by Dee Delaney

Created on: January 16, 2011

When I found out that I had to do some video recording as part of my job, I was vaguely alarmed. To my surprise, the piece of equipment that I was given was not much bigger than my mobile phone; I had been introduced to the wonderful world of digital photography in the shape of the Flip Mino Video Camera … and I was hooked!

As part of my teaching, I had to divide the class up into five groups, present them with their recording task, give them a camera, and get them all back into class with a 10 minute documentary filmed – all within an hour and a half. There was little time for explanations.

~~Description~~
The Flip camera that I used measured 100 x 50 x 16mm – absolutely tiny compared to my imaginings. It feels sturdy in the hand and has a robust, shiny black exterior casing.

The front of the camera contains only the lens; on the back a few simple buttons to operate the camera. A small silver ridged button on the side switches the camera on and off, and a slightly larger button moves downwards to flip the USB connection out of the side.

The operating buttons are very simple. There are only seven; a very large red button that starts and stops the recording process with a simple depression. Two backlit touch buttons containing right and left arrow symbols sit to either side of this large red button and allow you to control the skip forward and backward functions during viewing. Above the red button are three further buttons. The first has the easily identifiable symbol of a PLAY button, the second has a PLUS symbol, and can be used to control zoom and volume during playback; the third is the familiar BIN symbol from any compute desktop. Underneath the red recording button is a MINUS symbol, which has similar functions to the PLUS button.

The viewing frame is displayed in a small colour screen just above the record button. This screen measures 3cm by 2 cm and is surrounded to right and left by small speakers.

~~Ease of Use~~
I found the camera completely intuitive to use,  so when I presented them to my class I assumed that as teenagers they would have no trouble at all.  As part of the lesson plan, I instructed them to become familiar with all the functions of the camera so that they could film, stop filming, zoom in and out, and delete shots with confidence. On average it took them two minutes  to become completely familiar with the camera.

As you switch it on, the display screen activates to display your shooting frame. A message

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