Before I bought my DSLR I assumed I would continue using my little digital camera for the every day stuff and use the new fancy one for holidays or more purposeful photo taking. As it turns out, I haven't used my old Casio since my Nikon D40 arrived in the mail. This is great because I love my D40 and it takes amazing pictures (and is surprisingly light and portable), but I do miss the video capabilities on my little pocket camera. At this age Landon is so active and so funny that I want to capture his movement and speaking more than a still snapshot.
We had a Canon ZR800 before he was born, but as you can see from the clips below, the quality is less than impressive. Even worse than that, transferring the video to my computer is a pain and it takes two programs just to edit and save the clips and then burn them to a DVD (I hate Windows Movie Maker, or I think I hate it, I definitely can't figure out how to make this all work as easily as I'm sure it should. I'm not doing anything fancy- just cutting out parts of the clips I don't want).
So I ask you, my techno-savvy readers- what do you use for capturing video clips? I'm intrigued by the Flip Video products, especially the Ultra HD, but I'm concerned about shakiness in the video (how's that for a technical term). I'd basically be chasing around after Landon and with a device that small it seems like there's often stabilization issues. I could be swayed to go with a digital camera/video combo again, so if anyone has recommendations for one with great video that takes decent pictures, let me know. I'd like to stay under $300, with bonus points for staying well under it. I'd also like something with pretty good quality - these will be our only video from this time in our lives and I'll be burning them to DVDs to save. I understand I won't be getting big screen TV/DVD perfection, I just want them to be fairly clear and bright.
I'm so glad that we got some of his super fast crawling on video too - I think that's our only clip other than a few of his first successful attempts back in May. And below is a clip (Finally!) of his dance moves. The quality is kind of awful and so is the lighting since he prefers to dance in front of the window in the playroom, but at least you get some idea of his skills. He's wearing a swim cap that he picked up on a recent trip to Lane 4 Swim Shops in Austin. He saw the bin and got very excited about the "hats! Mama HATS!" and ran to try to put one on. The owner loved him and sent us home with one in our bag for free- since then Landon asks us to put it on him at least once a day. I swear we're not actually trying to turn him into a swimmer it just seems to be in his blood.
Let me know your recommendations -- good quality, easy to export and share (this is key, I'm good with picture transferring and editing, and apparently suck with video clips), and not so expensive I have to make myself wait until Christmas to buy it!
If you aren't worried about size and portability I would suggest selling your D40 on craigslist or ebay and buying a D90 - it's Nikon's DSLR with an integrated HD video recorder.
ReplyDeleteI have the basic flip and love it! I was so impressed at the quality of video once we saw it on the comp., it is so easy to use and fits in your pocket, what more can you want!
ReplyDeletewe have a flip - not the hd one. it's great, we love it. haven't noticed any stabilisation issues - it's MUCH better than the video we had on our little camera.
ReplyDeleteWe bought the FlipHD this summer and love it. Yeah, you have to work to keep it still, but I had to do that with our "real" camera, too. Heh.
ReplyDeleteWe love our flip, too. I use one hand to hold the elbow of the arm holding the camera to keep it steady. It's really easy to transfer videos to the computer.
ReplyDeleteI spent my nephew's first birthday party taking video with the flip, and thought it was great--super easy to use, and I didn't notice any stabilization issues on playback (though I was playing back ON the flip, not on a computer or TV). I think some video editing software will have a stabilizing filter to soften some of the jerkiness that inevitably shows up in handheld camera video (not sure about Movie Maker, but I know iMovie on the Mac has such a thing).
ReplyDeleteThe one drawback of the flip is its size limitation, but if you're not planning on shooting several consecutive hours of video, it should be just what you need.