Still Image Quality from the Best Video Cameras
“musicmaster890″ was awestruck by the scenery in Seattle (specifically, the landscape shot in my recent video camera field test). He decided to take high quality stills and sew them together into single panoramic photos. I say the results were quite striking – further lending credibility to my argument that the Creative Vado balances color better than the Zi6 and the Mino HD.
I’ve uploaded these images to my Flickr account (obviously, opting to embed them in this post as well). If you’d like to view a higher resolution image, simply click the thumbnail. They were all taken from the videos in this series. No, I don’t live on a lake; the mirror effect was added for artistic purposes. The photos were not retouched in any other way.
- Pure Digital’s Flip Mino HD is, as expected, a bit washed out. Yes, all it needs is a bit of contrast and saturation adjustment, but this was lifted directly from a video. Wouldn’t you have better colors from your video camera without needing to edit in post?
- Kodak’s Zi6 does fairly well with contrast, but the sky is a tad oversaturated (almost looking like the Mino HD’s sky – minus the Mino’s inexplicable green tint).
- Thanks to its wide angle lens, Creative’s Vado HD captured much more (vertically) compared to the other two devices. The sky’s blue and the clouds’ orange seem true to my memory of the scene, too.
Which one looks best? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One thing’s for sure: I love my backyard!
Kodak Zi6
Creative Vado HD
Flip Mino HD
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12 Comments
Jacob Brauer
January 4th, 2009
at 12:04am
I agree. The Creative Vado HD has the best picture quality. The colors are more true than both the Zi6 and the Mino HD. I just wish I would have seen these comparisons before I went out and bought my Zi6. I’ll just have to be happy with what I have.
Pat Hale
January 4th, 2009
at 1:06am
… it is amazing to me how wonderful all three images are…
Lamarr Wilson
January 4th, 2009
at 1:27am
I ordered a Vado the other day. Come on and deliver Amazon!
HTM
January 4th, 2009
at 2:43am
I like the flip mino’s picture
Lisa Lee
January 4th, 2009
at 3:09am
Creative Vado for sure!! Beautiful!
Followed a bit behind by Kodak. The Flip is just “okay”.
Liam Forkings
January 4th, 2009
at 4:33am
Great Post Chris….
wookiehangover
January 4th, 2009
at 10:31am
I prefer the Vado HD as well, but if you really want to get your feet wet you should check out the color space in the high end Panasonic HD cameras–I work with the HPX3000 and the color space is ridiculously good, shots of people reading the phonebook look breath-taking.
Jeff
January 4th, 2009
at 11:33am
I like the Vado, but it makes the clouds look greenish at the sides. I think the second best is the Flip hands down! It picks up color for still images the best!
Sven Vollstag
January 4th, 2009
at 4:47pm
…[face palm]…
Francis Young
January 7th, 2009
at 5:44am
Jeez… They all look very good! I have gotta say though that it is hard to determine which is better in a still life. They are primarily video camcorders so to decide between them in sitll lives without frame rate and audio consideration is very hard. I reakin though that the flip mini HD is the best. I prefer the very well defined images even if that means more contrast. The Zi6 tends to pick up less light and colour but blends colour better together. The least I favour has to be the Zi6 due to it’s lense capturing too much orange colour for my liking but also having a slight tiny of green. It is very close and a hard call to decide.
Francis Young
January 7th, 2009
at 5:45am
Jeez… They all look very good! I have gotta say though that it is hard to determine which is better in a still life. They are primarily video camcorders so to decide between them in sitll lives without frame rate and audio consideration is very hard. I reakin though that the flip mini HD is the best. I prefer the very well defined images even if that means more contrast. The Zi6 tends to pick up less light and colour but blends colour better together. The least I favour has to be the Vado due to it’s lense capturing too much orange colour for my liking but also having a slight tiny of green. It is very close and a hard call to decide.
imer
April 30th, 2009
at 9:33pm
Hi Chris,
I think it’s time to update this thread with more comparison.
One will be with RCA ez209hd and also sony webbie (they have two models).
Or maybe you already did and just haven’t posted any review?