Not that I’m denying that these HD video claims refer to valid, useful features. The point is that the marketing claims lead the less experienced buyer to assume they will be able to produce professional looking videos all by themselves, using just their shiny new camera. This is clearly not the case.

I don’t yet own an HD video capable camera nor have I any experience of making videos beyond quick, jerky clips grabbed with my non-HD compact camera or cell phone. But listening to podcasts like TWIP I have come to realise that just because we hear that some TV show episode was shot with an HD-capable digital SLR camera, we can’t make the assumption that they used just the camera. After listening to these podcasts I’ve come to realise that many accessories, often very expensive accessories are used as well. Professional quality external audio recording equipment, a variety of rigs to steady the camera or move it smoothly and devices to allow a focus puller to focus the camera are just some I have heard mentioned. Learning this has made me realise that just buying a new DSLR that shoots HD is not going to let me produce anything approaching decent videos; not without learning a lot about how movies are made and buying more equipment any way.

This was brought home to me on Monday when I came across a blog post highlighting Apple of My Eye, one of the first HD videos to be shot with the new iPhone 4. The movie is short and deceptively simple and the blog post says “Shot and edited entirely on the iPhone 4 / iMovie App (in 48 hours)”. This doesn’t mean that some guy just grabbed his phone and fired off a quick video though. At the end of the movie is additional footage showing how the movie was made. This makes if abundantly clear that without specific knowledge and extra equipment, you are not going to be producing quality video.

So, go ahead and buy yourself a new, HD capable camera; but realise that you will have to go through a steep learning curve, invest in buying or renting more equipment, and enlist the help of friends before you will be able to produce that hit movie you dream of.

Creative Commons licensed image courtesy of Damon Duncan.

I’ve had a look at the features and think these are the coolest of them.

• I love the full QWERTY keyboard. Having a deaf wife that relies on text messaging, I think that all handsets should have these.
• The wide screen and trackball are great too as they will make web browsing that much easier. I do a lot of web browsing on my phone.
• The GPS and mapping features are nice for someone like me that is always on the lookout for and trying to find directions to cool locations to photograph.

I have no interesting cell phone related stories. I am “teh boring” when it comes to cell phones. I always have the more affordable, less featured handsets and have never lost, destroyed or had one stolen. So I think I need to win this shiny, feature-packed smartphone so that I can step into the light and catch up with all the cool kids of the cell phone world.

I have a few other problems with this phone.

• The combination of shiny silver keys and a blue backlight make it impossible to read the keys in bright light unless I hold the phone at a peculiar angle.
• The battery cover is a flimsy plastic thing that kept coming off when the phone was in my pocket and lowers the stylish, weighty feeling of quality of the phone. My very stylish solution to it coming off involves a piece of duct tape stuck on the back of the phone.
• Being a smartphone, albeit only a Symbian S40 one, it is reasonable to expect that the phone will be used for Internet browsing. The native browser is a rather clunky WAP browser and I have installed Opera Mini, which works perfectly. The only problem in this regard emanates from the ridiculously short time that the backlight comes on for each time a key is pressed, making it impossible to read a screen full of information without constantly pressing a key to turn the backlight back on.
• The charger has a very thin cable with a very soft rubber covering. Due to its flexibility it has developed a break in the cable where it joins onto the charger and it takes some jiggling to get it to charge. I will undoubtedly need to buy another charger before my phone is due for replacement. This is quite ridiculous considering that Nokia chargers have traditionally been quite robust. Whether they are trying to reduce wight or simply cut costs I think that they need to go back to a more robust cable.