the color they said would be a little off. Though Samsung makes some of the best TV's and Video players, their camcorders are not up to par yet, but they said that they were getting better with each new model.

Now for the features. It has a 60x optical zoom which was better than the close to same priced Canon and I believe the Canon had no flash memory and a little higher price. The Sony has a 4GB internal memory and now you can use the regular SD memory cards in it. The Sony has new low light technology that makes it better for use indoors in lower light areas. There are a lot of other features that I don't yet understand but I chose this model because of how I wanted to use it and the salespersons recommendations for my purposes!

Welcome to my blog!

Though I'm no professional photographer and I don't know much more than point and shoot, I do have an artistic eye and have taken some awesome photos. For years I've been using an old Canon T50 35mm camera with an adjustable lens. I've never known any of the technical stuff or much more than loading the film and shooting pictures.

The last several years I have been interested in getting a digital camera, as I've seen a few in use and I like some of the features. The problem is I don't know what to get, as the cameras I've been looking at with adjustable lenses are quite expensive, especially with my limited budget. I decided that I should learn more about the cameras before I spend the money to purchase one.

So I thought one way to learn would be to buy a cheaper camera without the fancy lenses and learn about the camera operation first. My girlfriend found an ad for a used one at less than half price than they were charging for them at Walmart, so I bought it. It is a little Kodak Easy Share ZD710 with a 10X zoom. I've also taken some awesome pictures with it, but I've had trouble with focus when using the zoom and taking action shots. The manual doesn't give me much information about all the features and I wouldn't even know what to do with them if I knew how to use them.

So as I post on here, I hope some more experienced people can help me with my difficulties. All advice welcome!

This is a photo I took of a locomotive coming thru Wagner, Ok in April 2010