Review - Olympus micro-mini digital camera
For my recent plunge into the world of amateur video production, I had to buy a new camera. My old digital camera was very good for stills, but the video function only recorded silent videos, as it has no microphone.
This was recorded using my new Olympus μ-mini digital camera. (5 megapixels.) I planned to transfer the recorded file directly into YouTube, but this clip, at a little over five minutes, went over YouTube's 100MB limit. As such, I had to get a friend to compress the video down a bit.
Here's my review. More notes below. Even if you don't care about the camera, you can look at the nice scenery from a nice walk along the Grand Union canal.
I forgot to mention in my commentary (totally unscripted) that it has a strange battery - there no way I could use standard battaries like AAs. It did come with a charger, but if the battery ran out, I'd have to go home and recharge, unless I had a spare. The trade off is that this camera is tiny, but I think I'd rather have the regular batteries.
As promised, I've taken some still pics and a video sample. These files all came directly off the camera and put onto the web server, without any editing or touching up.
A short video clip. (1.5 MB)
A still picture, taken at the same time I did "7 miles from Ludlow".
Some sheep.
Some ducks at twilight. (The flash did go off.)
Enjoy.
This was recorded using my new Olympus μ-mini digital camera. (5 megapixels.) I planned to transfer the recorded file directly into YouTube, but this clip, at a little over five minutes, went over YouTube's 100MB limit. As such, I had to get a friend to compress the video down a bit.
Here's my review. More notes below. Even if you don't care about the camera, you can look at the nice scenery from a nice walk along the Grand Union canal.
I forgot to mention in my commentary (totally unscripted) that it has a strange battery - there no way I could use standard battaries like AAs. It did come with a charger, but if the battery ran out, I'd have to go home and recharge, unless I had a spare. The trade off is that this camera is tiny, but I think I'd rather have the regular batteries.
As promised, I've taken some still pics and a video sample. These files all came directly off the camera and put onto the web server, without any editing or touching up.
A short video clip. (1.5 MB)
A still picture, taken at the same time I did "7 miles from Ludlow".
Some sheep.
Some ducks at twilight. (The flash did go off.)
Enjoy.
2 Comments:
Hmm, seems ok on the stills-although that flash didn't work too well! How much do you think it is teething problems while you get to know the camera? It's possible there are ways of working around the problems quite easily when you know how? I can't even get my big digital camara to show a view at the moment-no idea why, but it's probably something simple I've just not realised yet lol! Your hands may become famous on Youtube-as that's all you ever show us ;)
By
samsarajade, At
12:28 PM, November 04, 2006
Bill, try a program called Bink. Two programs come together, Bink and Smacker... great names eh? They are kind of famous cos of their use in most PC games. Anyway, I'm gone off in a tanget. You can use Bink to convert quicktime to raw avi which you can then do what you like with. I reccomend virtualdub. I've been using it for years now. Its great for quick and dirty editing of a single video stream.
Another option, again using virtualdub, is to install the quicktime alternitive on your computer. Then doing a little jiggery pokery with a direct show filter you can import the quicktime video directly into virtualdub (and a few other video editors).
I absolutely hate quicktime (and Apple in general). It's just a really shitty system, with a truely horrorfying media player. Microsoft would be condemned if they introduced it.
Make sure you get virtualdub anyway, its very handy!
Some links:
Page on converting mov's to avi's
Info on how to import mov's into editing applications
By
Anonymous, At
1:16 PM, November 04, 2006