Meeting A Movie Star
Posted at 9:58 am on Wednesday, January 28, 2009, in Technology, and tagged zi6.
I was hiking with my wife near the Haleakala Crater on Maui, carrying my newish digital HD camera, the Zodak Zi6, when a man and woman crossed our path along the trail. He stopped and turned. “Is that the new Kodak camera?” I told him it was. He asked me when I got it, and I told him only a few weeks earlier. He asked me what I thought about it, and as I started to tell him the normal stuff (“oh, it’s real neat-o”), he interrupted and said that he was on the design team. He then showed me what was in his hand, the next generation of the Kodak HD hand-held cameras, the Kodak Zx1, not available until April.
The Zx1 was a lot smaller and was yellow (although it comes in many colors), and it didn’t have the flip-out USB arm, which he said was a design flaw. I agreed and told him that I use an SD card reader, and he added that it is awkward for most computers anyway. They fixed that.
He then asked me of my overall opinion, and I said I liked it a lot and that he did good work. I wish I had told him this: I don’t know why the camera includes VGA (640×480) or 3-megapixel camera settings. That seems to be a waste of space on the hard-drive. Also, the camera defaults to HD at 30 frames per second even if you are always using HD 60 fps. Every time you turn the camera on, you have to shift to HD 60. This leads to a lot of 1-second videos that were mistakenly shot at 30 fps before you realized you had the wrong setting. The camera shoots poor in the dark, and the microphone is too easily over-powered by wind. It would be nice to turn the microphone off or on low. There is also no image stabilization which leads to a lot of shaky video (but I guess that is what software is for).
Lastly, when I got the camera a tiny-bit wet on the beach, the on-screen display fizzled for a long while. It returned to normal eventually, but the updated Zx1 is apparently rain and dirt resistant. That would be nice.
The best part about these cameras — besides the fact they shoot HD and fit in you pocket — is that they are relatively cheap, less than $150 or so. That means upgrading models will not kill your travel budget.
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