Toshiba Camileo S20 Full HD 1080p Camcorder UK version - Black

Product Information

But it is impossible to get past the iffy video and still-picture quality. If it could shoot good video, it would be a must-buy. Without it, the Camileo S30 is merely a toy. Also for the photos, the camera is also equipped with functions such as detection and smile, which allow you to always have beautiful portraits. Other features include white balance, with various options, the power-saving mode, the built-in flash, various scene modes for still images. Absent instead image stabilizer, and this is a major flaw. Still images shot with the 8-megapixel sensor were hit or miss. The fixed focus means you need to be several feet from whatever you're shooting (the macro mode didn't have any noticeable effect on still images, and anything close was totally out of focus), but as long as I could get my subject in focus, images looked good. They're not as good as a dedicated 8-megapixel digital camera would be, but they're serviceable in a pinch. Images can be shot at 3, 8, or 16 megapixels, but since the sensor is only an 8-megapixel CMOS sensor, 16-megapixel images aren't as high quality. The built-in flash was surprisingly bright, lighting up subjects in both still photos and video.

Toshiba Camileo H30 Review | Trusted Reviews Toshiba Camileo H30 Review | Trusted Reviews

In our battery test, the Camileo lasted one hour and 32 minutes while recording video at 1080p/30fps, which matches Toshiba’s claimed battery life. The Li-ion battery is user-replaceable, so you can buy more and replace drained batteries in the field.

The X-Sports’ menu provides you with the usual array of video options, and you can choose to shoot Full HD video at up to 60fps. If you reduce the resolution to 720p you can even shoot at 120fps, which is useful for creating slow-motion videos. The menu is easy to enough to use, considering the limited amount of buttons, and we had no trouble seeing it outdoors in daylight.

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Although it doesn’t have a built-in USB plug, relying on a cable instead, there is software on board. The Camileo Uploader app is very limited, offering just the ability to send your footage to YouTube, Facebook, Picasa and Twitvid. However, there’s also a CD included with Arcsoft Media Impression and Converter, plus a trial of MAGIX Video Deluxe, if you want to do something a bit more sophisticated with your video. Although we’ve not been hugely impressed by the image quality afforded by previous Toshiba Camileos, the X400 provides surprisingly decent performance. In good lighting, colours are bright and faithful, with a relatively sharp picture. Low light performance is a little less exciting. Although the X400 does maintain a reasonable level of brightness, but the white balance isn’t very accurate and there’s a noticable loss in detail. With excellent image stabilisation built in, it isn't a victim of the shake associated with many models. The Camileo comes with a generous assortment of mounting options so that you can attach it to vented helmets, bikes and surfboards, as well as curved and flat surfaces. These mounts work with or without the waterproof case. For comparison, I held a Flip HD right next to the Toshiba Camileo and shot the same scene with both cameras at the same time.This highly depends on the settings, but in general it can be said that 1GB of storage can hold about 5 minutes of HD footage or 1 minute 4K footage. The X-Sports’ rectangular design is simple and the camera looks tiny when it’s taken out of its tough case, which is waterproof up to a depth of 60m. As the camera isn’t waterproof or rugged you’ll want to make sure it’s kept in the case whenever it’s in use. Annoyingly, though, we found the X-Sports’ buttons difficult to operate when it’s in the case, and required a firm and forceful press for something to happen. The H30 is built around a 10-megapixel CMOS sensor – twice the resolution of the S20’s, although as with the latter Toshiba hasn’t publicised the physical size of this sensor. A modicum of interpolation is added to bring the still image resolution up to 16-megapixels. There’s a small flash built into the H30 to help with photography, but unlike the S20 no LED video light is provided. Video is recorded in H.264 format at 1,440×1,080 pixels per frame, but non-square pixels give it the same widescreen aspect ratio as the other HD cameras. This lower resolution wasn’t a huge loss, though, and in bright light we were impressed by the amount of detail the H20 captured. It fell short of the best HD cameras but showed significant improvements over the SD models and even outperformed Panasonic’s HDC-SD20 and Sony’s HDR-TG3E at times. Colours weren’t great, though, with overblown contrast sometimes obliterating highlights and shadows. Indoors, video was grainy, and in very low light the camera failed to record anything at all. Movies may be shot in Full HD (1080p) at 60fps, 720p at 120fps, 1600x1200p at 60fps, 960p at 60fps, 848x480 at 240fps and 480p at 30fps. Exposure is controlled automatically, with exposure compensation available to +/-2Ev in 1Ev steps. Sensitivity can be set to Automatic or set manually to ISO 100-6400 in 1Ev steps. Metering can also be set to spot instead of the standard mode.