Judging by the top selling Camcorders in the Amazon chart, if the Flip Camera was a pop band it would be The Beatles.
Here’s the Top 20 selling Camcorders right now on Amazon.com (US). As of today the Flip Video Camera holds a massive 9 places inside the 20! That’s some going for a relatively new player in the Camcorder business.
It’s also clear that Black is the most popular color for the Flip.
At Number ONE in the US and UK - the Black Flip Ultra HD
This week Apple announced a new Ipod Nano that can shoot video, in the clip below the same scene is shot side by side using the new Nano and the Flip Ultra II Standard Definition.As you can see the Flip has noticably better image quality especially in low light.
Of course the Nano, which shoots 640-by-480 VGA video in MPEG-4 format, has loads more storage space and plays music. But even though the two units are similarly priced (in the US around $150) I wouldn’t advise buying the Nano if Video is key for you. The Nano doesn’t seem to offer much beyond decent Mobile phone Video quality.
Note: The Audio used on the clip comes from the Nano so the clip isn’t an Audio comparison.
This clip is over a year old, as it is the first ever footage I shot with My Flip, straight out of the box, insert batteries hit the record button and there you go. A minute later I was saving it into my Mac Powerbook via the Flip software.
I then took into Final Cut Pro, made a couple of trims, added some graphics I knocked up in Photoshop and uploaded the clip a few minutes later to Vimeo. Having just spent 6 weeks editing my last show for the BBC it was quite a pleasure creating some instant content even if it is only 10 seconds worth!
There are 3 points I want to make about this short example:
1. The Edit
This is not a continuous clip of footage, actually there is an edit, at one point my daughter took too long too reply so I made a cut on a pan which you can’t notice. The lesson is you can fool the human eye by cutting on fast movement or a fast pan without needing a cutaway shot to cover the jump.
2. Musical break
You will notice the music drops out under the word “Mummy” this deliberately gives the punchline impact, and is a common technique used in MTV/American style reality shows. You would think that only adding music would give impact sometimes just taking it away works well too.
3. Soft Light
All digital camcorders hate high contrast lighting situations. I deliberately shot with soft daylight though a window as the main lightsource, as you can see it looks fine and the Flip has done a good job with the tones. If in doubt and if you can move your subject to an area where the light works for you rather than just shoot in any situation. The Flip makes shooting simple, but it can’t control the light that’s up to you the Director.
"Your programme is absolutely first class and I wish I'd seen it before I spent £3,000 on professional video production! "
Scott Watson, Summit Training
straight out of the box, insert batteries hit the record button and there you go. A minute later I was saving it into my Mac Powerbook via the Flip software.
