Aiptek A-HD+ 1080P High Definition Camcorder (Silver) Review

I bought this not expecting much and not having seen any reviews on the Web or in print.The product is a couple of months old to market.There's some misinformation floating around out there -- here are a few clarifications and highlights of the product from my week's worth of testing.First, it does indeed shoot at a 16:9 aspect ratio even as the video resolution is 1440x1080p -- you just need to be sure and apply an "anamorphic" pixel ratio (i.e., not square/1:1).Also, it is a fixed focus camera:The benefit is that there's no noisy/slow auto-focusing mechanism, but the con (as with all fixed focus camcorders) is that low light performance suffers somewhat, while close-in subjects go out of focus (though there is a manual macro switch on this product).Big pluses include the fact that it's charged via a super-standard mini-USB connector, and accepts up to a 32gb SDHC card.There is a tripod mounting hole but no electronic or mechanical image stabilization, no optical zoom, and no external microphone/audio in port.

In short, this makes for a great "second-unit" camcorder in cases where you don't want to rough around with your primary HD camcorder, or where you want to strap this onto a skateboard and the like without worrying about lost investment.It's wise to take the native H.264 files that are wrapped in .mov format and convert them to .avi or MPEG-2 .mpg files for further processing/editing/burning, as most systems will stutter trying to decode the native video files at 1080p/30 fps on-the-fly (i.e., even high-end video cards do not necessarily include hardware acceleration for files in this specific format).Although users appear to be especially enamored of the product's 1440x720p/60 fps non-interlaced mode, I'm not convinced that their bias is based on the benefit of double the frames-per-second, instead of the mere shortcomings of their system's hardware playback at 1080p/30 fps.

UPDATE:The following wide-angle lens attachment works perfectly with this camcorder, and I'm tempted to use it full-time as it not only widens your field of view, but in the process mildly reduces the inherent shake of your footage by "pulling back" a little farther.
Sunpak CAM-2110 MagMount 0.5x Wide-Angle Conversion Lens (Large)



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Digital Camera Labels: Aiptek A-HD+ 1080P High Definition Camcorder (Silver),Aiptek,Inc.,A-HD+