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10-18-08, 06:26 PM
I bought a new Oregon Scientific atc3k video camera in the hopes of taking some road cycling videos, but so far I'm really disappointed with this cam.
The good: It's cheap, fairly lightweight, takes SD cards and AA batteries (easy to swap out for unlimited run/record time).
The bad: Transferring files via USB cable uses the slow v1.1 standard. The camera is large/bulky enough that I'm not interested in mounting it to my helmet.
The ugly: The video it records!
The camera is securely mounted to a stable Nitto lamp holder. I understand that vibration will degrade the video quality, but the effect vibration has on the video is agonizing to watch - it makes the video "wavy" is the only way to describe it.
Also, as a totally separate issue from the vibration - the cam cannot deal with changing or non-ideal lighting conditions. The video is usually either grainy or washed out. Blocky artifacts appear in the video regularly. The frame rate of the video is obviously changing continuously. And I could not make out the license plate of any cars that drove by me.
In short, don't expect much from such an inexpensive camera (I bought mine on Ebay with a 4 GB 150x SD card for $140 shipped). If it sounds too good to be true, it is. This camera is a toy. You can probably expect slightly better results by mounting it to your helmet, but not by much.
The good: It's cheap, fairly lightweight, takes SD cards and AA batteries (easy to swap out for unlimited run/record time).
The bad: Transferring files via USB cable uses the slow v1.1 standard. The camera is large/bulky enough that I'm not interested in mounting it to my helmet.
The ugly: The video it records!
The camera is securely mounted to a stable Nitto lamp holder. I understand that vibration will degrade the video quality, but the effect vibration has on the video is agonizing to watch - it makes the video "wavy" is the only way to describe it.
Also, as a totally separate issue from the vibration - the cam cannot deal with changing or non-ideal lighting conditions. The video is usually either grainy or washed out. Blocky artifacts appear in the video regularly. The frame rate of the video is obviously changing continuously. And I could not make out the license plate of any cars that drove by me.
In short, don't expect much from such an inexpensive camera (I bought mine on Ebay with a 4 GB 150x SD card for $140 shipped). If it sounds too good to be true, it is. This camera is a toy. You can probably expect slightly better results by mounting it to your helmet, but not by much.