With the tech world going social network crazy, sharing is the sexy thing to do, and with the exsplosion of sites like Youtube, Facebook and Vimeo, there's now a huge demand for easy ways to shoot and share video clips. The Kodak Playsport caught our eye when we came across it. It's part of a new generation of minicamcorder that is designed to make it incredibly easy to shoot and share full High Definition 1080p video.
What makes the Playsport really good is that it can shoot video just about anything anywhere. Based on the acclaimed Zi8, the new KODAK Playsport is capable of shooting full 1080p HD video whatever the conditions and even up to 3m (10 ft.) underwater. The rugged design, simple ergonomic controls and compact size enables full 1080p HD video recording in just about any environment.
With more than adequate 2-inch colour LCD display this hasn’t been design for you to look down the lens, you simply point and shoot and let the electronic image stabilization and smart face tracking technology do all the hard work. Unfortunately there is no optical zoom, but on something this small – you can live without it.
It work incredibly well in bright highly reflective situations as it has the choice of two filters which act as a built-in anti glare shield to help you view your subject on-screen and an additional blue filter provides colour correction to footage shot underwater.
You can select video resolution simply by clicking the left and right arrows on the central controller selecting 1080p, 720p 60fps, 720p 30 fps, WVGA or a 5MP still camera for high quality 16:9 HD stills.
The biggest advantage of the high resolution 1080p is that it'll look great when blown up a big TV. This isn't so important if you only view videos on a small window on your PC screen on youtube. But with Playsport footage you can scale the video to full screen and retain image sharpness and for the best possible picture
Many other minicamcorders feature small internal memories, the Playsport has an SD card slot which can take upto a 32GB SDHC card good for upto an 10 hours of video at HD 30fps (1GB = 20mins).
If you do run out of memory you can alway buy an extra cards. It’s also powered by a rechargeable Li-Ion battery, we’ve heard that the battery performs well, but will drain quickly when use for prolonged periods of time. So you won’t be able to make the next Jaws.
But it delivers a longer record time than camcorders using AA batteries and features the flexibility of in-camera charging from a mains socket or via USB. And with a 38% discount on Amazon you'd be mad not to pick one up.
[product#520]