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It’s in your pocket, it’s instant start-up, it’s a whole new way to catch those Kodak moments. While we await the Australian arrival of Pure Digital’s successful Flip handheld video camera from the States, Kodak has landed first on our golden soil with its $299 Zx1. Mobile phone; portable music player? No, it’s a video camera capable of recording 720p/60Hz video.
On paper it shouldn’t be as cute as it is. From the lens side (pictured below) it looks much like any digital compact camera or camphone. And any of those can also take video as well as stills, no? What’s special here is that the Zx1 aims for video quality first; it has camcorder priorities, combined with compactness and even semi-ruggedness — Kodak says the Zx1 is “resistant to rain, snow, sand, dirt and more”, being certified to IP43 aka JIS 3 (dirt over 1mm, and water from certain angles it’s good to know these things).
The controls are bravely unlabelled, but things are easy enough after a brief session with the Quick Start guide. The left/right arrows choose your shooting mode — either stills (around 3MP equivalent), 4:3 VGA video, widescreen 720p at 30 frames per second, or 720p at 60Hz. The big red circle button starts and stops recordings, creating a separate H.264 .mov file each time — sadly there’s no way to merely pause and continue with the same file. You zoom by using the up/down arrows, though the zoom is only 2x and is digital, so you lose resolution the more you use it.
The Zx1 has 128MB internal memory, which is OK for a few stills but holds little more than a minute of 720p/60, so you’ll be popping in an SD or SDHC card to the side slot, which gets you about 10 minutes per GB at maximum quality. If you’re not planning to shake it around a lot you could opt for 720p/30 video, which doubles your recording time, being half the frame rate.
The 30Hz recordings looks good, but when you see the faster frame rate on a big full-HD screen, it’s clear that 720p at 60Hz allows still better results, with less smearing and more fluidity on pans, allowing you to focus more on the detail available. For any frame rate it performs best in outdoor or bright internal scenes; it doesn’t re-adjust well to compensate in shadows, for example, nor does it excel in low-light. But at its best it captures some surprisingly beautiful images — light on water, footprints in the sand; you’re often struck by the detail and sharpness on show. So while we wouldn’t be making Lawrence of Arabia on it, the Zx1 could certainly handle a Blair Witch, and is perfect for home movies for all but the most dedicated ‘pro-ams’.
Obviously such dinkiness on a camcorder means making sacrifices over a fullsize model. The 5cm display, while bright indoors, is only just strong enough in bright sunlight for you to see that it’s on, and to read the video settings. A bigger camcorder might offer a shaded viewfinder; it would certainly have a bigger and partly optical zoom, and most likely a better isolated microphone — the Zx1’s is mono only, and on our test videos it gave clear but slightly thin sound, often with a continuous background crackle.
But being so small, the Zx1 does enter a new world of jacket pockets and handbags. It’s a social device, made for sharing. Pictures look great on the screen, friends can listen through the integral speaker, and especially fun in this context is slow motion down to 1/16 both forwards and backwards. Great for checking your golf swing, or replaying your mate walking into a lamppost. And with fast-forwarding up to 16x, you can rush Benny Hill style to the next bar.
Back at base, you either plug its output straight into a TV — a ‘bravo’ required here for including a mini-to-fullsize HDMI output cable. Or, given the flexibility of using an SD card, you can play the .mov files through your PVR, digital photo frame, or onto the PC and straight up to YouTube. (The Kodak comes with neat editing and export software stored on the camera for use on a PC.) Power comes from a pair of rechargeable AAs, which (impressively) are supplied pre-charged, together with their own charger unit.
The Zx1 scores huge on general gadget thrills — it yields good if not great HD video, with superb portability. Given the inclusions, and particularly 60Hz recording, Kodak’s Zx1 is a brand-name bargain the incoming Flip will need all its funkiness to overcome.
THE TECH
- Sensor: 1.6 MP CMOS
- Lens: 4.1 mm, f/2.8, fixed focus
- Zoom: 2x digital
- Display: 5cm LCD
- Storage: 128MB internal, SD/SDHC card slot
- Focus range: 70cm–infinity
- Video format: H.264 (.MOV), AAC LC
- Video quality: 720p/60Hz (16:9), 720p/30Hz (16:9), VGA 640×480 (4:3)
- Still format: JPEG, 3MP equivalent
- I/O: USB 2.0; HDMI out; AV output
- Dimensions: 50 × 107 × 20mm
- Weight: 90g without batteries
- Warranty: One year
MYM: Kodak (Australasia) Pty Ltd
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