FROM ED MORRISSEY, A STRONG REVIEW for the Flip Ultra HD camcorder. Those are good. I just got my Kodak Zi8 in the mail and I’ve played with it a little — it seems very good so far, with surprisingly good video quality from something so small.. Advantages: Removable SD card, and jack for external microphone (importance of good audio is often underappreciated, but it’s huge), plus 5MP stills. These days, the more people out there who have some sort of camera, the better.
UPDATE: And not just for Tea Party coverage. J.D. Johannes emails:
On my last trip to Afghanistan I shot what was essentially a TV news package on a Flip Ultra HD.
I had hit Afghanistan expecting to spend the month with Soldiers and not turn any products until I got back to the US so I only had a net book instead of my large editing lap top. I shoot my video with a Canon XL-H which requires a fire-wire and/or a 1394 card bus and lots of processing power to handle the full quality HD video.
A friend of mine asked if I could turn a report for them in Afghanistan. By chance I bought a Flip to take snap shots and record other little clips with right before I flew to Afghanistan.
I double filmed everything on the Canon and the Flip. When it became obvious I would not be able to find a proper lap top, firewire and card bus in Afghanistan I had to use the Flip. I downloaded some inexpensive editing software from Pinnacle, transferred the video from the Flip to a lap top with slightly more horse power than a netbook and edited the package.
We even recorded all the narration tracks on the Flip.
The video held together very well when we played it through a projector onto a 60 inch screen. I knew the audio quality would not be great, so made sure I got right on my subjects during interviews.
The end product turned out better than I had anticipated. It also helped that I used the Flip like I would a real camera so I had all my shots and enough material to turn a package with.
The Flip was perfect for the ultra-low-profile work I did out on the streets. It fit in my pocket so I remained fairly anonymous while doing man-on-the-street style interviews. It also looks enough like a cell phone that you can record things without drawing any attention.
Everything in this blog post was done with a Flip Ultra HD.
The only thing it lacks is a plug for an external mic. If it had a plug for a lav or small shot gun mic, the Flip would be the perfect on-the-fly news gathering tool.
Well, the Kodak has an external mic jack. But this is pretty impressive stuff for a small consumer-grade gadget.