I purchased the Flip Mino HD (60 minute version) over a year ago and have used it for the last 15 months to document my travels (9 months in Europe) and a number of local events and activities (+ 6 months at home). In that time, I have discovered both the benefits and the drawbacks of this tiny HD camera and I’d like to share my findings with you today.

First of all, the camera’s basic features…

Basic Features

• Weighs only 3.3 ounces
• Claims to be the world’s smallest HD camcorder
• Super-slim, super-sleek design that fits into your pocket or your purse
• Simple user interface features one-touch recording and digital zoom, making HD video easier and more fun than ever
• Holds 60 minutes of HD-quality video on 4 GB of built-in memory; no tapes or additional memory cards required
• Convenient flip-out USB arm plugs directly into your computer to launch built-in FlipShare^TM software
• Built-in FlipShare software lets you easily email videos, edit individual clips, make custom movies, capture still photos from video, and even upload video to sharing sites like YouTube and MySpace
• Internal Li-ion battery recharges through the built-in USB arm while you’re plugged into your computer
• Produces incredible HD 720p (1280 x 720 resolution at 30 frames per second; 16:9 widescreen) video you’ll be able to enjoy on your HDTV
• Records high-quality H.264 videos that work with most video-playing applications, including Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player, and iTunes
• Watch videos instantly on TV with the included connector cable
• Plus, you get instant playback, pause, fast forward, rewind, zoom, and delete functions

Why I Bought This Camera

I bought the Flip Mino HD because I was going to Europe and wanted to have a camera that was small, lightweight, durable, capable of shooting in high-definition, and was easy to edit and upload to the Internet. In many ways, the camera has held up to all of these expectations – except for one (which I’ll talk about in a moment).

The Camera Body

The image to the left points out the camera’s basic parts, which I will now highlight and discuss below.

Screen

The screen on the Flip Mino HD is small. Super small infact! It is only 1.5 inches across and because of its small size, it is often times difficult to tell whether or not the image you are shooting is in frame, in focus, or even visible. A larger screen would certainly be nice.

That said, the screen does a good job of being visible in both dark and sunny conditions. I’ve never had a big problem viewing the screen while out shooting on a sunny day. This is one area where the screen does excell.

USB Port/Arm

The USB port is the camera’s main connection between itself and your computer. The port not only transfers files between the camera and your computer, but it is the USB port itself that is responsible for charging the camera. Just plug the camera into your computer and the camera instantly starts charging. This, of course, is a nice feature, but it would be nice if there were also a way to charge the camera without having to connect it to a computer. For example, what if you wanted to take an extended trip and did not want to bring your computer with you. It sure would be nice to be able to charge and/or offload the camera in some way without having to lug around a laptop or other such device.

Lens

The lens on the Flip Mino HD is a fixed lens, meaning that there really isn’t much to it. The lens is set to keep just about everything in focus and there is no way to adjust the focus after purchasing the camera. I found this out the hard way after the first camera I ordered was delivered with a broken, out of focus, lens. I was able to send the camera back and get a new one delivered to me at no cost, but it still gave me something worry about right from the get-go. That said, the camera I now have (the one with the working lens) has never had any problems with a shifting focus. Overall, however, the lens is weak and I’d love to see something with a few more options to it in future camera models.

Tripod Mount

At the bottom of the Flip Mino is a tripod mount, which I am both grateful for and have used hundreds of time. Being a solo traveler, it is the tripod mount on the bottom of my cameras that enables me to get in my own shots. This is a tiny feature, and understandably not one that everyone will use, but for someone like myself, this is a feature I am so glad the people and Mino decided to include.

Buttons & Controls

On the back of the camera are seven (7) buttons that control just about everything having to do with the shooting and management of your videos. The appeal of the Flip Mino for many people is it’s simplicity. There are no complicated options, settings, or controls… and many people will like this. The procedure for recording a video with this camera is incredibly simple: Click the big red button in the middle of the camera to start recording… and click it again to stop. Simple is good! However, I have found the simplicity of this camera to be quite restrictive at times.

