Vacation season is here, and the Flip Mino-HD is a great camcorder to take with you:

• It's small enough to fit in your pants or shirt pocket
• You can fire it up in just a few seconds, and shoot a moment that might otherwise be lost
• You don't have to mess with settings
• It's unobtrusive enough that you're more likely to catch priceless candid moments
• Going to Disney World or another theme park? Grab the terror in the eyes of your loved ones on those thrill rides.

The list goes on. This is a camcorder you can take with you and use in situations that you otherwise probably couldn't or wouldn't.

If you take along a laptop, you can download your clips in the hotel room, and recharge your Flip from the laptop. You can look at the clips of the day, save the good ones on your computer, and toss the rest, clearing out the Flip's memory for the next day's adventures.

Here are some tips for making your vacation videos better:

Think about your shots as telling a story -- not about just capturing scenery. Take short shots of ten or twenty seconds, from different angles. The lighting will cause some angles to be better than others.
As with photography, candid is almost always better than posed.
Catch your subjects with the light in front of them, rather than behind them.

• Think about how to steady your shots. Plant your elbows against your chest, or steady the camera against a tree or fence post.
• If you're inclined to shoot video from the car (which is a tricky business, at best), shoot through a clean windshield, and avoid shooting out the side windows, which just gives you a lot of motion blur and very few usable shots.
• Keep your imagination engaged with the story you're telling. The story is about what happens, more than about what is.
• On a two-week vacation, there may be only one or two shots that catch the essence of a day. Look for those shots.

There are a couple of accessories to consider taking along with you. To keep your Flip's battery charged, consider one of these: