J198: Kodak Zi8: A good tool for the backpack

One of the cool parts of my job here at Lehigh is I get to play with toys. It’s a guy/eternal kid thing. If I had room for a couch in my office, you damn well better believe there’d be a fort made out of cushions. Throw in a dash of academia nerdiness and you can imagine how much fun it can be for me to do what I do.

The latest toy-playing has been trying out equipment for J198 Multimedia Reporting (I’m blogging my journey as I build this course, which you can access as a tag because that’s how I roll). Right now we’re playing with digital cameras in an attempt to choose the core devices for the course.

The class will have four groups of three people, and so we’re thinking of giving each group one or two finalist devices and using the course to assess the equipment. There’s a good reason for this, as what we end up using long-term will also potentially be adopted by The Brown & White student newspaper for general use (with perhaps a couple nicer devices as well).

My department chair Wally Trimble has been working with me to think through this after I have been passing on recommendations from my own research. There were a few things we felt like we had to have in a video device. The main one is we wanted something that would be a paradigm-shifter. We haven’t had multimedia here at Lehigh as part of coursework, so there is a potential problem with handing students a device that looks like something they’ve seen. Giving them something that looks like a digital camera would make them think still images. Handing them something that looks like a TV camera might make them think television news. We want them to think Web, and so it was important for us to have a device that looked like a Web tool first.There were other needs as well:

• The ability to take photos, for versatility.
• A mic jack would be a plus. The built-in mic on these cameras often leaves something to be desired, and getting a cheaper model with a mic jack is difficult without sacrificing quality.
• The ability to zoom, either optically or digitally.
• Ease-of-use both in terms of shooting and uploading for production. The kids are bright, but we don’t want to get caught up spending all our time teaching technology.
• Good balance between battery life and quality.
• Some image-stabilization function that would account for motion-shifting.
• Cost. We don’t want to contribute to an unsustainable journalism business model, and we want to give students the sense they can do this as entrepreneurs or indies.

The first device we’re trying out is the Kodak Zi8. It came recommended from a bunch of folks both in academia and in the industry, but the first person to tell me about it was Jen Reeves at Missouri and that led me to research it more heavily. The Zi8 came out a couple months ago to a great deal of fanfare, and from this corner the hype is deserved.

How do I know that I love this camera? Because it’s sitting on a table next to me right now and I just want to pick it up and shoot video instead of blog. Good Web-publishing devices are like that. They’re so easy to use they beg you to use them all the time. I feel the same way about my iPhone, which has me shooting photos and video way more often than I used to in my dumbphone days.

Three things jump out about the Zi8 as I researched it and then tried it.

First, it does HD. Huge! The clip below was shot in HD at the best quality available (including 60 fps) and uploaded to YouTube. Honestly, I don’t think we need much better quality, and in some ways it’s too much.

Second, it does have that elusive mic jack, but the video below was shot without the lapel mic we have for it. Notice when I get down to the street (about 2 minutes in) you can hear me just fine with the cars going by. I wasn’t making an effort to talk loudly and I’d say my head was about a 18 inches from the camera, so the internal mic works pretty well for a built-in version.

Third, the price is right for what it does. It’s retailing for $173 or so at Amazon right now. Considering the image quality and the presence of a mic jack, it’s a steal. Add another $100 to the price and I might reconsider, but I think the cost makes this thing a no-brainer to at least consider for anyone teaching a course like this.

Check out the video:

Some other things jumped out the more I used it.

It doesn’t feel like a TV camera or a digital camera, but it does pictures and video. And it feels sexy … it feels like the Web. The fact that it comes in several colors that don’t look professional at all is actually part of its appeal, although you can go with basic black if you’re worried about that. The camera isn’t much bigger than my iPhone, and it’s a bit lighter; you can easily slip the thing into your pocket between assignments. But this is the paradigm shift we’re seeking.

The proof of this came when Wally handed it to the B&W multimedia editor. She immediately began trying it out and couldn’t stop. We haven’t seen the camera since. This is exactly the type of paradigm-shifting buzz we were hoping for.

Another thing is the camera does account for motion pretty well with the image stabilization function. I wasn’t really trying to keep a steady hand because I wanted to see how it did. Obviously this camera isn’t great for  sudden movements, but for standard point-and-shoot interviews it works well. And you can use a tripod if you need it. It gets a little rough when you use the digital zoom function, as would be expected, but it honestly wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

While I do like the audio without the mic, it does get even better with it. I used the Audio-Technica omnidirectional mic that lets you use it as a lapel mic or a handheld and the quality did improve somewhat. I’d recommend it most for areas with a lot of background noise, or if you’re in a room with a lot of echo. We may get a couple of nicer mics if we feel like we need them at some point, but for now this would seem to do the job.

