Steve Garfield purchased the cute little (OK, not so little, it’s larger than many competitors) Kodak Zi9 camera recently and brought it to the Boston Media Makers meeting. And while this $179 camera is not going to enter my short-list of favorite documentary cameras (on the list are Panasonic’s DVX100 & HVX200, Sony’s A1U & EX1, and expect the Red Scarlet to join the list as soon as I actually get a change to use one) it offers an intriguing option for quick and dirty point and shoot image capture.
Kodak Zi9 is small enough to take with you everywhere you go, it’s simple enough you can hand it to anyone to shoot, and it’s cheap enough you don’t have to worry if it gets lost, stolen, or suffers damage when used in a risky situation. And the 720p image quality (encoded as H.264) is pretty good given the price. As the quality of camera sensors goes up, and the price of camera sensors and flash memory goes down, expect to see small cameras get better and better. They could soon rival the traditional camcorder, the only issue is over time how much are the camera manufacturers willing to cannibalize their traditional camcorder market. It’s a fun little camera, I hope to get a chance to do more shooting with it.
This test was not about how pretty the video can look, it’s about how does the camera do in a common documentary situation. Here are the basic specs on the Kodak Zi9 camera:
Camera Type: Point and Shoot Camcorder
Resolution/Sensor Size/Type: 1.6 megapixels 1/4.5″ CMOS
Lens: 4.1mm – F/2.8 (fixed focus) with 2x optical zoom
Minimum Focus: 27.6″ (macro focus: 2″)
Display: 2.4″ TFT active matrix LCD (no viewfinder, no flip-over display)
Video Format: 16×9 H.264 (MOV, AAC, LC) 720p @ 30fps or 60fps
White Balance/Exposure: Automatic
Sound In: Built-in Microphone (mono)
Sound Out: Built-in speaker (mono) and audio on composite video output
Computer Interface: USB 2.0
Video Output: Composite video and Component video
Digital Still Features: also shoots digital stills in JPEG format and has a built-in flash w/ close-up and normal modes, and red-eye reduction
Internal Storage: 30 MB Flash Memory (built-in, specs do say 128M, however, only 30 can be used for image storage)
Storage Slot: SD Memory Card, Kodak recommends use of SDHC High-Speed Card
Additional Features: YouTube capture mode
Power: Uses 2 AA NiMH rechargeable batteries (included along with a charger) or 2 AA Alkaline batteries (nice not to have to deal with a built-in LiIon battery like some other devices)
Accessories: carrying pouch, cables, manual
Warranty: one year
Weight: 3.8 oz.
Hi David, Hi Steve.
Have you brought any of the 720P mov into FCP? I’ve found that some clips need to be rendered, others not. I have an earlier Kodak that does need rendering while a Canon A610 and A530 do not. Curious about this generation of Kodak.
Thought I’d share ”“ We just bought a couple of these to test for the young filmmakers in the Howcast Emerging Filmmakers Program and the results were pretty commendable. This spot was made entirely using one and the filmmaker didn’t do anything special. The micro shots look pretty great: http://www.howcast.com/videos/68768-How-To-Style-Your-Hair-With-Mousse
Thanks for the test. I need to take one out myself and mess around with it for a few days myself.
(Hey, is that Doyle’s?….Makes me miss JP.)
I’ve been posting the raw .mov files up to Vimeo.
http://vimeo.com/stevegarfield
There you can click on the right hand column of each video and see the video exactly as the camera shot it.
I have no problem editing in QuickTime Pro and iMovie, I get an error tryign to open the .mov file in my older version of FCP, even with Periean installed.
David WAS able to edit in his newer version of FCP.
Bill,
Yes, I cut the above clip in Final Cut Pro 6.x. I did have to render the clip. It’s hard for FCP to decode H.264 material in real-time on a Mac Book Pro (my computer is so last year). I edited the clip using Apple Pro Res 720p as the sequence codec as to not add any more compression artifacts while editing. Shooting with these little cameras that encode to H.264 is great, but you are starting with video that’s way more compressed and artifacty than the gorgeous clean high data rate DVCPRO HD video (Panasonic HVX200) the low-artifact MPEG of HDV (Sony’s FX1, V1, etc.) or high data-rate MPEG of XDCAM HD (Sony F350) or XDCAM EX (Sony EX1). But we’re comparing heirloom apples to common oranges.
I’m not sure what is the reason I was able to read Kodak’s H.264 clips from this camera without any problems, but maybe it’s because I have Perian installed on my machine which greatly expands the range of codecs that QuickTime can deal with.
If you want to see a higher quality output of this same clip, check out a much higher quality H.264 output, here’s a direct link to a 720p HD version of the above clip: http://blip.tv/file/get/Kinoeye-QuickKodakZi6TestDarkInteriorWithLightFromWindow379.m4v