For example, the zoom feature on the Flip is really quite bad. When you do zoom in, the movement is fast and choppy. On top of that, the zoom is a digital zoom, meaning that when you zoom in, you are losing picture quality. And when you zoom out, the movement is once again hard to control and much too fast. Being able to control the zoom speed would be nice… and getting rid of the digital zoom is an absolute must in my book.

Other buttons found on the back of the camera are for playback, pause, and video editing. Unfortunately, there are no real video editing features on the camera. The only really options are to start, stop, or delete the selected video files. I often times wish there was a fast forward button, so I could record a video and then watch it back by fast forwarding to the part I am most interested in seeing – rather than having to watch the entire video back from the beginning.

I also wish there were a way to make basic video edits from within the camera itself, so that I could cut off the beginning of the video and the end if needed. Because I travel by myself and have no one to hold the camera for me, I will often times set the camera up on a tripod, hit the record button, and then run in front of the camera as fast as I can. This, of course, produces a number of seconds of video where there is no one on the screen… and it becomes quite obvious that I am shooting these videos by myself. I wish there were a way to cut out these few extra seconds at the beginning and end of the video without having to export the entire video file to my computer, render the video, bring it into a video editing program, edit out these extra few seconds, export the video, and then finally upload it to the web. Being able to make these tiny edits from within the camera would make a huge difference and save me hours and hours of time. My digital still camera is capable of making these sorts of edits from within the camera itself… so why can’t the Flip do it?

Speaker

There is also a small speaker on the back of the camera. It works well and there isn’t much more to say about it. You can control the speak volume with some basic plus and minus controls.

Other Add-Ons

Other on-camera features include a power button, a place to mount an arm-strap, and a hole used to connect the Flip Mino HD directly to your television for instant video playback. The camera also comes with a lightweight, black, cloth cover, which I happened to lose in the first three days of owning the camera.

Video Quality

The overall video quality of the Flip Mino HD video camera is great – depending on the light conditions, the overall movement of the camera, and your own ability to properly frame your subject. The HD video quality is superb for such a small and basic camera… but there are some general problems with the video, which I’d like to point out now.

Mounted & Standing Still

When shooting a video that has been propped up on a tripod or is, for the most part, being used to shoot a still subject, the video quality can be quite excellent. Just look at the totally unedited video below, which I shot while in Athens, Greece in September of 2009. The camera is on a tripod, not moving, and the subject matter (me) is relatively still for most of the video.

As you can see, the quality here is quite astounding. But now watch the video below, which is a video I shot while walking through an old-world bazaar in Skopje, Macedonia.

Hand-Held & Moving

The video below was shot while I was walking through a crowd of people and street vendors. As you can see, the video is quite shaky and difficult to watch. I was doing my best to make the video as smooth as possible while I walked through the mass of people, but the end result was quite disappointing. If you look closely, you will also see that when there are moments of mass movement, the video becomes distorted and wavy. This is something I have noted repeatedly with the Flip Mino and is not something I am used to seeing on other high-quality video cameras. Movement, it seems, is the number one enemy of the Flip Mino HD.

Battery & Memory Life

The camera’s battery life is good. I haven’t tested it to see exactly how long it lasts, but that said, I have never run the battery out while shooting. The battery is automatically charged when the camera is connected to your computer, so this makes remembering to charge the device incredibly easy. The camera basically remembers to charge itself for you!

As for the camera memory, you can record about 60 minutes of HD video to the camera’s internal 4-GB memory card. This is a good length of time and I have rarely wished I had more time to record to. However, there have been times when the camera filled up and I was wishing there were a way to easily change out the memory card with another – so that I didn’t have to stop and waste a huge amount of time offloading the current content to my computer. It would be nice if you could simply swap out the existing memory card with another SD-like card, which could then be instantaneously used to capture more video. My still camera is capable of doing this… and it’s a feature I’d love to see in future Flip cameras.

Included Software

The Flip Mino HD comes with some basic video editing and management software, which I have basically ignored. The software is so incredibly basic that it does not meet my needs. It may work for those who know absolutely nothing about video and basic editing software, but for me the included software is absolute junk. Not recommended.

