Playing with the Zumi

Posted by Steve Hull on Wednesday 15 September 2010 at 11:08am
Tags: camcorder | cameras | equipment | inspiration | photography | video |

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The Digital Harinezumi 2++ a.k.a. the Zumi. Image by JISC Digital Media.

The Zumi is a tiny (3 cm high, 9 cm side to side) camera/camcorder designed to look a bit like an old 110 Pocket Instamatic film cartridge (for those who can remember back that far). It's definitely lo-fi: video is standard NTSC (480i/30) and the colours are heavily saturated and contrasty, somewhat like old Super-8 film. (The Zumi website refers to its "melancholic image quality.") The camera function gives you a choice between 1024x768 and 2048x1536 pixels and you can also toggle the virtual film speed between ISO 100 and ISO 800. It has a self-timer and also allows you to select black & white or colour. You can record video without sound if you wish and there's a macro switch for doing very extreme close-ups. My favourite bit: the viewfinder is a metal rectangle that pops up on top of the camera. Seriously retro.

The menu system seems a bit clumsy at first but you very quickly get used to it. There's no USB port, so to transfer media you have to take out the microSD card, stick it in an SD adaptor and put it in your computer.

The Zumi is designed for fun and that's what it is. It's so small and light that you can easiily take it anywhere. The lo-fi quality and ease of use mean that you're not too fussed about getting your images just right. I very quickly found myself pulling it out again and again to take random shots of whatever caught my attention. Unless you have limitless disk space on your computer (not to mention a limitless capacity for boredom) you'll want to do some pretty severe editing of what you shoot when the time comes to upload it, but that's all part of the fun.

Here's an example of what it can do, shot in beautiful Berkeley Square (the one in Bristol, not the one with the nightingale):

Test footage shot on the Zumi.
If you cannot see the video above, please use this link to download the video file (2.5MB).

It'll set you back something in the £100 range -- a bit cheaper if you get it from the US but the Royal Mail will hit you for delivery and customs, so it ends up costing much the same.

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