Brett
Bronze Member
Hey guys and girls!
On my quest to become more tech savvy and improve the quality of sharing life experiences with others, I was looking for a nice new camcorder that's EZ to operate and edit videos from. Not only that, but I wanted the videos to be of a higher quality that what I've been using.
I won't bore you with past attempts, because there are so many NEW choices out there today... and cheap. I could buy 3 camcorders for just the cost of the one I already have (that sux).
I really like the new Kodak Zi8 full HD pocket camcorder. It has a bunch of really cool features, but to sum it up, it's small, had no moving lens pieces, has a normal/macro slide switch right on top, shoots 1080p, 720p and another lower quality version and in different frame rates, has a nice LCD, and has a line input for an external microphone, but best of all it's only about $149 with free shipping on Amazon right now in black, blue, and a kind of reddish pink (if you can rock that one). I like the blue personally. If you look at the buying choices there's one for $141.19 from AllAbout Electronics but it's a few more for shipping and it's not worth it if you have to return it in my opinion. Amazon makes you deal with the 3rd party, and that could be good or bad. Amazon is always good. Anyhoo... it does require a memory card, and a Transcend 16GB class 6 card (class 6 is faster than 4) is about $35.
http://www.amazon.com/Kodak-Zi8-Poc...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1256695811&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Mem...on-Free-Packaging/dp/B001ECQVTM/ref=pd_cp_e_1
This is all good, but if you start to look around at test videos of ANY of these pocket camcorders, they all suffer from one thing... shakiness. They don't have optical stabilization (the Zi8 is actually the first to have electronic image stabilization, but it doesn't seem to take the BIG shakes out), but that would jack up the price so we don't care about that... but there is a way to solve the shakiness... a steadicam! Of the ones I see out there that work well... they are big and cost a lot. The smaller one I found is only sold in the UK. So in my quest to find a DIY project that was GOOD and CHEAP, I found one that fit the bill PERFECTLY!
(watch this in HD)
http://www.protodojo.com/content/2009/01/mini-camera-stabilizer-flip-float/
If you guys get something out of this, great! Otherwise I hope you can at least appreciate my efforts to smooooth out the jerky videos on YouTube
On my quest to become more tech savvy and improve the quality of sharing life experiences with others, I was looking for a nice new camcorder that's EZ to operate and edit videos from. Not only that, but I wanted the videos to be of a higher quality that what I've been using.
I won't bore you with past attempts, because there are so many NEW choices out there today... and cheap. I could buy 3 camcorders for just the cost of the one I already have (that sux).
I really like the new Kodak Zi8 full HD pocket camcorder. It has a bunch of really cool features, but to sum it up, it's small, had no moving lens pieces, has a normal/macro slide switch right on top, shoots 1080p, 720p and another lower quality version and in different frame rates, has a nice LCD, and has a line input for an external microphone, but best of all it's only about $149 with free shipping on Amazon right now in black, blue, and a kind of reddish pink (if you can rock that one). I like the blue personally. If you look at the buying choices there's one for $141.19 from AllAbout Electronics but it's a few more for shipping and it's not worth it if you have to return it in my opinion. Amazon makes you deal with the 3rd party, and that could be good or bad. Amazon is always good. Anyhoo... it does require a memory card, and a Transcend 16GB class 6 card (class 6 is faster than 4) is about $35.
http://www.amazon.com/Kodak-Zi8-Poc...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1256695811&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-Mem...on-Free-Packaging/dp/B001ECQVTM/ref=pd_cp_e_1
This is all good, but if you start to look around at test videos of ANY of these pocket camcorders, they all suffer from one thing... shakiness. They don't have optical stabilization (the Zi8 is actually the first to have electronic image stabilization, but it doesn't seem to take the BIG shakes out), but that would jack up the price so we don't care about that... but there is a way to solve the shakiness... a steadicam! Of the ones I see out there that work well... they are big and cost a lot. The smaller one I found is only sold in the UK. So in my quest to find a DIY project that was GOOD and CHEAP, I found one that fit the bill PERFECTLY!
(watch this in HD)
http://www.protodojo.com/content/2009/01/mini-camera-stabilizer-flip-float/
If you guys get something out of this, great! Otherwise I hope you can at least appreciate my efforts to smooooth out the jerky videos on YouTube
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
I have made a few test movies and they really don't come out that bad. Just need to be focused on keeping a steady hand and sweep slow. Another thing that helps is doing image stabilization in processing. I can't speak for the software that comes with windows, but in iMovie on the Mac, you can run a stabilization process on the video to take out the jitter.
