Bulbs & Fittings Ideas

I bought this for a rafting trip in Colorado and I couldn’t be happier with the results. It is only 720p, but I am not a cinematographer either and I am shooting action highlights with it. Since I found it hard to locate online I will mention here that it’s highest resolution is 720p @ 30 frames per second. So if you plan on doing a lot of slow motion this may not be for you as you’ll appreciate the higher frame rates of the upper end GoPro models. I have slowed footage down to 1/4 speed and I am completely happy with that myself. I found battery life to be acceptable, I tested it at home and got 1 hour and 10 minutes out of it, and on my rafting trip I got 1:07 all shooting at high res. If you spend a lot of time using the screen you will burn through battery quicker, and it will shut down on you if you attempt playback when the battery is getting exhausted. However, I have noticed that when I cannot playback it will still let me record and I have shot 20 minutes of video when it didn’t have enough juice to playback, so I kinda like that it appears to bias battery usage to the recording function. I am using a 32GB Class 10 MicroSD card with no issues, and a full battery recording session will use about 10GB of that. The biggest limiting factor is that the battery is not replaceable, so once it is out, it is out. I read one review that said you could record while it is charging, but at this point I have not been able to, every time I plug the USB cable in even if just the car charger it will switch to USB Drive mode. At this point I have used 2 of the 3 included mounts. The helmet mount worked great, and the strap is long enough that I was able to attach it to my life vest since we didn’t have helmets on our trip. I had the camera upside down for this which meant I had to flip the video afterwards, but my fiance noticed that as long as you start it recording when you put it in the housing it will go into the waterproof housing upside down and would have allowed me to record the correct orientation (obviously you cannot use the buttons when set up this way). I have also used the suction cup mount to mount the camera to my motorcycle’s gas tank. It stuck and had no problems on a 20 minute test ride. I think I would put some sort of small tether on it just in case, but it may not be needed. I also noticed that it suctions very well to my helmet. I haven’t tried it yet, but it has been sitting attached for hours. Again, I’d probably tether it just in case.

Lastly, if you do try this cam realize it is a “branded” item and that a manufacturer sells it to companies that just put their logo on it. I have found this camera for GearPro (what I bought), Polaroid, and Blurfix. They all appear to come with the same accessories and the GearPro and Blurfix models even use the same pictures. The Polaroid one is orange and white. Polaroid does have the owners manual online which has been branded for Polaroid but otherwise is identical to the one that came with my cam. So look for a deal, last I saw the Polaroid one was while the GearPro was . If I had found it before I bought I would have bought the Polaroid. 🙂

Here are 2 videos I made with the camera…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqj0maf8uds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5QV0VoVytA

I bought the camera on woot (an amazon site) and I misread it thinking it was an older Go Pro (I was on my phone and stopped at a restaurant on my way to Myrtle Beach so, it was an impulse buy). I thought oh, a Go Pro for , that’s a no brainer! Anyway, I bought the camera and it came with a waterproof housing and a ton of mounts so, I didn’t really feel cheated.

VIDEO QUALITY

The camera has a 720P max resolution and the results are a bit of a mixed bag. First, it uses a fixed focus 9mm lens with an f/3.1 aperture but, that’s good enough for the fixed infinity focus of the lens. Overall, the camera has a bit of an underexposed image (about a third of a stop) which holds highlights fairly well but, it has a very strong vignette so anything not in the center of the lens becomes really grainy and this is being used in daylight at about 5 PM here in Florida (the sunshine state). The built in Mic, is so muffled that I literally cannot hear a thing in the videos when it is completed and I’m not sure if the Mic is broken or if this just par for the course. Keep in mind that 720P is only .9 Mega-Pixels and 1080P is 2.1 Mega-Pixels so, don’t expect this to shine on your 1080P TV screens.

Overall though, I wasn’t completely disappointed with the videos but, I was very much disappointed to find that the Mic was not working.

STILL IMAGES

Average at best but, nobody is going to use a .9 MP camera for taking pictures anyway. So, you probably aren’t buying this camera for this purpose.

BATTERY LIFE

Mine went longer than 15 minutes and was actually about 30 minutes of battery life. Not really good for more than a short ride or so but, still overall I could live with it for the pool with the grand kids.

BUILD QUALITY

Well, the camera is honestly pretty cheap feeling and if not for the waterproof housing, it would have almost no weight to it. The housing is actually the best part and if it didn’t come in the housing, you would not feel like you got your moneys worth. Pretty much, the brackets are most of the value and the camera is functional.

DISPLAY

The display is a small touchscreen (Resistive, so it takes a couple of tries to do something at times) and the range of the screen is really poor so, your video might appear to have hot spots on skin tones but, actually they’re not there in the finished product.

WATERPROOF HOUSING

Good overall quality for the housing but, its biggest drawback is the fact that you only get two controls… Power and Record, It would have been nice to play back the videos without having to take it out of the case.

OVERALL

A video camera should have sound at the very least and this one is weak at best (mine just doesn’t work) so, I cannot recommend this camera. If not for this issue, I would say that I could push the Vignette in Adobe Premier and have a decent looking image but, as it is, I do not have the sound so, every useful purpose is out the window.

When I first opened the package I was pretty excited. There were plenty of mount options and a few cables for charging as advertised. I took the camera out of the weatherproof case and it turned on and had a working touchscreen.

I then turned the unit off and put it back in the case (which I don’t think is strictly waterproof – it looked like there was a crack water can get into). I tried to turn the unit back on again via the buttons that are on the case, and it didn’t work. Instead of the screen coming on after 3 seconds like the first time, the “busy” light turned on and then nothing else happened. After that, nothing I did would get the busy light to turn off or the screen to turn on.

I am returning this product and I don’t recommend other people buy it.