He's only gone and found another worthy of attetion under £100.
SVC200 is the best £100 action camera I've found (So far).
Impressive performance and value for the money.
The video review is worth watching if only to see the odd bloke at 13:48.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Stuff
New action cam recommended by "Techmoan"
(8 posts)-
Posted 11 years ago #
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I've been using my Kodak Playsport, with a £1 ebay handlebar camera mount for the last few days and I've discovered some mandatory features that I'd never considered before.
Not sure whether these are covered by the camera in this post, but here goes;1. It needs to have image stabilisation. The recordings I got from the playsport were rarely good enough to pick out an errant number plate.
2. Obvious enough, in hindsight, but battery and SD card life needs to be 2.5 x your commute time. I only get the chance to recharge kit at work so 45 minute charge on a 35 minute commute doesn't help.
3. This is the biggie; the camera needs to be able to be configured to overwrite old recordings. If I get hit by a van then I (or my heirs) will extract the video. Otherwise, we should assume than unsaved video is unwanted and that running out of SD card space means that the camera will recycle other recordings.
4. Nighttime. It needs to be able to record registration numbers at night.
5. The camera should be able to be recharged on the bike. Assuming the van missed me, then I want to get to work and just plug the bike in to recharge.Who knew that buying a camera was so complex?
Posted 11 years ago # -
1. It could be the mount to blame, more than the camera. If the mount isn't sturdy enough, the camera will vibrate too much. If it's a good enough mount, then it's just the roads and yes, IS is needed. But that tends to be expensive and often adds to the size of the camera. Filming at 1080P will help though as the higher resolution will compensate for the loss of detail from vibration. How much will vary of course.
Maybe there are different Playsport models but this review says it does have IS.
(No IS on the SVC200).
2. Record time on the SVC200 is 2 hours so no problems there for most commuters. And the battery is removable so you could carry a spare anyway.
3.I'm slightly confused by your wording but most of these "ebay-type" cameras have looping and segment recording options. You can normally record till the card is full or in segments of perhaps 30 seconds/2 minutes at a time, it various from camera to camera. Usually you have a choice of allowing the camera to overwrite the oldest recording(s) when the card id full, or stoppping it from doing so, and some will let you lock individual recordings to save them from being deleted ot overwritten.
4. Thats' the problem one. Most of the cameras have relatvely poor low light capability. Most are pretty useless and even the better ones will probably need the number plates of vehicles to be illuminated by other vehicles or street lights. My main camera has a+/- 2.0 EV correction range but even that isn't brilliant at night.
5. Recharging on the bike? Possible. You could use something like the Pebble or a BikeConsole accessory. but you'd need to check the camera can record while charging. Not always the case.
Posted 11 years ago # -
This is the biggie; the camera needs to be able to be configured to overwrite old recordings. If I get hit by a van then I (or my heirs) will extract the video. Otherwise, we should assume than unsaved video is unwanted and that running out of SD card space means that the camera will recycle other recordings.
What if you get hit by a van and the priority of passers by/paramedics/your heirs is not to stop your video recorder before it carries on till the batteries run out and overwrites the evidence?
Posted 11 years ago # -
You need an SOS wrist band with your allergies, blood type and a request to switch off your video camera in the event of an accident.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I have the Contour Roam 2.
It's a bit bigger and heavier than most of the other Bullet-type cameras (it's really aimed as a Go Pro competitor), having used it for a few months now my thoughts on cameras are thus.
1 - wide-angle view is a must.
2 - helmet mount is better than fixed. The camera looks where you look. On a couple of bad close passes I've only got recognition details by being able to point my head at the side of the vehicel to get taxi register number etc.
3 - manual angle adjustment is good as a camera mounted on, say, a stay or side of a helmet will tilt. It's much easier to fix it with a rotatable lens than in post-production
4 - agree that if you commute 1/2 hour each way, you need about 1.5 hours battery and camera life. Currently I have a card that gives me 10 mins leeway only and if I take a longer route home it expires before I'm home.
5 - not convinced about looping. If capacity is an issue, get a bigger card, they're very cheap. You'd be in danger of over-wrting something from your previous footage otherwise.
6 - 720p is good, but even then still struggles on occasion to resolve a number plate. 1080p preferrable if you can get it.
7 - for night time, the Roam (and I believe most other helmet cams) is pretty poor. It sees very little outside of streetlighting, even with good lights on your bike. Even then it just picks up the lit area and little in the dark area. It would still get details of a numberplate and be able to record a bad pass or maybe someone cutting you off, but would struggle with stuff happening on the periphery of the shote
8 - things ALWAYS seem further away than they really were. Bad passes where you can reach out and touch the vehicle still look like there were metres to spare, but that's always going to happen witha fisheye lens.Posted 11 years ago # -
Useful responses to my points, folks; many thanks.
The review that @Focus points to is in fact the Playsport that I have so, in theory, it does have image stabilisation. I suspect my cheap ebay mount is most of the problem here and my next plan is to superglue one of the joints :)
I still stand by my point that the recordings should wrap (erase old recordings) no matter what size the SD card is.
With the Playsport in particular (and, presumably, a number of other cameras) you have to connect the camera to a PC (or connect its SD card to the PC) and manually delete its old recordings.
I'd prefer to use (say) a card that maintained a week of recordings and know that it would automatically overwrite the old ones.I was hopeful that the Playsport was the answer, simply because I already owned it. I'm going to keep on looking and will definitely consider the Contours.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I've got a Roam 2, and agree with Kaputnik's assessment. Mine is bar-mounted, due to absence of suitable thing on my head to fix it to.
This post shows some of the problems he mentions. This was at 1080p, and the car is very blurry because (a) it was relatively low-light in the morning and (b) there's a lot of vibration. Because of the way the camera points straight ahead, I've got no clear pictures of the car or its plate. The ones I've posted are the best I've got and and full size.
I've previously done some experiments with pointing 45 degrees to the right, to try to pick up what's happening beside me. They were quite successful. Because the camera's got such a wide angle, if you point it to the right, you still get what's happening in front but just miss a bit of what's happening on the verge to your left.
I don't see a problem with having to delete the recordings manually. I have a 16Gb card, and it lasts about as long as the battery, so every couple of days I connect to the computer, charge the battery and empty the card. My 25minute commute generates a 2.1Gb file at full HD resolution.
Posted 11 years ago #
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