Another key feature I like is that it’s easy to use with a Mac or a PC. The department’s computers are PC based, but I ran it on both that and my MacBook Pro and it was fine. The downside is that it shoots only in .mov, which means you’ll need to convert the file type if you want something else. I prefer .mp4 as a file type because it is better for YouTube in terms of upload time, but my 6-minute video shot at highest quality was only 470 MB so even that wouldn’t have tripped the file-limit had it been the full allowable 10 minutes. I just don’t like huge file sizes because it really means you need to be using ethernet to upload.

You have a couple choices in downloading video. You could just pop the SD card the camera uses into your computer and use it that way, or you can use the pop-out USB connector the camera employs (similar to what Flip uses; not detachable from the camera). I didn’t like the USB connector as much as Flip’s version (it felt a little loosely connected and I was afraid of breaking the camera) but the SD card works fine.

My colleague Wally mentioned something that rang true with me. He thought it might be hard to hold it given the design, but that it turned out to be really ergonomical to do filming with it. I’m considering getting a mini-tripod kit for each camera so that they’d have it for office interviews, but the other thing is that it might allow them to hold the camera like a pistol when filming outdoors or while walking around.

There are some downsides to consider. The battery life isn’t great on this thing. If you shoot at the highest quality you have anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. You can bleed more out of the battery by reducing quality, and truthfully you’d probably do that anyways, so expect an hour or so of life. In the field, I think it’d be a good idea to have a spare. We’re still thinking through that issue practically, because a small battery is an easily lost battery when it comes to students.

Second, there is no optical zoom. The digital zoom looks fine, but if for some reason you want to zoom without sacrificing max resolution then this camera won’t do that. It really depends on what you need the camera for, obviously, but I found that shooting anything more than 20 feet away required digital zoom unless it was big. On the subject of shooting, the options for contrast are limited, so it’s a good idea for reporters preshoot for lighting to make sure you’re getting what you want. Use the facial-recognition function to help set your contrast.

The first thing you need to do out of the box is install the firmware update. The original release made it so that video had a hissing sound with the audio, and it turns out it was a software flaw. So get that update installed beforehand so that you don’t get frustrated. After that update, the problem is gone.

Fourth, the camera comes with the standard crappy proprietary video editing software and asks you to install it every time you plug it in to a PC (happily this isn’t an issue on my Mac). I could rant all day about how dumb those programs are, but the stupidest part is that even if you do like the software you are legally allowed to put it on one computer. Nobody uses a camera like that, especially reporters who use several computers. Anyhow, I’m going to see if we can trash the software without ruining the camera, but tread lightly as always.

Lastly, the box doesn’t advertise this but you should plan on getting the 32 GB SD card (the max it holds). There is an internal storage drive, but it’s tiny. Just consider the SD card part of the cost.

One last negative I should mention. While it is small and lightweight, that is in part due to its outer shell being made of plastic. I do wonder about the long-term wear and tear problems for this device and will be looking at case options to see if we can protect it a bit. Based on feel alone, it seems fragile enough that it can’t take a bad tumble, especially on concrete. It has an attachable wrist strap; use it.

Still, for all its drawbacks it’s hard to beat this thing for the price. Like I said, add another $100 or even $75 to it and I’d reconsider that statement, but for what you get this thing is a steal at $170. I’d estimate it’ll cost another $75 to fully equip it (case, tripod, mic, etc.) but on the whole it seems ideal for programs that want to dive in on this sort of thing without blowing your budget.

As we progress at Lehigh and get more multimedia in the program, we might want to have a few cameras that are up a level or two. Then again, we might not. I’m excited to see what the students do with this thing when we turn them loose with it in January. Wally and I have been testing a couple of them, and we have another one on order. The way we’re talking about it now, we might outfit every group with one of these and at least one other type of camera. At the end of the term, we’ll talk through the plusses and minuses of each one so we can make a better decision as to what works.

One last thing about this process worth mentioning, because we are going to try other stuff as well. Wally and I are testing cameras together, and it’s a good idea to have someone to go through that process with you. He and I both see different things that stick out (good and bad), and I feel like I’m getting a better read on equipment when we both test drive it. Bottom line, test it in collaboration with someone who knows what your goals with the device are.

Now if only I could get him to work with me on that fort, I’d be set.

Related posts:

1. Blogging out J198
2. J198: So we took the plunge
3. J198: Start your engines
4. J198: Equipment and software choices