Following on from my previous post about the MinoHD, I happened to write this in an email for Vinay, who’s about to do some video policy work for an NGO. It might be useful more widely too:
The major limitations/trade-offs with the Flip concept are:
- No microphone jack. You have zero options for good sound, unless you count off-camera recording, clapperboards, and post-sync.
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Fixed screen means you more-or-less have to shoot from head height. You can’t easily shoot sitting subjects, or people interacting with props. It can be done, but handling in these situations is poor.
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Close focus is limiting; big close-ups will always be blurry.
The Flip can do what it does in part because it makes a huge assumption: that 80% of what you shoot will be somebody speaking to you or the camera. That is, a mid-shot of some sort. Most of the time, this is a reasonable guess.
But it’s not a valid assumption for demo-based filming – the story is often told by the detail of the prop you’re showing, and the Flip starts to break down here. There are good reasons people use cameras costing £500, £5,000, or £50,000, and they’re not all about raw picture quality.
Example: want to film a mosquito? With a Flip you’ve no chance. The best camera I have for this is the £225 FS100, which close-focuses down to about 1cm (which is bizarre, actually, but I’m not complaining). It captured the image you see attached to this post. You can tell it’s a female, for heaven’s sake.
“You can tell it’s a female, for heaven’s sake.”
Yeah, I can see the high heels and lipstick.