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(More customer reviews)Update 9-16-2010 This is no longer their top of the line cam - the new one is based on this camera but includes a GPS and tags your images with location. You'll need their viewer to see the map movement as the video plays.
Update: 7-2010
Tonights episode of Dirty Jobs showed this camera strapped to a head strap for the host, Mike Rowe, who was 408 feet above the cement floor decending & window cleaning in Hawaii. Troy chickened out on the first 100 feet so alot of the contour HD footage made it into the show. By the 300 foot balcony they got troy on the ropes but his hair got snagged in the safely line and had to get his second "shearing" on Dirty Jobs - it was also filmed on contour HD cams 300' above hawaii. The quality was as good as the cable company could deliver in their 6:1 re-compression of HD. A full HD viewfinderless camera has value when you must get the shot.
using a sandisk 16GB microSD card and the maximum detail [1080P] + best quality I could get 3 hr, 6 minutes of video recorded with battery leftover. If you use the lower resolution setting the battery may be the limiting factor - I have not tried that yet.
I bought this to produce a bluray disc of a police helicopter team, using a gyro stabilized canon professional camera in back and wanting a 2nd angle up front. This comes with an adhesive patch that sticks to the side of the pilot's helmet to give a 135 degree wide field of view. The integrated rails on both sides permit the ultimate flexibility in mounting the camera, and second options for this cam are car mounts, etc.
The quality is GREAT. The lens is the downfall - there is some pincushion effect due to the inexpensive lens and wide angle. I'll deal with it for the price and the shots you can get with it, plus I can trim out the distortion in post editing.
One note - the output is .mov which is fine for macs, but for pc's you will need to transcode if you run premiere pro cs4 from adobe as it does not import .mov natively. Perhaps that is a good time to clip the edges where the bent picture is most noticable.
Another factor to like is the simplicity. With gloved hands you slide the top forward to record and back to stop, with a beep to start and and double beep to stop - it's very hard to mess up except for your horizon, which is why there are detents and lasers.
Detents and lasers?
Yes, - there are detents in the event you mount it on the right and left hand side of a helmet or rotate it in a mount. The 2 lasers can be turned on to tell you what is level with resepect to the imager. This is helpful when you rotate it but you must manually keep track of the bottom of the screen (below the laser points ) as you rotate it, otherwise your output will be upside down.
For the price, you simply can not beat it. Buy a 16 GB sandisk micro-sd card to go with it Sandisk 16GB Microsd Card Note that they have a low packaging option which the card is inside a plastic carrier and inside an ESD bag but no box or other trash with it that goes in the landfill - smart packaging.
One of the other great applications for this is taking HD video where you otherwise would NOT take your $3K camera - the beach - the water park - etc. You won't get the absolute best quality but you will get 1080 p hd that is playable on macs or pcs in native players!
Another great use is for children. It's easy to use, inexpensive, and highdef. For the kids who are beyond the toy grade cameras but not ready for a professional unit, this fills the gap. Adults will love its simplicity. On or Off - no fancy buttons to press, and everything complex is set while attached to the computer.
Finally there is my use - have a 2nd angle view for use with NLE systems. You can now do a/b video fades by time syncing the output from this camera with your primary cam. Be sure to expose something that will sync the two that gets recorded on both at the start of shootng.
I'm only deducting a star becuase of the pincushion effect of the lens. I realize for this price you are not getting an HD lens, and I realize that HD will show any defects, but a few more dollars in the lens would have made this 5 stars - it is oh so close. Be sure to pick up extra memory and batteries if you plan to use it at maximum definition because it makes some big files fast.
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