No such thing as a bargain

[cscotthendry]

Hi all:

 

As some of you might know, I like to video my flights. Recently, I bought two off brand sports video cameras to add to the GoPro I already had. Today, my wife and I did a run down the Gold Coast. The weather was perfect and I was looking forward to editing the footage tomorrow.

 

Nope! The two el-cheapo cameras failed to record any footage. Both of these cameras have really sucky user interfaces and it's hard to tell if they're recording or not. One of them I got from JB HiFi is a piece of excrement. Even when you're sure that it's recording, when the battery runs down it sometimes fails to finalise the files on the SD card and you get...nothing.

 

The other cheapie, I bought from Jaycar and when you turn it on it has a blue flashing LED on the front and a red one. When you press record, it sometimes starts recording and sometimes not. The problem is, the LED indications don't change whether it's recording or not. So I'm never sure.

 

Today, after a 2.5 hour flight, both of these cameras let me down.

 

They're going in the bin.

 

The point of all this? As a mate once said "There's nothing as expensive as a bargain". If you're thinking of doing some video, give the cheapies a miss.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Sorry to hear of your bad luck Scott. I have had poor service from both cheap and expensive gear. My GoPro takes good quality video but it's too wide-angle for my tastes. It's a damned pain to use and you have to drill a hole in the casing to run it with a power cable. In preparation for last Sunday's flight I checked battery level; it showed full charge but the next day it would not power up.

 

At 1/8th the price, my cheapie has a built-in screen, is far easier to operate and can be mounted outside its waterproof case to allow it to run on a DC cable. The video seems to be of lower resolution, but I prefer it's narrow field format.

 

 

[cscotthendry]

This has been coming for some time now. I've done four flights with the JB HiFi camera and got one lot of footage out of it. TheJaycar camera, as I mentioned is a lottery as to whether it's recording or not. As I said, after 2-1/2 hours flying, very disappointing to find no footage in the cameras.

 

I don't seem to have problems with the GoPro. You turn it on, set it to record and stop it when you land. When it runs low on battery, it saves its data and bundys off. Another little nasty that the Jaycar camera has is a three second lapse when it finalises one file before it starts the next one. It breaks the video stream into 37 minute chunks (why 37 minutes?) and takes three seconds to do the changeover. I can work around that, but if it doesn't start recording....

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

We bought a Go-Pro type camera from Ian's shop (now Save More On Line) and haven't used it much, but the little use we did give it came out better than our other camera. The favourite part is being able to check its vision and that it is recording, on the smart phone. Our old one had to be adjusted with a lot of guess work, only to find it was a little off centre or had vibrated out of the clamp (out of focus of the back of his head...) Have not downloaded and edited any, so can't address that part of the performance. Good value as far as I am concerned. We also bought the Gro Pro case and a 360 degree clamp.

 

 

 

Sue

 

 

[DGL Fox]

Scott did you get any footage from your Go Pro that you can use?

 

David

 

 

[409tonner]

Look on the bright side mate ,you will have to fly the route again.I bought a cheapie $100 from supa cheap for my race car ,footage was ok but any vibration ( lots on a drag car ) it created a horrible buzzing noise .I used it on my helmet skiing in New Zealand and it worked great.I havnt tried it in the plane yet.

 

Danny

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

Hi all:As some of you might know, I like to video my flights. Recently, I bought two off brand sports video cameras to add to the GoPro I already had. Today, my wife and I did a run down the Gold Coast. The weather was perfect and I was looking forward to editing the footage tomorrow.

 

Nope! The two el-cheapo cameras failed to record any footage. Both of these cameras have really sucky user interfaces and it's hard to tell if they're recording or not. One of them I got from JB HiFi is a piece of excrement. Even when you're sure that it's recording, when the battery runs down it sometimes fails to finalise the files on the SD card and you get...nothing.

 

The other cheapie, I bought from Jaycar and when you turn it on it has a blue flashing LED on the front and a red one. When you press record, it sometimes starts recording and sometimes not. The problem is, the LED indications don't change whether it's recording or not. So I'm never sure.

 

Today, after a 2.5 hour flight, both of these cameras let me down.

 

They're going in the bin.

