First impressions of my Flip HD Video Camera

Merry Christmas Everyone! It’s rainy and wet here today, Yuck!, but we still have a little snow to make it seem like Christmas. I want to start with the Flip camera.

I liked how easy the camera worked and the low light capabilities of the unit. One thing that I noticed though was how noisy 20 odd people can be when crowded into a small space. Because the camera is so light you don’t get tired holding it but you also don’t have the heft to help you steady it either. I tried putting together the pictures using the Flip Software but it seems cumbersome so I tried switching to Window’s Movie Maker. The sound track from the video seemed to shift some on that and I wasn’t real happy with that either. That bothers me because Movie maker is easy to use it would be nice if it would work for this purpose.

I need to give it another try but I miss my big machine. It got a little sick with of the stupidity of its primary operator. I had a Facebook message come through that pointed to a site that a virus/trojan attached and I went through the motions of loading the virus without thinking. Shouldn’t be operating a computer that early in the morning I guess. It really got zapped and the guys are still working on it. I hope we don’t have to reload the computer from scratch. This is not the time of year to be doing that.

My off loading the data to network drives will allow me to bring the system back up to speed rather quickly though if that is what we have to do. So if you run into an email that has you installing software onto your system, don’t do it. Delete, Delete DELETE! Even the best of us can get suckered.

I Caved In!

What I really wanted was a Canon 5D but the Camera Fairy isn't coming through for me. So... I picked up a Flip Ultra to tide me over until she decides if I have been naughty or nice. Oh, I guess I’m mixing up my holidays. Whoops!

The Flip is a cute little thing, and it is hard to believe that the Flip, smaller than a cigarette case, can take such beautiful pictures and store up to two hours of video.

The controls are simple and straightforward. So to it will be very simple to learn how to use and operate. It has a 2X zoom lens and the image you get is very good. I'm not real wild about the sound but it's not too bad when you get close up to the individual you are taking a photo of.

The video we are shooting is done with two small HD cameras, one of them an Aptek the other is a Flip similar to the one I just got.

The biggest problem that I am observing with what we have done so far is with the sound quality. We'll have to see what we can do about that. We are looking at at a sound kit that has a mixer and a desk mic in it, and I have a wireless lavalier mic that we can try as well. If that works we'll need a second wireless set later as we keep going.

We are all very excited about how many options and uses we will be able to use these videos for. So be sure to come back often and see how we grow our video library with different product reviews, how to's and news from our industry.