The rise of the pocket video camera...

Much has been made of Pure Digital's Flip line of pocket video cameras. Inexpensive, convenient, easy to use and decent audio and video quality (for the price). Its made video as easy as point and shoot. Well the ante has been upped some from the vernable imaging gurus at Kodak. They have introduced the Vi6 pocket video camera that shoots in 720p, 60fps, 16:9 aspect ratio using H.264 encoding. This is compressed HD in a form factor about the size of a Flip Mino. Also, the Vi6 can take memory cards (SD/SDHC formats) up to 32 GB giving one lots of room to shoot all those lectures one is attending this semester. The Flip cameras only have built in 2 GB memory that is not expandable. Kodak's video quality is considerably better than the Flip provides at the moment, but I bet Pure Digital won't be standing still long, even if they just came out with the Mino. The camera will run about $180.00 plus a memory card.

note: Sanyo's Xacti line is also a great option for run and gun HD shooting, but alas, these cams are quite a bit more expensive and a little bigger (not as pocket friendly)