By Karen Vazquez
When I had my first baby almost 6 years ago, my husband came home one day with a new, $1300 Sony video recorder. In theory, it was great - it captured the moving pictures on these little mini-DVDs. We'd never miss a moment! We'd have great montages of our kids as they grow! Happy ending, right? Well, not so much. Turns out that the Sony software didn't get along with our Windows OS, resulting in the awesome movies we captured being stuck on those cute little DVDs...a known bug preventing the files from being transferred to the computer. Since then, I've had a bad taste in my mouth about buying a new movie camera. Since we stopped taking videos with the Sony - too frustrating - my husband has been itching to get another video camera. He was hell-bent on getting an HD one, to work out our shiny new HD TV. I decided to ask Flip if I could borrow a Flip for review, and test it out before buying (disclosure: I didn't pay for the Flip; it was in my possession for 3 weeks.They agreed, and I was so excited when that little camera came in the mail.
They sent me a white Ultra HD Flip. It is pretty small - it fits easily in my purse and is slightly bigger than a deck of cards. There are literally four buttons on it - Power, Record, Trash, and Play. The camera was unbelievably easy to use. Because of its small size, my initial movies came out a bit shaky, but once I realized what was happening I started to stabilize my arm and the images were steady. The real test came when it was time to download the movies to my computer. The Flip has a little USB connector that flips out of the side of the camera...you plug the camera into the USB port and it automatically downloads the software and drivers required. I didn't find the software user interface to be as intuitive as the camera itself, but it didn't take me too long to figure out how to download the movies. Within 15 minutes of plugging the camera in, the $199 Flip had functionally surpassed the $1300 Sony (in my experience). The movies were safely on my computer's hard drive.
The biggest benefit that I see in FlipShare - and I can't believe they don't do more marketing around this - is that you can take a "snapshot" based on a single frame of a movie. So where my regular camera hesitates a millisecond and misses the shot, the Flip can just record the whole photo session and you can select the specific frame that captures your image. Do you have any idea how much easier my holiday card photo shoot just got?!?! Last year we took over 300 pictures of our 3 boys - not kidding - and this year we took about 3 minutes of video. Avoiding that headache alone makes this camera worth the $199 I paid for it (I bought one after returning the loaner).
One of the advertised selling points of the Flip video camera is the FlipShare software, which allows the user to assign movies to "Flip Channels". Once you've entered the email addresses of people with whom you want to share videos in that channel, they will automatically be notified when new videos are added. In theory, great idea. However, in my experience, recipients are frequently unable to view the videos. I got complaints from people on work computers, home computers, old (92), young (30), savvy, and clueless - all were at various points unable to view the videos, for varied and/or unknown reasons. Thankfully, FlipShare makes it really easy to upload videos to YouTube (or others). So the sharing is still easy, even if I had to go a secondary route.
Things to be aware of as you think about buying a Flip: my husband really wanted to get an HD camera. But the thing we didn't think through until after having the camera in hand is that unless you have a high definition DVD burner, the only way to view the movies on the HD TV is to save the movies you want to watch to the camera (if you've already downloaded them to the computer and cleared space on the camera), and connect the camera itself to the TV (i.e., you can't burn a DVD in HD. Or I can't, anyway). It is easy enough to save movies back onto the camera for that purpose. Also, the HDMI cord to connect your Flip camera to your HD TV is not included with the camera. It costs around $70. The HD moview were spectacular on the big screen.
In the end, after returning the loaner camera, I bought myself another Flip UltraHD - in black. I leave it in my purse and take video of the kids almost every day, even if only for a few seconds. Of course I haven't yet gone through them all to compile a highlights movie....but because the videos are so easy to share, my family is able to see the kids grow without having to wait on my organizational skills to come around. When I do finally sit down to organize, I'll have tons of footage available.
Karen
is a freelance writer and stay at home mom who tries to get out of the
house with 3 boys (ages 4, 2, and newborn). When not breaking up fights
over cars and trains, she blogs at NYC Moms Blog (
www.nycmomsblog.com).
With career experience in marketing, fashion, and publishing, she
enjoys product review assignments that enable her to voice her often
strong opinions in a socially acceptable manner.
