A second Zi6 Video
I’ve been spending a bit more time with the Zi6 camera the last few days, and I think I’ve found a good combination of settings to produce really nice video.
If you shoot at regular HD settings, not HD60 (60fps), the video is still clear and nice, and it gets much less jittery on fast pans and motion. I even drove up the street here with the camera out the window, and the video is good.
Here’s a version at Vimeo, though it’s not in HD. I’ve also uploaded a high-res version, which you can get here. It’s 40mb, so you may want to right-click and save as.
If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed!
Very quick impressions of the Kodak Zi6
Our Kodak Zi6 arrived today, and I’ve been able to spend about 15 minutes with it and I wanted to post a few first impressions of this new HD video camera.
The actual unit is small, lightweight and feels good in hand. The controls are totally intuitive and we didn’t read the instructions at all - we just started taping stuff.
There are several modes of capture - still photo, VGA (which I’m assuming is 640×480), HD and HD60, which is HD shot at 60 frames per second. You can easily thumb through the settings, and there’s a zoom feature as well.
When on a tripod, the video is very good, indoors and out. When you’re not on a tripod, it’s a bit of a different story. The video seems to be jerky on really quick pans and whip-arounds. This is the case for many flash cameras (even our expensive HD camera can get a bit iffy on really quick pans or cuts) but I think in HD you really notice it more.
Here’s some video I shot with it this afternoon. Please go to the Vimeo page to view it in all it’s HD glory.
Zi6 Camera Test from Mike on Vimeo.
On my mac, the clips can be imported into iPhoto if you like to manage them there. When connected, the camera also shows up as a drive, so you can pull your clips off that way as well. I had no issue whatsoever importing the clips into iMovie and adding transitions, edits, fades and so on. I anticipate using this camera when something quick pops up and we need coverage. There are some times when our big HD camera is overkill.
I will shoot more tonight with all the different settings and will report back.
Some other specs and information from questions I received today on Twitter.
- The cost of these units is $179.
- There is a macro mode and a macro switch on the side
- There is a tripod hole. It fit 2 different tripods with no issue.
- The unit comes with 2 AA rechargeable batteries as well as a charger
- It comes a very small amount of internal storage. We shot about 20 seconds in 60fps mode without a card
- The unit takes both SD and SDHC cards. I am using a 4GB SDHC card, so I don’t know for sure if this reduces stutter or the choppiness some people are seeing. I get a bit but not a ton.
- There are AV and HD outs. No inputs at all (no mic, video, etc)
If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed!
Target Your Facebook Updates
If you don’t have a Facebook fan page for your institution, you should. Stop reading this, go make one, and then come back. I’ll wait.
For those of us who do manage our institution fan pages on Facebook, I noticed a new feature yesterday when I wanted to send an update to our “fans.” I see that you can now target those updates to a specific demographic. Here’s a screencap of the menu:
I think this opens up a whole bunch of new opportunities for us - we can now target alumni specifically or current students. You can also just target a specific geographical area. Very interesting.
If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to my RSS feed!
