People seem to be in love with the new iPhone camera, which is quite an improvement over the camera used in the first generation and 3G. I haven’t seen that many video comparisons of what its video looked like compared to the inexpensive video cameras out there such as the Flip so I thought I’d do a brief comparison. [Update - for more info on the Flip Ultra, see here (Camcorderinfo review) or here (Amazon page with user reviews). By the way, I purchased my Flip Ultra 30 minute on sale from Amazon for $60 a couple months ago.]

First, the iPhone 3GS:

Second, the Flip Ultra:

A couple of notes. Since these get transcoded by YouTube, what this test shows is how the video from these cameras look like on YouTube. This is perfectly fine, since that’s how we’re uploading and watching our videos more and more. I think I might next upload a phone video to compare YouTube to MobileMe, but that will be for next time. But be advised that this transcoding process softens up the images of both a bit.

The most obvious difference between the two is the color cast: the iPhone’s is cooler, the Flip Ultra’s is warmer. It also seems as though the Flip Ultra’s exposure is a bit brighter, maybe a a half-stop, maybe a little more.

Both videos have the visible CMOS artifacting at times (the jelly rolll), but nothing that’s not to be expected with this technology and nothing extreme at all.

Conclusions? I think I prefer the full size video from the iPhone on the computer, but maybe give slight preference to the Flip Ultra on YouTube, perhaps for its slightly brighter exposure.

One last note: the famous video editing on the iPhone is destructive. I haven’t heard this mentioned many places, so user beware before trying this feature on footage you don’t want to throw away.