Forgive me. I'm fasting ahead of a routine procedure scheduled for tomorrow morning. Perhaps I'm feeling faint. And I'm experimenting with a new HD pocket cam acquired to more easily add quality imagery to the blog and elsewhere. Like the Flip cams one sees everywhere today, this Kodak Zi8 has few of the features of a consumer/prosumer video camera. No flip out screen, for instance, making it a challenge to shoot toward yourself. A table mirror placed behind the camera let me see where I was in frame, but to set up the camera and mirror quickly I had to choose a desk top, which meant getting low, as you'll see. I was also just off my ski machine, hair wet and workout "T" on, so I don't expect Hollywood to call soon. But for the price I can't say enough about the image clarity. See for yourself right
here. If you have the bandwidth, be sure to check it out at full screen.
The audio comes from the on-board mic, which is a bit noisy. Earlier clips with an external mic plugged in (great feature) offer clean audio. Normally I'd embed a video clip but the 720p resolution is too large for the blog's width. The camera will shoot lower resolution but usually that's not what I'm going to be looking for.
I should mention that the unit ships with an HDMI cable so you can view clips on your flat screen TV, where they look surprisingly good. It also takes an SD card to expand the hours of material you can gather. I've got a 4GB card in mine for the moment, about $13 at Staples.
I promise to shoot something, or somebody, more attractive in the near term.