Playback, Editing & Video Conversion

The biggest problem with the Flip HD video camera is that when I do want to take it into an editing software program (such as Vegas Video or Adobe Premiere), I can’t pull the video files directly into the software. Whatever format the Flip records to (MP4) is not supported by my editions of Vegas or Premiere, and I therefore have to convert the video before I can import it into my editing software. This is a negative because 1) it adds an extra step and takes more of my time and 2) the conversion process degrades the video quality – not something I want from a a video shot in HD.

If I could simply pull the recorded MP4 video files directly off of the Flip camera, edit them in Vegas or Premiere (or any other such program), and then quickly export the videos to my computer and upload them to the Internet, that would be great! But because I have to convert the video files (sometimes twice – once for the video and once for the audio), the editing process with the Flip HD becomes a huge pain in the ass. If this single feature were to be improved upon… or the camera were to come with basic editing software that was capable of controlling edit points, titles, and basic audio levels and transitions, this camera would be a knock-out. But the way it currently is, I find myself getting constantly aggravated and upset at the overall time commitment this camera requires of me.

I spent 9 months in Europe, shot a ton of video and edited/uploaded very few videos (far less than I wanted to) because the video editing process with the Flip Mino HD is so incredibly time consuming.

Strengths

The best thing about the Flip Mino HS is that it is small, discrete, and easy to use. I love the fact that the camera starts charging as soon as I connect it to my computer and I am often times amazed at just how good the quality of this little HD camera really is.

Weakenesses

That said, the Flip HD is incredibly limited in its options and I would love to see some basic features such as focus, zoom control, and basic in-camera editing being added to the device in future models.

My biggest complaint however, is that the Flip HD is not compatible with my current video editing software, which requires me to convert all files first, before I can even begin to edit them… and this wastes a huge amount of time and degrades the overall image quality for my videos. In the next camera I buy, I want to have the option or recording my videos in a format that is compatible with my editing software – even if it means being able to shoot less overall video with the camera itself. I’d also like to have the option, much like my regular still camera does, of being able to record to an SD memory card, which I can then pull out and replace with a new card when/if the card even becomes too full.

Conclusion

My overall assessment of the Flip Mino HD video camera is that it is a nice little, amateurish camera. If you are happy with simple point and shoot operations and don’t mind the sometimes shaky video that this tiny camera produces, then this is one HD camera you may very well enjoy. But for me however, I want something with a few more features. I love the size of this camera and I like the fact that it is so simple to use, but I want to be able to zoom, focus, and shoot video of moving objects. More than anything, however, I want a camera that can co-exist with my current video editing software. At the moment, that just isn’t the case and it’s making me somewhat resent my purchase of this highly-recommend HD camera.

My Overall Rating: 7 out of 10

Product Review Information: I purchased this camera myself and have used it for well over a year before writing this review. This review contains affiliate links to Amazon.com.

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My first trip by bike took place when I was just 17 years old. It was 2001, I had just graduated from high school and I wanted to do something big before I went off to college and began my professional career. The idea for a bike tour came mainly from my Uncle Tom, who had recently completed a bike tour in Ireland and suggested I do something similar by riding my bike from Oregon to Mexico along the California Coastline.

Being just 17 years old, I had to convince my parents that this was something I was capable of doing. With my Uncle’s help, my parents conceded and said I could take the trip, but they insisted that I find people to travel with.

In order to make this happen, I recruited three of my best friends to join me on various legs of the journey. My friend Jason Weber rode the first left (from Eureka, CA to San Francisco). Jason June rode the second leg (from San Francisco to Camarillo, CA). And Ryan Nakashima rode with me on the final leg of the trip (from Camarillo, CA to the Mexican border).

Ryan and his sister recently came to visit me at my home in Park City, Utah, and while they were here I sat down with Ryan and asked him to talk about the things he remembered from that first trip by bike in the summer of 2001.

