Aldi are currently selling a sports action camera that you can mount to various places and film yourself in action, also you can attach it to your motorcycle and film your rides.
At £49.99 I’m unsure of the quality it’ll give you. But says that it records at "640 x 480 VGA at 30 frames per " This will be good enough quality for the internet, but you’re unlikely to be able to make a blue-ray HD production.
I actually saw it in-store a few days ago but the que was absolutely massive so I didn’t pick it up. They are still there from what I’ve seen in Northampton. I didn’t notice that december 2009 though.
And it’s just been reduced by £10! Making it just £39.99. They had hundreds in stock too so I don’t think getting one will be an issue for others.
Here is a pic of the box:
It comes with quite a lot of cables to hook it up to your PC and so on and there’s other extras for mounting it to different areas/parts. Feels like a well made product. I am looking forward to testing it out!
Paid £39.99 for it in Northampton today. I am just testing it out at the moment. I don’t think it copes well with dark-lit rooms (only got to test it this evening).
Also it only comes with 32mb of memory which is only enough to give you 52seconds of film so you will need to upgrade to an SD card as soon as possible.
It seems really sturdy though, I wore it on my head for a bit and took some video footage, the film wasn’t bouncing all over the place as I moved which was really good. I will take it out for a trial tomorrow in the day light and post up the results.
Tested it out a couple of times now. It doesn’t cope well with indoor lights well, the sound pick up is absolutely rubbish, but I have to say it reacts really well to action movements much better than a camcorder. I think using this in tandem with some other cameras you could make some really good tootage. It would be perfect for filming from your forks point of view and comes with loads of adapters to strap on to various places to your bike.
For £40 I’m quite happy with it. Definitely not going to produce material that’ll get you an oscar. It’s pretty much on-par with the most mobile phones except it’s mobility and ability to attach it self to lots of different places makes it much more versatile, apparently you can use it underwater too.
If you’ve got £40 to spend on something just to show your mates what it’s like to be you then I’d say go for it, however if you’re a budding Alfred Hitchcock looking to make Les Dramatics Le Motorcyclés then you may want to save that £40 and invest in something bit more hi-tech.
However, like I said, this is basically as good as mobile phone camera except it’s much more action focused.
Not sure if its exactly the same model, but the review on the Gadget show was pretty positive - Damn near indestructible too - I think you could go head first with a truck an it’d record it all for er… evidence?
nice find. Can anyone tell me if it has an external microphone input? I’d like to be able to connect it to my starcom and comment on my impending crash… :w00t:
These cameras are fine for a bit of fun. I had one a while back.
Forget fixing it to your forks, you’ll not see a thing. And forget the sound too. On a nice day you’ll get a fun image, from mounting it high, or on your body somewhere.
Next. Battery life is shite. You’ll need rechargeables, unless you’re minted. And you may have to modify the way the batteries sit in the unit, as vibration causes these models to lose power and then record nothing (plenty to read about this on forums).
And I think you can only add a 2gb card? May be wrong, but this will only allow you about an hour on it’s best setting?
Don’t let me put you off though - just be savvy about where you’re mounting it, and stay away from bumps! For the money, there’s not much else out there.
Note that the card that comes with it is **** and will give grainy blurry footage, you need to put in a high speed (class 6) card, you can get an 8gb one off play.com for under 20 quid (don’t buy off ebay, loads of fakes about). Also, whilst on the subject, don’t buy one of the cheaper cameras that look similar, the push button ones are cheap copies made of plastic with worse quality, whereas these are made of pretty solid metal and not too bad.
Here’s an example of what quality the video is with my setup (and yes I know I ride like a tosser):
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then I’d say go for it, however if you’re a budding Alfred Hitchcock looking to make Les Dramatics Le Motorcyclés then you may want to save that £40 and invest in something bit more hi-tech.