Sanyo VPC-C4 review

On the other hand, the VPC-C4 does have a built-in digital image stabiliser. It reduces the effects of camera shake, which can be a real problem when shooting video with a long zoom. This feature is commonly found in camcorders but is still rare on hybrid cameras. Also unusual is the VPC-C4's ability to shoot full-resolution stills and video images simultaneously. Sadly, the process isn't seamless -- it introduces an approximate 1.8-second gap into the video recording.

The 5.8x optical zoom is unusual on such a small camera. It's fully functional during video captures, which greatly enhances its value. The f/3.5-to-f/3.7 lens offers a 35mm-equivalent focal-length range of 38mm to 220mm zoom. We would have preferred it to be skewed toward the wide angle. The camera has a manual focus mode as well as a macro mode that focuses down to 20mm.

All photos are saved as JPEG files, and all video files are saved as MPEG-4 files. The photo-resolution options include an 8-megapixel setting that interpolates a native 4-megapixel photo to the higher resolution. It doesn't add true detail to the image, but it could be useful for smoothing out jaggies if you intend to go for oversize prints.

Performance
We found the Sanyo VPC-C4 slower than average by many performance measures. The wake-up-to-first-shot time was a subpar 4 seconds. We spent about half this time pressing down the power button to coax the camera to wake up. Shutter lag was sluggish at 1.2 seconds in bright light and 1.9 seconds in dim light.

Battery life from the rechargeable cell was a satisfactory 378 photos

One performance element was difficult to measure, but frustrating nonetheless. When you press the photo shutter release to engage the prefocus mechanism, the view on the LCD screen suddenly shifts to a more wide-angle view. It's a little disconcerting when you compose the subject in the frame, then have the composition suddenly change. Two solutions are to always use the prefocus or to always allow a few seconds for recomposing the shot. Both make it hard to grab spur-of-the-moment photos. While we can't quantify the extra time involved, it affects the camera's performance and could prove irksome if you prefer to carefully compose each shot. The prefocus view matched the captured photos, which is good because this camera doesn't have an optical viewfinder.

The autofocus was relatively fast in both well-lit and low-light environments. It slowed down in low light but not unreasonably. Though small, the LCD screen was bright and sharp. It didn't fade out completely in direct sunlight, and it performed surprisingly well in dim light when we switched to the low-light mode. The zoom, which has only one speed, takes about 1.2 seconds to travel from one extreme to the other. The zoom motor is fairly noisy. You can hear it on video recordings that don't have enough ambient sound to mask the noise.

Image quality
Most of our exterior photos from the Sanyo VPC-C4 were well saturated, almost to the point of being unrealistic. In the best shots, the images were razor sharp, taking full advantage of the 4.2-megapixel sensor. Skin tones were spot-on and green leaves were vibrant with subtle colour variations. The photos exhibited a broad tonal range with rich, dark hues, though there was white burn-out in some high-contrast areas.

That's the good news. The not-so-good news is that even in bright sunlight, under the best possible conditions, the focus could be inconsistent. The focus wasn't completely inaccurate -- just somewhat off-kilter in some photos. Because the other photographic qualities were accurate, the focus defects were more obvious. We also experienced an excessive amount of purple fringing along borders of extreme contrast, such as the edge of a roof set against a bright sky.

As we moved indoors and the light levels diminished, focus accuracy suffered even more. To the camera's credit, visual noise was low, even in dim light. Many of our flash shots were uniformly lit, with a near-perfect exposure. The wild card was usually the focus, which caused us to discard some otherwise excellent interior shots.

The video from the VPC-C4 held up very well in stationary shots. When the camera panned or the subject moved, there was some blurring and an increase in compression artefacts, though far less than we expected. At more moderate light levels, the video captures were dark, yet the colours remained true, and there was only a small increase in visual noise. In low-light situations, the recorded video was too dark to use. Overall, the video performance of the VPC-C4 suggests that the video quality of consumer-priced hybrids may eventually match that of standard MiniDV camcorders, although we're not there yet.

Edited by Aimee Baldridge
Additional editing by Nick Hide