During our talk Ryan and I discuss:

• How I was able to convince Ryan to come with me on the trip.
• How we were able to convince Ryan parents to let him join me on my ride.
• How much training Ryan did to prepare for the journey.
• Where we spent our nights in Southern California and how this compared to the rest of the trip.
• An embarrassing moment that I will likely never forget (WARNING: It involves poop!)
• What it felt like to reach the Mexican border on that last day.
• A horrible accident that happened just as the trip came to an end.
• And a whole lot more!

The listen to my interview with Ryan Nakashima, just click play on the video below. I had to split the interview into two parts because we went slightly over the 10-minute YouTube time restriction. Enjoy!

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Gobi Desert, Mongolia, June 2009.

“The Wind. It howls, yells, screams in my face. It grabs me by the shoulders and tries to wrench me back to China. It’s forceful, ferocious, determined. But so am I. I’m further from home than I’ve ever been. I’m out of water and food. I’m scared. It wouldn’t be so bad if not for the wind. It seems intent on stopping me. Each time I press down on a pedal it’s a struggle. My mouth has dried up. Sand works its way around my glasses and into my eyes. I imagine what it would be like to disappear. I could leave a last message on my video camera, like a black box on a plane. Or would that be a bit over dramatic?”

I had been on the road for nearly one year. I had left Brisbane, Australia, on the 10th of August 2008, in my quest to reach Copenhagen, Denmark, by the 6th December 2009. The day before the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the COP15, would begin.

The journey preparations had been hurriedly thrown together from June. I didn’t know what I was doing, I was trying to turn a pipe dream into reality with a tight deadline. Copenhagen, I wanted to get there in time to demand change, to demonstrate the capacity to travel great distances in a sustainable way, to demonstrate the commitment needed to stop climate change. I was a 27 year old social worker from Canberra, who had never cycled more than 3 days in a row, but I was determined to do something about the greatest threat facing the planet and this was my way.

I didn’t even have a bike. I remember asking people who had cycled over continents for advice, but all they would tell me was that I’d work it out along the way. I was frustrated with their lack of specifics ,but I guess that was how it turned out. I must say I don’t share their guidance style. Now if anyone asks I try to tell them all the things that I had wanted to know. But it is true, you work it out along the way.

I didn’t know how it was going to work but I thought that somehow my cycle would do something good. I talked to Greenpeace, Oxfam and Friends of the Earth. A few businesses helped me out with the cost of gear and priceless advice. But I needed to be on the road if I was going to make it to Copenhagen in time. So before I knew it and before I was ready I was crossing Story Bridge Brisbane and entering the world.

It was really once I arrived in China that I felt I wasn’t doing it right. It was March 2009 by then. I mean, I’d made it far enough to think that Copenhagen was possible. I had cycled through the harsh dry expanse of the North Australian Outback, admittedly learning the rules of hydration the hard way after a night in the hospital with heat exhaustion. I had eventually made it to Timor-Leste when I again paid the hospital a visit, this time to receive 7 stitches in my face after collapsing on the road. It seems I hadn’t learned the hydration rules properly after all.

South East Asia had been strange. The cycling had been tough. The heat, the rain, the volcanoes of the Indonesian Archipelago. The tourists. I was shocked by the cultural, ethical void created by the swarms of hedonists who had colonized vast swaths of land up and down the coast lines. Thailand, never formally occupied by an invading foreign force was now totally economically dependent on tourism. Gigantic, red bellies swayed up and down the beaches, searching for a free plastic deck chair.

But I had started to question my endeavor. Was I really having any impact on anything? Was anyone talking any notice of what I was doing? I had received a bit of media attention in Australia ,but so what? That didn’t mean anyone had decided to get out of their car and onto a bike.

