Azura Technologies

Tonights episode of Dirty Jobs showed this camera strapped to a head strap for the host, Mike Rowe, who was 408 feet above the cement floor decending & window cleaning in Hawaii. Troy chickened out on the first 100 feet so alot of the contour HD footage made it into the show. By the 300 foot balcony they got troy on the ropes but his hair got snagged in the safely line and had to get his second “shearing” on Dirty Jobs – it was also filmed on contour HD cams 300′ above hawaii. The quality was as good as the cable company could deliver in their 6:1 re-compression of HD. A full HD viewfinderless camera has value when you must get the shot.

using a sandisk 16GB microSD card and the maximum detail [1080P] + best quality I could get 3 hr, 6 minutes of video recorded with battery leftover. If you use the lower resolution setting the battery may be the limiting factor – I have not tried that yet.

I bought this to produce a bluray disc of a police helicopter team, using a gyro stabilized canon professional camera in back and wanting a 2nd angle up front. This comes with an adhesive patch that sticks to the side of the pilot’s helmet to give a 135 degree wide field of view. The integrated rails on both sides permit the ultimate flexibility in mounting the camera, and second options for this cam are car mounts, etc.

The quality is GREAT. The lens is the downfall – there is some pincushion effect due to the inexpensive lens and wide angle. I’ll deal with it for the price and the shots you can get with it, plus I can trim out the distortion in post editing.

One note – the output is .mov which is fine for macs, but for pc’s you will need to transcode if you run premiere pro cs4 from adobe as it does not import .mov natively. Perhaps that is a good time to clip the edges where the bent picture is most noticable.

Another factor to like is the simplicity. With gloved hands you slide the top forward to record and back to stop, with a beep to start and and double beep to stop – it’s very hard to mess up except for your horizon, which is why there are detents and lasers.

Detents and lasers?

Yes, – there are detents in the event you mount it on the right and left hand side of a helmet or rotate it in a mount. The 2 lasers can be turned on to tell you what is level with resepect to the imager. This is helpful when you rotate it but you must manually keep track of the bottom of the screen (below the laser points ) as you rotate it, otherwise your output will be upside down.

For the price, you simply can not beat it. Buy a 16 GB sandisk micro-sd card to go with it Sandisk 16GB Microsd Card Note that they have a low packaging option which the card is inside a plastic carrier and inside an ESD bag but no box or other trash with it that goes in the landfill – smart packaging.

One of the other great applications for this is taking HD video where you otherwise would NOT take your $3K camera – the beach – the water park – etc. You won’t get the absolute best quality but you will get 1080 p hd that is playable on macs or pcs in native players!

Another great use is for children. It’s easy to use, inexpensive, and highdef. For the kids who are beyond the toy grade cameras but not ready for a professional unit, this fills the gap. Adults will love its simplicity. On or Off – no fancy buttons to press, and everything complex is set while attached to the computer.

I currently own the Flip Mino HD (1st gen) Flip Ultra HD (2nd Gen) Flip Slide HD, and now the Flip Ultra HD (3rd Gen with Flip Port). I also own a Canon GL2 and Vixia 30 video cameras and a Canon Xi digital SLR.

I got home from school on Tuesday and found my brand new Flip Ultra HD waiting for me. I had about 20 minutes to open the package, look and set up the features (time, date, etc.) before I had to leave for marching band rehearsal. During rehearsal I did some test shooting and I was very impressed with the quality of this camera, but I was worried about a few features.

I was reluctant at first to purchase this camera because of the 60fps feature. I did own a Kodak Zi8 and the 720p 60fps setting didn’t not import into Final Cut Pro. I had to take it into compressor or some other software and change the file extension in order for Final Cut Pro to import it. Of course this causes a decrease in quality.

I was also reluctant because of the image stabilization feature. When image stabilization is added to a camera (of this size) video quality usually suffers. I know flips can be very shaky if you do not have a well trained hand. After a few hours a playing you will figure out the right movements that the camera can incorporate so your video will not come out shaky.

I don’t use my Flip Slide HD because of the omni directional microphone. I can not record loud situations because the microphone distorts. This is my biggest fault with the Slide HD. I was a little concerned with the new Flip Ultra HD that it would have the same problem even though it uses a different microphone, but what really sold me on this new Flip was the accessories and the FLIP PORT.

Right off the bat I noticed all of the new accessories that they are pushing for the Flips, the aquapacks, the igo chargers, and my favorite is the magnetic Bower Wide Angel Lens. Flip and Cisco have finally started listening to its customers, but what put it over the top for me was Blue Microphones. Blue Microphones makes vintage and out of this world recording, studio, usb microphones. I own one of their USB Microphones called the Snow Ball and the quality of that microphone is amazing. When I found out that Blue Microphones was making a microphone (mikey) for the new Flip to be used with the new Flip Port, I purchased mine right away.

So the Review…

The main reason for my upgrading was for the video recording and I am very satisfied with this. Since the a300 doesn’t have video recording I can’t compare it to another DSLR, but compared to my point-n-shoot HD camera this is awesome. Being able to control the depth of field on videos is great and the auto focus is very fast, but sometimes hunts a little. You definitely hear the focus motor turning on the video if you’re recording a quiet scene but it’s not terrible. If you’re outside with ambient noises (cars, wind, random noises) you barely hear it. The mic jack is a regular audio jack so you can use any third party mic and this should eliminate the focus noise and would be worth looking into. You can also use manual focus and then there is no noise from zooming/focusing.

Photos are somewhat better than the a300. There is less noise at high ISO settings and AUTO ISO now will go up to 1600, compared to only 400 on the a300; this should help a good bit in low light conditions. It focuses faster and more accurate than the a300 and the a33 will shoot much faster in continuous shooting mode as well. The panoramic setting is great as well and works reliably and quickly, just push the shutter button once and rotate the camera quickly towards the direction indicated on the screen in one smooth motion (like recording a video) and the camera does the rest; there is no aligning ghost images one at a time like I’ve seen on other panoramic enabled cameras.

Other than noted above the a33 is pretty much the same as the a300 in most respects. I’ve used it with some Minolta glass and it’s worked well so there are no issues I know of in regards to compatibility. It’s like the a300 but faster, sharper, easier to use, has video, is lighter and a little smaller. The only real negative I have noticed compared to the a300 is the battery doesn’t last as long (but not too bad), so a 2nd battery pack is somewhat mandatory if you’d like to go out and shoot for a full day.

Technical Details
Translucent Mirror Technology accelerates AF performance
Continuous 7 fps shooting with continuous Phase Detect AF
Worlds1st consumer HD video camera w/ cont. Phase Detect AF
14.2 megapixels with Sony?s Exmor HD APS sensor