You no longer need an expensive video recorder

11/11/2008 3:56 PM EST

Although I'm very excited by this little beauty, I must admit that I've been thinking about it in terms of creating "cheap-and-cheerful" video snippets. I really hadn't considered using it to create even a slightly more sophisticated movie... until now...

I just ran across a very interesting vlog (video blog) by a guy called Kirk Mastin, who used to be a photojournalist and now finds himself a photographer, film maker, and lecturer at the University of Washington.

In this article, Kirk says that when he started out, he was always blaming his equipment and saying to himself: "If only I had 'this' or 'that' I could take much better pictures."

Well, in a recent experiment, Kirk took two videos side-by-side (he strapped the cameras together and took the exact same scenes with both). On the one hand he had a $3200 HD Cannon Camera and a $300 microphone. On the other he had a Flip Video (to record the video) and an iPod nano equipped with a $60 microphone (to record the sound).

The results surprise everyone who sees them. It may be that the two videos would appear different if presented on a high-end high-resolution display, but if you compare them playing on a computer screen you really can't tell the difference (Check it out and see what you think).

Truth to tell, this has opened up a whole new set of possibilities for me. I just tried loading a few of the video snippets I've already taken with my Flip Video into Windows Movie Maker and then adding a few fades and titles and suchlike. The result is really rather good. My next step will be to purchase a microphone for my iPod and then we'll really be cooking on a hot stove...

Of course... having said this... I realize that Kirk is a professional. But it just goes to show what you can achieve with the right camera angles and suchlike... so I think I'll also start looking for a book called something like Video Photography for Dummies (don't email me, I just went on Amazon and there are a ton of such books... I just ordered one).

Questions? Comments? Feel free to email me – Clive "Max" Maxfield – at max@techbites.com). And, of course, if you haven't already done so, don't forget to Sign Up for our weekly Programmable Logic DesignLine Newsletter.