Kodak announces ZX1 video camera
Thursday, March 12th, 2009The Kodak ZX1 has a candy-bar form factor with a fixed focus lens and 1/4.5″ CMOS image sensor optimized for high speed 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) high definition video capture at up to 60 frames per second. It’s also possible to slow the framerate to 30 frames per second at full resolution – reducing the file size by about 20% to roughly 20 minutes per gigabyte. Dropping the resolution to VGA (640 x 480 pixels) at 30 frames per second saves greatly on file size, with about 80 minutes per gigabyte. The lens used is identical to that in the Kodak ZI6, with one exception – Kodak has removed the Macro switch from the ZX1. Native sensor resolution is 1.6 megapixels, although still images can be interpolated to a maximum of three megapixels. The image sensor is identical to that in the Kodak ZI6, and given that it has no optical zoom the Kodak ZX1 instead offers 2x digital zoom.
Showing its intention as a video camera aimed at teens and an active lifestyle, the Kodak ZX1 has a splashproof, dustproof body that’s certified to the IP43 standard – meaning it is great for outdoor use, but not capable of being operated underwater. Another difference from the previous ZI6 model is that the ZX1 has a slightly smaller 2.0″ LCD display to fit in its smaller and more rugged body, instead of the 2.5″ type in its sibling. Videos and still images are stored on Secure Digital cards up to a maximum of 32GB. The ZX1 has HDMI connectivity, and includes the relevant cable in the product bundle. Power comes from two AA batteries, and Kodak is also including two NiMH rechargeable batteries and a charger in the package. There’s no bundled flash card, a smart move given that those bundled with most digicams are too small to be of any real utility, and serve only to increase the pricing.
Kodak’s ZX1 natively mounts on modern operating systems as a USB Mass Storage Class device, and videos are stored as H.264 .MOV files with AAC/LC codec audio, a format that was consciously chosen to offer native support in Apple’s iLife multimedia software, meaning that OS X users will be able to use their ZX1 with no additional software needed. PC users are catered for with a bundled media player and transcoding software that can convert the videos to other formats used by some of the key PC applications. Cleverly, Kodak has bundled this software in a read-only partition on the camera’s internal memory, meaning that the software is immediately available whenever you might want to connect the camera to a new PC, and can’t be lost.
The Kodak ZX1 will ship from early April 2009, priced at about $150. Five body colors will be available – black, blue, red, pink and yellow.