 

The point of all this? As a mate once said "There's nothing as expensive as a bargain". If you're thinking of doing some video, give the cheapies a miss.

Thanks for that info Scott.....

 

 

[winsor68]

Anyone tried one of these? They are sold by HobbyKing Model Shop for under $100..

 

A

 

Specs:

 

Image Sensor: 12 mega pixels CMOS

 

LCD: 1.5" (integrated)

 

Image Resolution:

 

12MP (4032x3024)/10MP (3648x2736)

 

8MP (3264x2448)/5MP (2592x1944)

 

3MP (2048x1536)/2MHD (1920x1800)/VGA (640x480)/1.3MP (1280x960)

 

Video Resolution: 1920x1080 30fps/1280x720 60fps/848x480 60fps/640x480 60fps

 

Default Resolution: 1080P (video) / 4032x3024 (photo)

 

Video Compression Format: H.264Image/Video File Format: MOV/JPG

 

Zoom: 4X (digital)

 

Lens: 170° wide-angle

 

Memory: Micro SD card slot up to 32GB

 

OSD Language: English/French/Spanish/German/Italian/Chinese Simplified/Chinese Traditional/Russian/Japanese/Korean

 

Connections: USB 2.0, HDMI

 

Battery Life: up to 70 minutes (1080P)

 

Battery: 900mAh Lithium Ion

 

Dimensions: 29.8x59.2x41mm

 

Weight: 44g (without battery)/58g (with battery)

 

Included:

 

Turnigy HD ActionCam

 

900mAh LiIon battery

 

Waterproof case

 

Multiple mounting accessories/hardware (see last photo for reference)

 

USB charge/data cable

 

Lens cleaning cloth

 

User manual

 

Required:

 

Micro SD memory card (max. 32GB)

 

 

[fly_tornado]

the hobbyking one also comes with wifi, so you can control the camera from your mobile phone

 

its a rebadged SJ4000

 

http://www.foxoffer.com/sjcam-sj4000-wifi-1080p-full-hd-action-camera-sport-dvr-p-763.html

 

 

[cscotthendry]

Both our GoPro and the camera we bought at JB HiFi have wifi capability. The problem with using the WiFi is that it uses up the battery that much faster. The GoPro with a standard battery is good for about 1-1/2 hours if you put the WiFi on that drops to about just over an hour. If you're doing a short flight that's ok. But a flight like today, you end up getting only about half the flight. It always seems to run out before that special moment that you hoped to capture. If you try to use the WiFi to turn the camera on and off, you spend most of the flight (or your pax does) fiddling around with the camera. And even then you miss that eagle that nearly takes you out just after takeoff, or the freight train going into the tunnel that you didn't notice etc.

 

@Windsor68: yeah, the cameras all have great specs on paper, but when you get them, a lot of them have weird user interfaces like the one we bought from JB HiFi. It has a screen on top with printing so small, even someone with good eyes would have to use a magnifying glass to read it. And that brings up another problem with the cheapies. The JB HiFi cam will not record while a charging cable is plugged into it, and every time you turn it on, it starts up in 1080 at 30FPS regardless of the last setting you left it at. I always shoot at 60FPS to reduce the rolling shutter distortion and every time I start this camera up. i have to reset the mode. Given its microscopic display, it's a real pain. THAT!S the sort of thing the spec sheets DON'T tell you.

 

We run a setup with three fixed cameras and one handheld. My wife is a technophobe and if she had to operate all four cameras, we wouldn't get any footage at all.

 

 

[cscotthendry]

Scott did you get any footage from your Go Pro that you can use?David

David: yep, the good old GoPro soldiers on and with the battery bacpac that I added, it did the whole 2-1/2 hours and was still going when we landed. The GoPros are more expensive, but they work and don't have the little "gotcha" like the cheapies. Good that you asked, because that was what I was trying to get across here and it got lost in my whinge about the cheapie cameras.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

One of the reasons JB sell cheap stuff is that the cheap stuff tends to push people to the expensive stuff after it craps itself.

 

It pays to google things like cameras, youtube has plenty of reviews

 

 

[PA.]

This website has reviews of lots of action cameras.

