Video quality
The video quality — color, accurate lighting, resolution, focus — is magnificent. This high quality is helped, in part, by what's called the RGB Primary Color Filter. The light that enters the lens is separated into red, green, and blue light, the same set of color filters that is used to recreate all the colors on your computer screen, and a similar technology to that found on professional video cameras. When these colors enter the camera as separate wavelengths as opposed to grouped wavelengths, the colors become more vivid and true to life. Even when I was underground touring a silver mine, I had the help of the video light and the "night" mode to bring out a realistic rendering of the surroundings. Playing it back on the TV was like reliving it again. Well, except for the sound quality. But that's to be expected, right? The S1 has the standard 12-bit and 16-bit stereo sound recording. And that's OK. We're not making Hollywood movies here.
Snapshots
While traveling, I found that there were occasions when a photograph was all I really needed. Such was the case for the human statues that were everywhere on Marionplatz, the main pedestrian thoroughfare of Munich. A statue doesn't make for exciting video, but it'll make a great picture. Thankfully, I didn't need the patience of a human statue to get to the camera setting on the Optura S1.
The mesmerizing statue at Marionplatz — snapped in an instant.
The camcorder has a Mini SD (Secure Digital™) card slot and comes with a 16MB card for storing still images, as well as short video clips. All you have to do to take a photo is turn the switch from Mini DV tape mode to Mini SD card mode, point, and shoot. Like many digital cameras, the Optura S1 has an auto focus, but there's a manual focus setting too, as well as several different aperture and shutter speed settings, such as portrait, sports, night, snow, beach, sunset, spotlight, and fireworks. These "scene" settings (available only when the mode dial is set to "SCN") are specially designed to get the best photo quality in each specific "scene." In other words, the "snow" setting anticipates a lot of glare and fast-moving objects, while the "sunset" setting anticipates low light, vivid color, and slow-moving objects. These same settings are available in tape mode as well.
Photo quality
The photo quality, as far as color and lighting is concerned, is excellent because it benefits from the same technology as the video recording. Photo resolution, however, is merely adequate. But this is also to be expected. The Optura S1 makes a great choice for shooting video footage, and has the added benefit of snapping photographs, but it was not made to be a high-end digital camera. Anyone interested in capturing high-quality digital images should invest in a dedicated digital camera, and not rely on the camcorder's camera function for anything other than snapshot-quality images.
