Found a cool new gadget in Cycle World this month

[OoPEZoO]

They had a short little blurb about these new cameras, so I thought I would check out their website (Vholdr) . They look pretty sweet.......its small, rugged, cordless, and seems to be pretty well thought out. I love the idea of the video being saved right to a mini-sd card.

 

Anyone out there with $350 disposable income want to give one a try and report back

[John Ranalletta]

Anyone out there with $350 disposable income

All of my income is disposable. Problem is, I disposed of it in advance.

[outpost22]

Definitions of dispose on the Web:

 

* give, sell, or transfer to another; "She disposed of her parents' possessions"

* discard: throw or cast away

 

Yep, sounds like my spending habits.

 

Sorry, but just bought a camcorder and I'll wait 6.1 months for it to break (warranty=6 months) and then try one of these new ones

[skinny_tom (aka boney)]

I'll posts some observations since I just spent a lot of time (and money) finding some video solutions. I didn't know about this product when I was looking for a system a little while ago.

 

Objective:

 

1. 640x480 at 30 FPS for ~$350 is a very good price.

2. It's a nice compact item in an aluminum case, so it's probably pretty durable.

3. MPEG4 is a compact file compression format and has some loss. If you intend to post to the internet, then this isn't a worry. If you're going to make DVDs to watch on a TV, then it is.

3.5 All in one! No cords, no wires.

4. In all, probably a very good value.

 

 

Some things to think about (somewhat subjective to personal criteria):

 

Watch out for: Battery life never lasts as long as estimated (in general- and on almost every product I've ever owned.) No external power input forces reliability on special battery and charger. Does charger charge from bike? If you don't motorcycle camp or shoot a whole bunch of video in a day maybe the charger thing isn't an issue. Does it support CF cards larger than 2MB? Many products do not. This means a new card with every battery change and more things to keep track of. Can you get extra batteries?

[OoPEZoO]

All valid points that crossed my mind as well. I was also mainly concerned with the charging system, batteries, and memory cards.

 

Thats why we need that volunteer with $350....

[Bheckel169]

Ok, I'm biting. Right now there is no product available until around Christmas. They require a $50 deposit which I gave them yesterday and will follow up with you when and if, they actually deliver the product.

Bruce

[OoPEZoO]

Ok, I'm biting. Right now there is no product available until around Christmas. They require a $50 deposit which I gave them yesterday and will follow up with you when and if, they actually deliver the product.

Bruce

 

Nice......can't wait to hear more. I had already planned to rip off an email to Cycle World to see if they planned to do a follow up review article once they actualy got their hands on one. I would buy one myself right now, but I am in desperate need for some new riding gear before it gets cold out.

[stubble!]

It looks really interesting. I can't wait to hear how well it works.

 

I have one of these: (Oregon Scientific ATC-2000). A much cheaper foray into the self-contained helmet camera. If high-quality video is not that important, it's a great toy.

 

Drawbacks:

 

It doesn't have the best video quality, or sound. I advise you to look at sample videos to determine if the quality is enough for you.

 

Also the AVI codec it uses can be a pain to work with. At first I thought it was MP4, but I think it's actually M-JPEG. iMovie on Mac can open it, but it slow to work with. On Windows I've had varying degress of success with different apps. Vegas is picky, codec-wise. After installing the FFDShow codec pack from free-codecs.com, Windows Movie Maker works just fine with it.

 

Here's a clip from the camera, rear facing on Hwy 1 in Big Sur. It's a 5mb WMV, not raw, but exported with minimal compression so you can see the camera quality. If anyone wants a truly raw clip to work with, PM me. They're a bit big.

[tomk99r11]

Realizing not the same camera, Kohl's has a set of binoculars with a digital camera built in. Can't remember the specifics, sorry, but it was cheap. Likely reflects the magnification and the clarity of the camera. FWIW.