Documenting products and testing (by Conrad H. Blickenstorfer)
Sometimes a picture says a thousand words, the old saying goes, and at times that is true. However, when it comes to product testing, a video can say more than a thousand pictures. That's because it's easy to do a pretty picture. But in this day and age of image processing, you can't ever be quite sure if it's real of has been Photoshopped. Video, that's another story. What you see is definitely pretty much the way it is.
Here at RuggedPCReview.com we began doing videos just for fun. Someone said, "Hey, as long as we're dropping this rugged machine in the water or take it apart, shouldn't we document that on video?" And so we did. The productions, for now, are anything but professional. We use only the most rudimentary of scripts. We have a tripod. And we usually use the "YouTube" mode on a Casio Exilim digital camera for the filming. Underwater we've used waterproof SeaLife ECOshot, SeaLife DC600, Canon G10 and various Olympus cameras to document things. Then we cut the videos together in Apple iMovie and upload them to YouTube.
The response has been quite positive. For example, we took a Trimble Nomad scubadiving. That video has been viewed thousands of times. People simply like to see how it all works instead of just reading about it. We can SAY a machine is sealed and could actually be used underwater. But actually seeing an editor take it under, using handwriting recognition in scuba gear, that's entirely more convincing.
So for now, below are some of the RuggedPCReview.com test videos we've done.
