Flip Mino Video Camera - Black, 2 GB,1 Hour (1st Generation) OLD MODEL
by Flip Video
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List Price: Our Price: $40.00 You Save: $109.99 (73%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Digital Camera See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Flip Mino Video Camera - Black, 2 GB,1 Hour (1st Generation) OLD MODEL
Customer Review: An amazing size for an Amazing camera
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
The Flip Video Mini is on its was to making traditional video cameras obsolete. The Flip Mini gives you...
- Good video quality (certainly not HD... but not bad)
- A rechargeable battery
- Ease of use ... if you have a PC (more on this later) it really is as easy as plugging the camera into your USB port
- Very small ... it is thinner than a deck of cards.... really it is about the size of an average cell phone (Non-Blackberry).
- 1 hour of video capturing ability.
-Sleek enough looks that you would think that it was made by Apple.
- And in my opinion a pretty decent value
Now when compared to the Flip Ultra it loses some of its charm... in fact, I would only recommend the Mini if you value the smaller size (It is about 1/2 the thickness) or if you have a passion for rechargeable batteries.
--- one alert----
Flip cameras are not as easy to use when you use Macs - and you do lose some of the built in editing and you-tube type features. In fact, if you are interested in Flip Camera and own a Mac I would highly recommend you buying Roxio Crunch Roxio Crunch Win/Mac as a means to convert your videos so that they can be viewed on your Mac. It is not hard to convert using Roxio Crunch, but it is an extra step.
Final tally - 5 stars for a PC user - 4 stars for a Mac - happy recording!
Customer Review: Bought it for a concert...Totally exceeded expectations
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought the Flip Mino on the recommendation of Kevin Rose (of Digg fame). We were going to a Nine Inch Nails concert that allowed video recording. This concert has an extremely intense light show and we were in the front row in front of a wall of speakers. Needless to say, we did not have high hopes for getting anything useable.
Boy were we wrong. The video came out incredible. The light show didn't overpower the camera. The stability of the picture is excellent. The ease of use being constantly shoved into or pulled out of cargo shorts was awesome. Considering I was 4 feet from a wall of speakers the sound was awesome. A little fuzzy on the base, but totally listenable. The zoom was simple and effective. Considering the low-light/intense light contrast, it was great. The battery life was enough to shoot the full 60 minutes, watch it playback on a tv twice, upload it to the computer and never go below 75% power.
It came time to upload it to our Mac Powerbook. I plugged it into the usb port, installed the software and uploaded all 11 videos. I wanted to watch them on my iphone though. I downloaded a free conversion software called Prism and converted the .avi's into mpeg-4's. This only took a couple of minutes and was super easy. I then converted the mpeg-4 movies into iphone movies using iTunes. Done. I have since uploaded to youtube and megaupload without a hitch.
I highly recommend this product. It does what it says. It does it extremely well. It is tiny. It looks like a cell phone. It is the simplest piece of technology I own next to my iPod Shuffle. It is easier to use than a regular iPod and even my grandmother can use that!
Enjoy
Customer Review: Less is best
Summary: 5 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
To understand the miniaturization of video equipment you have to go back to the first moon landing in July 1969. Just in case the lunar module didn't perform as expected the astronauts set up a video camera and trained it on their spaceship. The usual count down proceeded and then suddenly the thing was gone. Lunar gravity being one sixth of that of earth and the module being so light it was on screen about a half a second. Later versions had motorized tracking devices to follow it as it ascended to meet up in lunar orbit with the command capsule.
Now the point of this commentary is that until Apollo XI most people thought of television cameras as 800 pound gorillas, put on carts on studio floors where they would be moved about by a helper as the cameraman focused in on a subject. The space race produced smaller camera and set in motion a new race for the smallest camera of them all.
I can't say for sure if the Mino is the winner of that forty year race, but it definitely finished in the money. I keep it in my pants pocket (try that with a studio camera) and use it whenever something interesting happens. The video quality is excellent and the microphone is surprisingly sensitive. It is a great You-tube accessory. It's 60 minute storage capacity is more than adequate. While it lacks most bells and whistles it really doesn't need them.
Customer Review: I miss my camcorder!
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm a busy single mom of two little ones and I got this camera in the hopes that I would take more footage of my girls. It's VERY small, lightweight, userfriendly, etc.--the USB plug in and go makes our old DV cassette camera look like an antique. (and I don't miss the headaches there).
With that said, here are some things I really miss about my camcorder:
1. the move-able screen. the screen on this baby is so small and there's often such a glare that sometimes outside in the bright sun, I can't see what I'm shooting!
2. the zoom. again, the zoom on this one can't compare to my Sony Handy-cam. This is a feature I underestimated b/c my girls are camera shy, so it's often easier to film from far away on zoom as then they don't notice the camera.
3. the nightvision. The mino doesn't take well in dim lighting and even in the middle of the day in our house, unless all blinds are wide open, it's often not a clear image.
4. the pause button. Don't be fooled by the pause button on this--when the camera restarts it has already been spliced into a new clip. Sometimes I just want to pause for a second to readjust the camera.
5. being able to hold the camera steady. It's like shooting on a cellphone, which I thought would be ideal given its size, but actually sometimes I have a hard time steadying my hand enough to get good footage unless I use a tripod or my kids don't move at all.
Overall, I think it's a good value and I expected some trade-offs, but I do think you sacrifice quality for portability here.
Customer Review: Fun to use, handy to carry - I really like my Flip Mino!
Summary: 4 Stars
I've had the old Flip Ultra for a couple of years now, and just picked up the newer Flip Mino. Both are fun and easy to use. The image and sound is pretty comparable on both - which is to say both are surprisingly good for a camcorder that is this handy and small. It's not professional quality but for video that is intended to share with friends and family it is just perfect.
The Mino fits better in the pocket, and has a few features like "delete all" and time stamping that I missed on the Ultra. I thought I wouldn't like that since I like the idea of having batteries handy just in case - as it turns out, the Mino will run for several hours on a single charge which is more than enough for a day's use. You just have to remember to charge it after you've used it a bit.
There isn't any zoom to speak of (digital zoom is useless, since all it does is blow up a picture and lose precious resolution) but what the Flip really asks you to do is rethink how you are capturing your images. Hold it close to your shoulder and step in to the action - to record people just aim it and talk to them normally and the image and sound will be excellent. If you always keep it handy then you can pull it out and move it up close and capture the action on the fly.
I know there are some other cameras out there that are slightly cheaper and have roughly similar performance -- I still prefer the flip for their sheer simplicity. If I want a slightly more complicated shoot I'm going to bring along a more fancy camera -- but for simple you really can't beat the flip.