On my last trip to the US, in early May, I picked up a Flip Video Ultra and I love it so much I want another one, even though the one I have is fine and I clearly can’t use two at once.

(You know what I mean: sometimes you just want to get something again to be able to experience the joy and excited jolt of discovering how nice it is in the first place all over again. Like a [insert gadget name here]-virgin, touching it for the very first time. That’s what I want, every day.)

Anyway, I thought it was worth jotting down a few of my thoughts about the camera specifically (in case anyone fancied getting one - they went on sale in the UK today) and also a few broader thoughts about my approach to video in general (after the jump).

Let’s start with the bad stuff.

Less good things about the Flip:

• No real zoom - it’s understandable, given the form factor of the device, but it’s a little weedy nonetheless. You can at least zoom while shooting, though, which puts it one step above the video I can get from my Canon Ixus.
• The big red light on the front when recording makes candid stuff hard. Not that I would creep up on people, obviously, but it’s very clear that you are recording.
• It seems to have a tendancy to record its own operating noise when really quiet (see the mesmerising waves video for example)
• Apparently there have been compatibility problems with OS X 10.4 though I’ve experienced no problems with that opertating system along with Windows XP.
• It feels a bit plasticky and it attracts dust like a magnet. This might say more about the state of the bottom of my handbag than anything else, of course.
• You’ve got no fine control over video settings etc. It’s point and shoot…and that’s it.
• The quality not that much better than a newish camphone (at worst) and on par/worse than a decent point & shoot.

Good things about the Flip:

• Cheap: mine was about US$150 from Best Buy, though they’ve just gone on sale at Amazon UK for £99 - yet again, the UK loses out when it comes to pricing…But even at under £100, it’s just cheap enough to be not an enormous tragedy if it gets trodden on at a festival.
• It’s stupidly simple: It Just Works. Big red button to start. Big red button to stop. Up and down to zoom (or volume control in playback mode). Left and right to browse videos on the disk. The bin icon to delete and, play to, er, play.
• It doesn’t look like a camcorder, which means I feel better about carrying it around and whipping it out in odd places. In fact, it looks like a phone, sort of.
• It’s been designed to be held like a thing you hold at the end of your arm, as people do these days, rather than as a thing that is like a camera and needs to somehow resemble an old camera with a viewfinder etc - it’s vertical and fits nicely in your hand which makes it more stable, though a friend pointed out that the location of the on/off button is unfortunately probably slightly better situated for right-handers (I don’t think it matters, myself, but then I’m not sinister…)
• It’s very portable - light, compact, no fold-out screen, which means less to break or damage. That also means it fits in places other cameras wouldn’t like - bluetacked to the dashboard of my car, mounted via gorillapod to a bike helmet or possibly even a kite. Actually, I haven’t tried it on a kite yet, but I bet it’d work - it’s light enough. Hmm..
• No cable or software required to get video off the device. It’s got a (rather phallic, admittedly) flip-out built in USB connection, and it just works like an external drive. It comes with its own video management software built in that interfaces with YouTube and the like, but if you don’t want to use that, you don’t have to.
• You can record up to an hour in one go - most camphones/p&s have a file size limit which means you can’t do that. So it’s more useful for recording interviews, presentations, journeys…
• It takes two AA batteries, so no chance of running out at a crucial moment and being unable to replace them from just about any shop. No charger required (and since I travel these days with about eight mains and/or USB chargers/cables, that’s quite a relief) and the battery life is surprisingly good, actually - definitely several weeks of light use, and it does give you a good amount of warning before it conks out.

On balance, like the Asus EEEpc (another thing I got a while back and yet have singularly failed to write about here…sorry), the benefits (and cost) definitely outweigh the negatives, or at least they did for me. And besides, it’s a gadget. And we all know how I feel about gadgets.

I’ve cobbled some of the videos I’ve taken with the Flip into a set on Flickr, here, which is apt because Flickr starting to allow video is actually one of the reasons I got the camcorder in the first place.
(NB: Some of the following was taken from a comment I left on one of my videos in response to a commenter who said words to the effect of “Bah! Save it for YouTube! Video on Flickr sucks!”)

I’ve been using Flickr for several years and in the process have uploaded thousands of photographs: I’m an avid and passionate photographer, and a long-time member of the Flickr community.

I recently began experimenting with the idea of “long photographs” - a term I love, and something which I define as framed compositions which require an element of movement to come alive. You can see a good example of this here

or here

I like the challenge of finding new ways to record the reality of being in a particular moment, and sometimes video can do that better than a still photo. How many times have I tried to take a photo which captures the essence of a windy day, or what it’s like in London when it rains? Answer: loads. Sometimes still photos do it, and do it well - in fact, often a still can do it a hundred times more effectively than any moving image, but sometimes you need something else - movement, or sound - to accompany the image, to bring the reality of that scene to life.

One thing you’ll note about all the videos I take videos is that they’re short and unedited (with the tiny exception of when I’ve chopped it for brevity or sped it up to fit the 90 second limit). But they contain no music, narration or indeed narrative. The aim is to capture a slice of life in a photographic way, but using a different approach.

The nice thing about Flickr is that most people are willing to experiment - with different formats, styles and techniques, while understanding that it all comes from the same passion for the image - static or moving - that we share. Generally, the community of flickr users is supportive and constructively critical about such creative explorations. This audience is relatively small, but they have something crucial in common: a love of image-making.

On the other hand, YouTube is well-known for being a place to discover great video, but not necessarily to engage with like-minded others within the context of a love of video creation. In fact, often cynical, negative, discouraging and spiteful comments litter the tail end of every contribution (good, bad or indifferent), which makes it a rather poisonous place to participate.

I’m going to continue experimenting with short “long photograph”-style videos using the flip, just as I’m going to carry on experimenting with other methods of documenting the world around me; I hope the results speak for themselves.

PS No, I wasn’t paid or asked to write this. One of the nice things about being an independent blogger is that you only get my opinion on something when I actually want to write about it. That being said, if the Flip Video PR team wanted to bung me another one, I wouldn’t say no…