Review of KODAK PLAYTOUCH - Real Estate Video Sample w/ .5x wide angle lens

Yes,

Phil the Playtouch is an awesome camera in fact we used it yesterday with the wide angle to film Christmas and it was fantastic to use. 

I do have a new wide angle case made for it that fits perfect and looks great....slide on slide off in a second.  I will put those pics on our site and in the store sometime today. 

The importance of shooting wide:

1) less time to shoot a tour with less movements to capture the same area

2) Post production software that "stabilizes" video works in most cases by aligning shaky frames of video which of course then creates a jagged edge that is automatically cropped off.  So unstable video that is stabilized with software after filming that was shot at 33mm ends up at 36 or 40mm!  I will explain "stabilzing video" more in another blogpost but suffice it to say that after editing 1000's of videos for agents HDhat would consider the 16.5mm that the Playtouch shoots with the wide angle lens to be ideal.  After software stabilizing that may same video may go to 20mm or 22mm but that is still very good with an end result of a "Wide, Stable and Pro Looking" finished tour.
3) Stabilizer bar - For these small cameras like the Playtouch a bar will eliminate the twist of the wrist and little side to sides when walking.  In general this will reduce the stabilzing figure by 3-5% and make some areas such as turns usable. 
NOTE:Many times turns are replaced with transitions because they just aren't done well.  This video will help to understand how to perform the turns better to produce usable stable turns http://www.hdhathomes.com/tours/2700_tourb.html 

Mark

Mark

Barbara, sorry for the delay in responding....we are moving or consolidating 3 offices into one big one...but all is semi in place now :).

The Kodak Playtouch is the way to go with the .5x wide angle lens case you can shoot video at 16.5mm and if we are editing the video the "warping" will be removed in our stabilizing process.  For photos you can simply zoom in just a bit or slide the case off and not use the lens.  However, zooming just a tiny bit will solve the issue and is super simple on the Playtouch with just a slide of the finger on the screen. 

Playback on the Playtouch is landscape so you get the full 3"  width of the screen to watch your clips and can even 'trim' clips right on the camera. The Kodak Playtouch if I could use one word to describe is simply a "fantastic" camera at that price point. 
It however is a $150 camera so don't expect miracles....so for example in real dark areas or dark homes there are no manual settings to adjust the exposure or brightness so you get what you get....but for the normal contemporary well lit home the Playtouch is an ideal camera. 
I have put some pics of the new Playtouch .5x wide angle lens case at the bottom of this post.  The case fits perfectly on the camera and can easily slipped off and on to use or not use the wide angle. 

Other Cameras in the $500 range w/lens:
The next step up would be the Sony HX-1 with the wide angle we offer.  It is a great, simple to use camera that is great for "home tours" but lacks an external mic jack for doing profile vids and videoblogging. The HX-1 has easy to change settings for exposure to compensate for extremely lowlight areas and takes fantastic photos and instant panoramics.

Cameras in the $800+ Range
Beyond that price range and you get into the DSLR's which actually we are beginning to see agents moving in that direction.  In this price range and category individual preferences play a big part in the decison making on which camera and new choices pop up seemingly every week :). We will have samples from some newer models soon on our site.

Stabilizer Bar: 
For these small cameras the stabilizer bar is very useful to getting the best initial footage as possible....however machine/editing stabilzing is a "must" in my opinion for any handheld "walking" tour video.  So yes HDhat edits video but more importantly we cycle all the video clips through a machine intensive process of stabilzing the footage(in general this takes about 45minutes of machine time per tour).  This process "lines up" all the thousands of frames in a video and then crops the edges so that an agents handheld video clips look like they were filmed on track system.

PICTURES BELOW OF NEW KODAK PLAYTOUCH WIDE ANGLE LENS CASE - SIMPLY SLIDE ON OR OFF

Lots more blogposts on video coming!