So, I want to tell you about the best electronic purchase I made this summer. A few years ago I bought a little flip mino, before they had the HD version. I was pretty impressed and I used it a lot… that summer. Since then it’s spent most of it’s time in my office or in my backpack. The audio and video was pretty good, but for most of what we were doing, it wasn’t useful enough. Also, if I had my digital camera with me, it was easier just to use it to take pictures and video. Since then the flip has evolved and has become a much better camera, but not enough for me to want to upgrade.

Then this summer a coworker brought a PlaySport to camp, which is Kodak’s version of the Flip. When he told me he got it, I told him he should have gotten the Flip. Then I saw him shooting video with it in the pool. “That thing’s waterproof?” I was warming up to this device by Kodak. For the Flip, you have to buy a special case to go underwater. Then later one night, I saw what sealed the deal. We have a $2000 3CCD camera that we use for ministry. We were shooting a lot of video at camp with the nice camera. We were watching on of the daily videos when all of a sudden the person holding the camera jumped in the pool and went underwater. I freaked. I assumed that our $2000 camera just took a dip. Once reason hit me, I was amazed. The quality of the PlaySport was so good, I didn’t notice when the video switched from the nice 3CCD HD camera to the PlaySport. I was sold.

A few weeks later I picked up a PlaySport and I’ve been very happy with the purchase. It takes great 5MP pictures as well as fantastic video at up to 1080P. I put in a 8Gb SD Card so I have plenty of room for 2 hours of HD video. I love that it has removable memory and battery, so when I travel I can bring back-up just in case.

I bought it on my way down to San Marcos to go tubing down a river. Below is a video I made of our trip down the river. It was liberating to be in the water without worrying about the camera getting wet. The video was put together using Animoto and I didn’t pay for a high-resolution version of the video from Animoto, so don’t let that distract you. The quality really is amazing.

One of the best parts about the PlaySport is that it only costs $130. Seriously, that’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? You can pick up your PlaySport right here. Hurry up, the summer is almost over and you still have some time to capture some great memories on the lake or in the pool.