Friday, February 22, 2008

The palm-cam vs. the pro-cam

This is a pretty cool demonstration of the power personal video cameras such as the Flip Video put in the palm of your hand. Videographer and instructor Kirk Mastin shot the same video using a $3,200 Canon XH-A1 and a $150 Flip Video, then posted the resulting videos.

While you might not want to create your next Hollywood blockbuster feature using just a Flip, you’ll probably be surprised at the outcome of Kirk’s experiment. He was.

Yesterday I set out to film the exact same mini-film using a Canon XH-A1 and a Flip Video camera. I actually taped the Flip Video to the side of the Canon XH A1 to ensure that each shot was exactly the same.

Both sets of identical footage were editied exactly the same way: down to the frame! I wanted no bias in this test.

Both cameras were set to auto everything (Flip Video is always this way) and only minimal color correction was applied in Final Cut Pro to make them both roughly the same tone. I even cropped out about 30% of the Flip Video footage to make it have a 16:9 aspect ratio like the Canon XH A1.

16 hours later I have answered in part my eternal equipment question.

I have to say my results surprised even me.

Posted by Brad on February 22, 2008 at 3:32 PM | (9022) Comments | Permalink
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