ContourHD Camera
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Price: $249.99
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- Full HD Recording (1080p) – 1920×1080 pixels – 30fps
- 5 Megapixel Sensor
- Internal Microphone
- Removable Lithium-Ion Battery; records up to 4 hours
- Aluminum and Fiberglass Water Resistant Body
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Dirty Jobs uses this where big cams dont go /great 2nd angle cam,
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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|Great Camera for night skating,
Customer Video Review Length:: 1:44 Mins
This is a video of a couple of laps around the John Rose Oval shot at 10 PM under artificial lighting. I thought that the images were good with expected wide angle distortion.
I purchased this camera to record my speed skating at the John Rose Oval in Roseville, Minnesota. Most of my skating sessions are from 9:20 to 10:25 PM. The lighting is similar to a baseball or football field. I had some concerns about reviews that said that this camera was not that good in low light conditions but the images looked good to me.
In terms of ease of use, I don’t think you can really beat this camera. The instruction manual is microscopic and you are up to speed on the available controls within a very short period of time. One of the frequent criticisms of the camera is wind noise coming through in the video. It turns out that you can preset the sound level with the software that comes with the camera as a download off the MicroSD card.
I had the most trouble figuring out the mounting system because it was not obvious that it was stuck together with velcro and I did not know how much pressure to exert to pull it apart. I also did not have any goggles that seemed to work, but used an old belt that I cut down and strapped outside of my cap.
After shooting the first video, the playback on the editing software did not go as smoothly as using other software that I had on my computer. The downloads to Facebook and YouTube went very well.
All things considered this is a high value camera that produces quality video. In my case I am using it at night in cold weather and it performs flawlessly.
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|Great point of view camera,
I bought this camera primarily to be used for motorsports (autocross, track days, time attack, etc.) but took it on my recent ski trip to Breckenridge, Colorado. I’ll update the review once motorsport season comes around.
With the GoPro HD and ContourHD 1080p coming out around he same time for the same price point I did a lot of research on both. I was already biased against the GoPro having owned the original Hero Cam Wide.
Mounting
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The quick sliding of the GoPro is pretty simple, but the parts that you have to screw and unscrew are difficult. The screws were hard to tighten and it’s too easy to lose the screw and/or nut. I also managed to break one of the mounts by dropping it – a bit too easy to break in my opinion. Getting the correct angle by stringing the screw mounts together was a challenge as well.
I like the ContourHD mount a lot more. It just slides on and off and locks into place. While skiing, I was able to slide it off and hand it to my friend so he could take video of me. Using the included goggle mount, the video was pretty steady as long as my ski goggles were on snug. Never worried about it sliding off.
If I were to have gone with the GoPro, I would have to get a ski helmet. It would not be as easy to switch and I feel it looks and feels obtrusive if sticking out to the side, top, or front. The ContourHD, when goggle mounted, sits slimly along my head – not far out so that it feels like an antler. And since the goggle mount sits flush, I always know that what I am looking at (or at least slightly to the left or right) will be what is filmed. This would not be true of a camera that is chest-strap mounted or sticking farther out to the side.
Pointing the camera up/down was difficult at first but became easy to work with.
Viewing angle
I found the GoPro to be too wide. I love having a wide angle lens for point of view sports video, but the GoPro Hero Cam Wide just seemed so wide that it would be distorted (to reiterate, I have not tried the GoPro HD). The ContourHD was wide enough to have a large field of vision, but not so wide that things looked distorted. I’ve also tried the Kodak Zi8 camera which I feel has a great viewing angle for youtube type videos but not great for POV sports videos.
Video quality
I was really impressed with the quality. Everything was really smooth with no artifacts. Any higher video quality and I don’t think they could have kept this price point. It does have a rolling shutter, so I would occasionally get the jello effect if constantly over uneven snow. But I believe this is true of most cameras in this segment. The only cameras that won’t do this, as far as I know, are some point and shoot cameras or camcorders which usually don’t offer the same helmet cam functionality.
The colors and lighting seemed okay. Hard to tell as I was skiing and everything is white, but nothing seemed “off”. I went night skiing in Keystone Colorado and the video didn’t turn out that great there. I doubt any camera would be different though given the poor lighting conditions.
Audio quality
Not great. All I heard on my skiing videos was wind noise. I don’t see any other way around this though and I don’t think the competition does either. I’m just going to add music. When I’m still and talking though, the audio comes out clear.
Operation
The thing I like the most is how simple it is to use. Hold down the power button to turn it on/off and slide the switch forward to record. The display on my GoPro wasn’t useful and I was never really sure it was recording. When helmet-mounted, you can still feel the switch on the ContourHD is moved forward. Also, when it’s on, the slider reveals a big red sticker that says “REC” in big letters. With the GoPro, you have to look at the tiny display – which can be really difficult to do when the camera is strapped to your head and you have all your gear on. And while the slider switch on the ContourHD can be difficult to turn on with heavy winter gloves on, it is near impossible to press the GoPro’s tiny buttons.
I also really liked the beeping system. 1 beep lets you know when the camera is turned on or recording. 2 beeps lets you know when the camera is off or stopped recording. This is really useful when helmet mounted since you can’t see the camera and it’s usually close to your ear. This beep system helped as well when my battery died or the camera automatically shut off due to inactivity. I forgot to turn it off once and I heard 2 beeps while on the chair lift. Even though I skipped this in the manual, I knew that it turned off by itself.
The camera allows you to switch between 2 modes. I chose 1080p @ 30fps and 720p @ 60fps. It would be nice to switch between all modes without having to preset them in the computer, but realistically, I usually won’t need more than 1 mode in a given day…
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