Our Man Inside

So here is what the fuss is all about. Finally a low cost hand held HD video camera with a microphone input. I’m yet to get my hands on a Kodak Zi8 for a proper test but I had a quick fondle for a couple of minutes behind the Kodak stand with Jenny Cisney at NYC 140 Conference.

In the dark shadowy corner I shot this very quick video in 720p as the SD card I had to hand was not high speed and couldn’t cope with the fat data rate of the 1080p setting. The camera feels good in the hand. Well made and similar in form to the Zi6.

Already I can see the low light ability is better than that of the previous two models but more importantly I am looking forward to plugging in an external mic and seeing what kind of audio quality is possible.

The specs are as follows:

• Full HD 1080p video
• Built-in image stabilization
• 2.5” color LCD
• Swing out the USB arm to upload, share, and charge
• 5 MP 16:9 widescreen HD still pictures
• Built-in software for editing and uploading
• Compatible with PC and Mac
• Record up to 10 hrs of HD video (20 min per 1 GB at 720p HD at 30 fps) with SD/SDHC card up to 32 GB
• Face tracking technology
• External stereo microphone
• HDMI cable included

I’m thinking that finally camera producers are beginning to understand the importance of decent audio.. more important than picture quality in my opinion. It’s too soon for me to express anything other than relief at the mic input with the Kodak Zi8, but I feel with devices like the Zoom Q3 on the horizon (which is effectively a high quality audio recorder with a camera on it), I feel the goal posts have been moved and video blogging devices are entering a whole new era.

If you suffered watching the video with all the beeps in.. Now you can watch the uncensored version.

There is more information on the Kodak Blog.

When I told people I was to be sat on a panel with Paul Carr from the Guardian a couple responded.. “Paul Carr? He’s a bit of a dick.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“It says so on his twitter profile.”

Fair enough I thought, but when I met him he was just frank and very funny.

The video of the panel we did at the #140conf is floating around somewhere in the ether. I may even drop it in a blog soon.

What I have here in the mean time is a brief conversation with Paul at the end of the day. We were on the way out the door and both of us had cold beer on our minds. That’s probably why this is not so much an interview as a chat in a corridor over a conference when what we really wanted (and had later) was a chat over a beer.. well away from the conference.

There is more about Paul Carr on his Wikipedia page..

Linked Here is the article he wrote for the Guardian while at the 140conf

This video was filmed with the assistance of Matt (@barnstormed) and is also on the Open University You Tube channel so go view it there and show some love..

During the 140 characters conference in New York I got to connect with some really fascinating people.

Moeed Ahmed is the Supervisor of Internet Media, New Media section with Aljazeera in Doha, Qatar. With the help of Matt (@Barnstormed), I managed to grab a few words with him at my hotel.

This interview and others will also appear on the Open University website ‘Platform‘.

More information on Aljazeera can be found at http://www.aljazeera.net

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