Technology for Mortals

720p with the Kodak V1253 from Eugenia Loli-Queru on Vimeo.

The video sample above is why I love technology and progress. You couldn’t get this kind of video quality for $1000 in a full size camcorder 10 years ago and now you can get this for less than $200 in a form factor that fits in your pocket. The above is a video sample converted to a much lower bit-rate for Internet distribution on www.vimeo.com so the actual source is even higher quality!

The video is taken by Eugenia Loli-Queru using the Kodak V1253 who also posted this detailed review of the camera. DPReview has some more detailed specifics on this camera. The killer feature for me is the 1280×720 30 FPS video capture at 13 Mbps H.264 compression which is stored in the SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) cards. Just pop in a 16 GB SDHC card at $70 and you can record 2.73 hours of 720p video or more than 5000 high quality 3MB 12 megapixel JPEG images.

The camera also has a relatively large 1/1.75″ CCD so that it can capture more light and less noise. The Samsung NV24HD is a very similar camera but it’s $150 more money and it’s only 10 megapixels with a 1/2.5″ CCD. That additional $150 on the Samsung NV24HD gets you a 2.5″ AMOLED display with stunning color and contrast ratios but the Kodak’s massive 3.1″ LCD touch screen display is no slouch.

I can easily seem myself putting this in to my ski jacket and following my daughter down the ski slope. Oh sure I have a big Sony HDV 1080i camcorder that does much better quality and I’ll take that on the trip too, but it’s not going to fit in my pocket so it’s not going to the top of the ski slope. I have a nice Canon Rebel XT SLR digital camera too but it’s even bigger than the Sony camcorder. As soon as I get my new job finalized, I’m leaning towards this camera over the Samsung. I need to do a hands-on comparison before I can decide.