A few years ago just before my daughter was born I bought an expensive Sony Camcorder in readiness to capture all those special moments. It was great, but it was such a hassle to get out and switch on and charge the battery and copy the film over and buy new tape that in the end I think I used it about 5 times.
Camcorders document an event well enough, but to do that you have to step out of the event yourself and you then cease to be part of it. Great when you are looking, back but what about living the moment you are in?
Jump forward 5 years and there’s a whole range of mini camcorders no bigger than your phone that can do the job without you feeling like Micheal Moore’s cameraman on permanent standby.
One of the best out there at the moment is The Flip Ultra HD – the whole time I was testing it I was wishing I could have had one of these back when my daughter was small.
You can carry around a Flip all the time and capture those moments of spontaneity you would normally miss.
If you are old enough to NOT know how to set a video to record, I think even you would be able to cope with the Flip Ultra’s interface. It’s so simple, its almost too simple.
On/ Off Record / Stop Record / Playback / Stop Playback / Delete / Zoom in / Zoom out.
Thats it.
The HD picture quality for something of this price is exceptionally good and it’s bundled editing software while basic is actually very easy to use. Sharing to Facebook, Twitter or emailing stills or movies is also a dodle.
A couple of small comments, the sound quality is good, but when I was recording on a VERY windy day it did suffer noticeably (one solution to this would be to connect an external mic if necessary).
Also the way the USB connection flicks out and connects to your computer (left) is really cool, but if you have got lots of other USB stuff plugged in, there is a chance the camera might get in the way.
There is enough HD space (4GB) to record for about 2 hrs and they look quite cool too… Overall for the price around £130 there is not much else as easy and as fun to use.
Thanks to the Flip I DID manage to capture my daughters first time on a bicycle and that is worth the price alone.
More info from www.theflip.com