I determined to do things differently. I was tired, lonely and about to head into Mongolia. I proposed the Ride Planet Earth Challenge; could people travel in a sustainable way at least 1 tenth of what I was doing on my bike, at least 25km a week? Leave the car in the garage. I began setting up the Ride Planet Earth international day of action for the 6th of December 2009. I had seen the impact long distance adventure cycling had on people. They were usually amazed, excited, inspired. Unless they were fellow long distance cyclists, to whom the whole thing was quite normal. But that was the point, to make it normal. There were so many people I met, cycling from Europe to Asia or back in the other direction, all whose actions could inspire others to change their behavior. Some were making use of the fact, raising money for charities, or doing something similar to me, trying to promote sustainability and environmental protection. But what if we could all work together and encourage people at home, in the cities, to get out on their bikes. Jointly demonstrate the capacity and willingness of ordinary people to fight climate change.

A combination of luck and the hospitality of Mongolian herders kept me alive and on course through the Gobi and on into Russia. Cycling through Mongolia had been the best and hardest 32 days of my life. I will never forget the shimmering glow that covered the Steppe as the sun set and the icy dew glimmered. Alone but for the earth and my bicycle, I felt I had left reality all together and entered Imagination. Reality only returned much, much later in the snow outside the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, chanting along with 99, 999 others, demanding the action from governments that ultimately didn’t materialize.

I was slowly joined by more and more people as we approached Denmark. The first in Georgia, then another in Turkey, then Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia… and those who couldn’t join what became known as the Cycle Change Convoy, who joined us in their city or town by arranging actions that would take place on the day we reached Copenhagen, the 6th of December. More and more people wrote to me saying they were going to ride that day, setting up cycling rallies, demonstrations, critical mass rides and cycling picnics all over the world.

On the 5th of December 2009 we had arrived in Roskilde, 25 kilometres from Copenhagen. I had been joined by cyclists from all over Europe, Spain, England, Holland and Germany. And Ride Planet Earth would include events taking place on every continent. We arrived in the center of Copenhagen the next day with a group of 60. Carrying banners, singing chants, urging “Cycle Change, not Climate Change”. We were joined in action by thousands of other people from around the world, in places like Dar Es Salaam, London, New York, Sydney, Shanghai and Quito. A week later I was meeting with the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, giving him messages from participants from around the world, urging immediate climate action.

The COP15 was a failure. But the inspirational actions by hundreds of thousands of people around the world showed the capacity of the human community to ensure a safe and sustainable future. Cyclists must play a vital part in working towards that goal and will surely continue to do so in the upcoming years.

For more information on Ride Planet Earth and to find out how to participate this year please see www.rideplanetearth.org or email Campaign Manager Kim Nguyen at kim@rideplanetearth.org.

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Packing for a bicycle tour is one thing. Preparing your body and mind for life on the road is another.

This past Thursday, the Adventure Cycling Association published an article I wrote about how to prepare for a long-distance bicycle tour.

In the article I talk about 5 easy things you can do to prepare your body and your mind for life on the road.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the points I make inside my Adventure Cycling guest post:

1. Get In Shape — Ride Your Bike
2. Become A Strongman — Add Some Weight
3. Understand Your Gear — Practice Packing Your Panniers/Trailer
4. Know What It’s Like — Live Off Your Bike
5. Toughen Up — Sleep On The Ground

To read the full article on the Adventure Cycling web blog, just click here.

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During the interview Jerry and I discussed:

• How and why did I got started with bicycle travel.
• How traveling by bike at a young age is different than coming into bike travel when you are older.
• Why I started BicycleTouringPro.com and what I hope to achieve with the site.
• Whether or not bicycle touring is something everyone can do.
• What characteristics or physical traits people need in order to successfully pull off a long-distance bike tour.
• The biggest benefits I have received from my travels by bike.
• The benefits others can expect to receive from their own bicycle touring adventures.
• Where I see bike touring going in the future.
• Why I often times compare bike travel to sports like skateboarding and surfing.
• Highlights from my 9-month bike tour through 16 European countries.
• My favorite travel locations here in the United States and overseas.
• And a whole lot more!

To listen to my interview with “The Bicycle Nut”, simply click the play button on the player below.

Click here to download this interview as an MP3

For more information on Jerry Goodwin and his “Bicycle Nut” radio show, please visit www.thebicyclenut.com.

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