iPhone 4S video proves itself worthy for impromptu news video

The iPhone 4s shoots in 1080p. Awesome.

On Wednesday I showed up to a court hearing in which I didn’t expect a high-profile defendant to be there.

I had a big news camera in my car, but I didn’t get it down because dealing with security at this particular courthouse is a red-tape nightmare and I wouldn’t have been able to enter the courtroom with it.

I was confident if the guy  I was looking for was at his hearing, I could exploit the HD video camera on my iPhone 4s.  The battery life is excellent and the software is stable.

I do have an Evo droid-based cell phone.  I tried playing with the video on the phone before I arrived at court, but the battery life on this device is unreliable and the video kept freezing during recording.

Turns out the defendant I was looking for was there.

Take a look at  my story from Wednesday in which I used an iPhone 4s to record a walking-shot of former sheriff Patrick Sullivan:

While the video I shot at the courthouse isn’t perfect, it’s pretty good coming from a 5 ounce device.

The quality is 1080p.  Can’t complaint about that.

We mentioned on air at 11, 12 and 4pm that my video was coming from a cell phone.  But at 6pm I decided it wasn’t even necessary….the video was that clean and crisp.

One of the few drawbacks from using my iPhone 4s is the slightly jittery video, but I gotta say even that’s forgivable.   Perhaps down the line, Apple may be able to upgrade the software to something similar like Sony’s SteatyShot feature.

For those of you who know me, I’ve supported mobile technology for news gathering.

While there are a lot of naysayers in my industry, it’s hard to ignore the fact the technology is moving forward.  Such devices like the iPhone will be conventional TV news gathering tools.

Here’s some video I shot at DIA a few weeks ago using the iPhone 4s.  I even used iMovie to edit on the phone itself.