GoPro or go elsewhere?

[fmcd]

We've used both the GoPro HD and earlier version for a couple of seasons with the intent of utilising vid footage for review of any number of useful functions. Never once has anyone considered that capturing spectacular crashes and such typical mishaps everyone experiences might be best of all. Never.

The issue is that the GoPro lense is a fisheye thing that distorts unavoidably perspective to the sides and anything more than approximately 10 m ahead. It sucks when attempting to show terrain and for getting a handle on suspension dynamics and stuff. Everything else about GoPro is good; mounts are top-notch, software intuitive, unit is reliable, etc.

Anyone aware of the urban legend regarding lense replacement on camera body or maybe other helmet cams with more directional and less distorted lenses? There must be a way to do offroad vids better.

Moto Christmas to all,

Francis McDermott

 

[gman]

Morning...

I have the new Contour Roam POV and I'm really happy with it. For $189 (market price on most websites... I paid $199 and it came with a 16gb card), it is hard to beat. Contour has a couple other more pricey models that can give you GPS and/or Bluetooth connectivity.

I've never used a GoPro... But the common complaints are the lense quality and "not as easy to use as I'd like".

The ROAM is Contour's latest POV that is Waterproof to 3m right out of the box (no case required... although you can get one to take it to further depths), has a laser (lateral) aiming gude for mounting/adjusting and you turn it on/off with one, simple (large) slide switch that gives you an audible and tactile on/off feedback. This is huge... Instead of stopping to turn your camera on or running it your whole ride and shooting 3 hrs of video for 5 mins of "interesting" footage, you can quickly flick the ROAM on/off while riding. It starts shooting video about 1sec after you flip the slider forward. (I wear it on the left to keep my fun-juice hand free)

You can shoot in 720p, 960p Tall and full 1080p. The lens can rotate up to 180deg so you can mount it at almost any angle. Like the GoPro, you can only shoot in 170deg Wide Angle mode. But I think it looks a lot better than the GoPro Vids I've seen. (Less "fisheye" like)

The only drawback to the Contour ROAM in my opinion is that you can ONLY configure shooting modes (quality, frame rate, videp/picture mode, mic sensitivity, etc) when hooked up to your PC. I think you can progam the GoPro's with a series of button pushes on the fly... But not sure. This is a minor issue however. Choose the quality of Video you want (usually governed by your Mem Card size. My 16gb card gets you about 70 mins of continuous video @ 720p/30fps) and if you want still pics, just take a short video of the scene you want to capture and frame-grab one of the frames for your photo needs.

Here's two example video's I've shot. One is a recent trip to the Dominican and one where I set up the ROAM on a tripod to capture stills every 30 secs of me and my kids opening presents at Christmas. Keep in mind that the time-lapse Christmas video has been sped up 5x to make the video shorter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tpzAZ1L9Gs

The still-shots on the Cabarete Tour were taken with the Guide's digital camera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k66O86w ... -SY69eY5aO

You can find tons more footage and info on the Countour site here:

Hope this helps,

Grant