How the iPod Nano's Video Abilities Stack Up 216
andylim writes "Recombu.com has pitted the iPod Nano's video capabilities against an iPhone 3GS, a Nokia 5530 XpressMusic and Flip Mino HD. This simple test shows how the camera deals with motion, colour and audio. The iPod Nano's camera seems to offer a basic yet decent video experience and some might say delivers a higher picture quality than the iPhone 3GS's camera. What's interesting is how well it deals with close-ups."
make a real camera please (Score:5, Interesting)
I would sure love to have a "real" camera from Apple. Strap some proper optics to the iPhone platform and you've got a killer product: photos automatically GPS tagged and seamlessly uploaded in the background to your iphoto library, with support via apps for any kind of online hosting, plus specialty stuff like time lapse or other artistic/scientific needs. Full HD video of course, perhaps even with wifi streaming to an apple TV for instant nostalgia. Price it to compete with entry level DSLR and they would capture a huge chunk of market share overnight. Maybe not the volume of the cell phone market, but great margins.
Re:The problem isn't optics its processsing power (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem isn't processing power, it's sensor readout speed. Most CCD or CMOS chips don't have a huge bandwidth, so even high-end cameras like the EOS 5D II are forced to use only a small portion of its millions of pixels (this leads to nasty artefacts like aliasing and increased noise). Also, on CMOS sensors you want to avoid using all the bandwidth for transferring video, because otherwise you get a significant rolling shutter ("jell-o") effect. Even good cameras like EOS 5D II have a huge jell-o effect at 30 fps, so this is really a big problem. This means you have to choose between a high-pixel count sensor geared towards still pictures, or a lower-pixel count sensor gear towards video. Given the "more megapixels is better" mentality, manufacturers will tend to go for the first route.
Some new sensors are designed for very high bandwidth, but they're still expensive and reserved for professional video shooting [red.com].
Re:make a real camera please (Score:2, Interesting)
The DSLR I use sometimes for work has a full auto mode, it isn't that scary.
A perfect device for video surveillance (Score:3, Interesting)
After seeing what the new Nano is capable of, I can't help but think how easy it would be to turn it on and let it just record your life for 8 or 16 hours at a time. It's so small that you could easily carry it in such a way that the camera lens would be exposed, but the rest of the Nano would be hidden.
I've had plenty of incidents in my life when something interesting happens and afterwards I say "If only I'd had a videocamera with me." So now with the Nano, why not just record my entire day, download anything of interest, then start all over again the next morning? That way I'm never caught off guard. Anything I see, my Nano sees, and I have a permanent record.
The new Nano isn't just an MP3 player - it is a very inexpensive and compact video surveillance device. For a lot of people it will be worth buying just for that feature alone. The only questions are how long the battery will last in video record mode, and whether the screen can be shut off during recording.