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

Product Information

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.

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A 5-megapixel CMOS sensor captures the video, and despite Toshiba being very secretive about its physical size, it measures 1/2.5in. Still images can be shot at 8-megapixels (3,200 x 2,400) with interpolation, 5-megapixels (2,592 x 1,944), and 3-megapixels (2,048 x 1,536). In our testing, we found the 8-megapixel setting a bit pointless as it introduces grain which isn’t evident at 5-megapixels. Strangely, Toshiba hasn’t integrated any form of lens shutter or included a cover in the box, although there is a protective pouch. So care will have to be taken to avoid scratching the lens or getting greasy finger marks on it. The B10 does have a few more features than many of its competitors, though. The 16x telephoto seems impressive at first glance, but it’s still digital so noticeably pixellates the image when you zoom in. There’s a discrete button on the side which turns on the LED video light and toggles between this and what Toshiba calls “digital light” mode. This is essentially a single-setting video gain option, which does boost brightness, but at the expense of washing out the colour and introducing a grainy quality to the image due to sensor noise. The LED video light is no better than smartphone LED video lights, too, so only effective at very close range. We found it petered out rapidly beyond a metre range, but could still come in handy for shooting nearby objects in the dark.But that's where the good stuff ends. Toshiba's camera is hampered by clumsy controls and smudgy picture quality. A Pre-rec function is also available. It buffers a few seconds of video at all times, and then adds it on the beginning when you press record. This effectively acts as if you pressed the button a few seconds earlier, stopping you from missing important events. Time lapse options include capturing a frame every 1, 3 and 5 seconds. So there are certainly a few more shooting modes available than just point and shoot.

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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. Naturally, other manufacturers have been keen to get involved and Toshiba is one of the most recent to join the fray with its Camileo X-Sports. Video resolutions range from VGA up to the aforementioned Full HD. In between, there’s 720p and a curious 848 x 480 option called WVGA. This provides a 16:9 widescreen aspect but with the same vertical resolution as VGA. It also records at 60 frames/sec whilst the other modes use 30 frames/sec. Video is stored on flash memory, but the H30 includes just 128MB on board, of which only about 96MB is usable, so SDHC media is a necessity. At the top Full HD quality setting, a 4GB card will be enough for around one hour of video.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.

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The lens is also fixed, as before, with just a macro switch on the top adjusting the physical lens configuration for close-up shooting. So both the zoom and image stabilisation are digital. However, you can now use both even when shooting Full HD, unlike with the S20, and the digital zoom has been boosted considerably to 16x, although resolution still suffers considerably when the zoom is called upon, and image stabilisation crops into the frame slightly too. There are four video shooting modes available, all of which use MPEG-4 H.264 compression. Alongside the top Full HD 1080p resolution, which runs at 30 frames per second, there are two 720p options, running at 30 and 60 frames per second, plus VGA running at 30 frames per second. There’s 128MB of storage on board, but that’s enough for little more than a minute of footage, and we have to ask why Toshiba even included it. Instead, there’s a slot on the top for SD memory, which supports SDXC so can accommodate cards larger than 32GB. With Full HD video recorded at a reasonably respectable 13Mbits/sec, 1GB of SD storage will be enough for around 10 minutes of footage, or 40 minutes of VGA.Toshiba has provided some more fun-oriented facilities. There’s a motion sensing setting, which triggers recording when there’s action in the frame. The time lapse mode records a frame every 1, 3 or 5 seconds. There’s also a slow motion option which grabs video at four times the normal speed but at a lowly 320 x 240 resolution. With excellent image stabilisation built in, it isn't a victim of the shake associated with many models. Speaking specifically of video quality with the Toshiba Camileo X150 you can get Full HD movies in MP4 format, so with a maximum resolution of 1,920×1,080 pixels, of course with the ability to choose other resolutions, up to the lowest VGA. Of course, there the opportunity to take photos in JPEG format, in this case 12 megapixel, which translates into a maximum resolution of 4,608×3,456 pixels. It is certainly emphasized the ability to take pictures even while recording a video. The 'red eye' phenomenon is caused by too much light in too little time getting to eyes of the people in the picture. This effect is even stronger in a dark atmosphere. The following can be done to prevent it: don't let people look directly into the camera, create more light, take the picture closer to the subject or decrease the use of the zoom function.