James VanDyke

A great point and shoot camera

I bought a Kodak Zi6 recently. It’s a no-frills HD video camera that only costs $150. The camera takes 720p video, has a 2.4 inch view screen and a SD memory card slot to store your videos on. It uses 2 AA batteries for power and stores the videos as QuickTime movie files.

The camera’s biggest draw is that it’s point and shoot. It’s one of a new category of video cameras pioneered by Flip.

The camera also has a few drawbacks, like most of the point and shoot category, that are important to know going in. First, there is no optical zoom. The camera does offer a 2x digital zoom but it degrades the quality, so it’s best to avoid. Second, there is no image stabilization. This means that if you don’t use a tripod then your video is going to look a little shaky. The popularity of this category of video camera has resulted in Apple adding software stabilization to the latest version of it’s iMovie software.

Here’s a link to a sample of the video in HD.

I just got a new video camera and who better to test it out on than the dog. So, here is TigerMan showing off the vast majority of his known tricks.

SMU’s new advertising campaign includes two TV commercials promoting the upcoming football season.

Here is one of the commercials.

Someone mentioned this video to me yesterday, so being somewhat of an Apple fan, I thought I would pass it along.