 

http://www.techmoan.com/

 

 

[cscotthendry]

One of the reasons JB sell cheap stuff is that the cheap stuff tends to push people to the expensive stuff after it craps itself.It pays to google things like cameras, youtube has plenty of reviews

Roger that about the cheap stuff crapping itself.

 

I watched a few of the reviews, but they never seem to mention the things like the camera defaulting to a given setting every time you turn it on. In any case, the JB HiFi camera was an impulse buy. Someone gave me a gift card for Christmas and when I went into the store, I spotted the camera for about the value of the gift card.

 

Never again...

 

 

[DGL Fox]

Scott I look forward to a nice video from the Go Pro.

 

David

 

 

[kaz3g]

Contact the Consumer Affairs people in your State. The Australian Consumer Law applies and it requires goods to be "fit for purpose" and of "merchantable quality". You can seek a replacement or possibly a refund from the supplier.

 

Kaz

 

 

[KRviator]

My GoPro takes good quality video but it's too wide-angle for my tastes. It's a damned pain to use and you have to drill a hole in the casing to run it with a power cable. In preparation for last Sunday's flight I checked battery level; it showed full charge but the next day it would not power up.

Get yourself the GoPro Skeleton Case. It has the holes for the charge cable & aux mic cable already there... Run a 5m USB Extension cable and you've got it running off ships power, so the limiting factor then becomes the capacity of the SD card you're using. Tie it into the WiFi on your phone and you can see, in real-time, what you're filming and the status of the camera.I've used it dozens of times on various parts of my trains to film all sorts of odd angles, and it's never let me down, filming many hours of 30+FPS in full HD continuously, many times over. Get a GoPro combo cable and you can charge and record your intercom audio to the footage at the same time!

 

 

[Karen Bable]

Can't go past a GoPro. All our footage is filmed on ours

 

And my husbands kick ass Inspire 1 drone

 

Too much fun!

 

 

[kgwilson]

There is a dazzling array of action cameras available in many shapes and sizes. Check the reviews by using a good review site like techmoan.com & look at selected youtube clips. Don't bother with those silly unboxing clips as they generally tell you nothing. Make sure the clip has some good actual footage from the camera & that there is good commentary on the ease of use, the different resolutions offered, battery use, wifi to your smartphone etc. Compare this to the specs & then check prices on line. There are numerous SJ 4000, 5000, 6000, 7000 & now 9000 clones from China very cheap but if you go this way check their reviews as well.

 

 

[rankamateur]

Can't go past a GoPro. All our footage is filmed on ours

Got excited when I saw this, Thought you had flown under the bridge.

 

 

[Karen Bable]

Got excited when I saw this, Thought you had flown under the bridge.

Too funny. It might be a little hard to fly a Cirrus under this bridge, however the drone fit quite nicely. The video is a combination of drone footage, stills and go pro footage form a wing mount.

 

 

[rankamateur]

I know an old GA pilot who flew a Cessna under the Gwydir River bridge at Gravesend, NSW. He gave his licence up after that effort. I asked him did he give himself a fright? He said not but the thought of damaging a perfectly serviceable bridge gave him some grief.

 

 

[cscotthendry]

Just thought I'd update this thread with the video we shot on the day the cameras failed. Fortunately my wife rescued the day with her handheld footage. She has become reasonably good with the camera now and got some good footage in the can.

 

 

 

[fly_tornado]

another new player in the action camera business, i read recently that gopro's (share price) are in deep trouble due to falling volumes and margins

 

 

 

[cscotthendry]

another new player in the action camera business, i read recently that gopro's (share price) are in deep trouble due to falling volumes and margins

 

FT: I can understand GoPro's falling volumes when you see what they charge for their cameras now. They used to be a cheap sports camera, but now I think they have pretentions to be a high end product. The hero 4 black is now advertised at $650.00! When you see the specs of the cameras that Jaycar are selling for $199.00 (full 1080 @ 60FPS) it's no wonder the GoPros aren't selling.

I wonder at the claim of falling margins though. Although the GoPros are designed in the US, I believe they're made in China.

 

Oh, and the Jaycar camera comes standard with a viewing screen on the back. With the GoPro, you have to buy that separately.