Good Idea ... In Theory

Author's Rating:

Pros: Small camera, big screen, swivel design is cool

Cons: No tripod use with battery, no way to protect screen on back, motor noise

The Bottom Line: 
Although the unique form factor is cool, there are too many negatives. Steer clear.

Author's Review
The Sharp NZ-50 is pretty cool. I got it from Circuit City with the intention of abusing their no-questions-asked return policy so I could get familiar with the DV format.

The video produced is pretty good, but not amazing. It's what I'd expect for a camera that's among the cheapest of MiniDV. From what I could gather on the Web, it has among the smallest of CCDs, so this makes sense.

Transfer of my vides to computer via IEEE 1394, or FireWire, was easy. If you're not using a Mac, this means you'll probably need to buy a FireWire card, since it's not included with most PCs just yet. Make sure you buy the 4-pin-to-6-pin cable (yes, you have to buy your IEEE 1394 cable separately) to make transfers to your computer. You'll need a separate 4-pin-to-4-pin cable to transfer between camcorders.

Sound is pretty good. You can hear it the zoom motor on your tape if you're not talking or in a loud environment. It's also worthy of note that the microphones are located directly above the lens ... which is where I found my fingers drifting whenever I held the camera. This meant LOTS of finger noise in my tapes.

The controls are bad. I had a hard time using my thumb for zooming in and out. Didn't like it. Menus were ridiculous to navigate, since you have to push one button on the right of the camera to bring up the menu, then navigate to the option you wanted with the poorly-implemented joypad on the right of the camera, and then hit a button with an anti-intuitive name on the left side of the camera. This is complicated by the fact that the body may be rotated separately from the side of the camera with the joypad.

Also on the back side of the camera is a big 3.5" screen. This is very nice for seeing exactly what you're filming. You can also bring up large guides to frame the shot. Pretty cool, but there's no way to protect the screen. You'll get fingerprints all over it right away, and if the camera is stored anywhere but in a plush custom case, the always-exposed screen will likely get scratched.

Still pictures ... I don't bother. This camera, unlike the VZ-100, doesn't have a memory card slot, so if you take a still picture (using a button that is easily pressed accidentally), it's on the tape. I don't know how software handles this in terms of image extraction, but I imagine it to be more of a pain than it's worth. Buy a digital camera if you want one.

My personal beef with this camera: No tripod use! It does have a tripod mount in the lens (thin) half of the camera, but my tripod interfered with the battery. Well, they thought of that, and provided a tripod adapter (extension?) in the kit. Unfortunately, the adapter doesn't provide any sort of anti-rotational force to the setup, which means your camera can flop all around unless you tighten the heck out of both of the tripod attachments, and are lucky enough to have them come together facing the right direction. Thumbs down!

Other nitpicks: No mic/headphone jack (not really expected in this low of range), no included IEEE 1394 cable.

Although the unique form factor is cool (and one of the chief reasons for success of a bunch of Nikon digital cameras), there are too many negatives to this and the NZ-100. Steer clear.