Action Camera - The Drift HD Ghost... The best thing since just about anything!!

[Edmartin01]

Hi there everyone

Christmas has come early for me this year; it actually came four months ago, around the time of my birthday when my misses gave me a Drift HD Ghost action camera. Now when most people think of an action camera, there is usually one that comes to mind, I can’t blame them, they were essentially market pioneers and did a rock solid marketing plan which exploded them onto the market! But that being said, times and products change and that’s why after a heck of a lot of research I decided on the Drift and haven’t looked back one day!
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not slating nor disgruntled with other brands but I cannot deny, that I deeply flipping love with my Drift and these simple reasons pretty much rap up why this camera are suitable for me and my needs as a fly fisherman:

• The Mounts - Standard centre chest mount for others brands placing the camera in the centre of your chest, right where your reeling hands go! The Drift has a shoulder mount, which can be switched to either left or right shoulder mount which give you a nice high perspective and is 90% exactly where you want it to be filming.

• The REMOTE - certain items on other brands are considered purchasable extras, those extras come standard on the Drift the remote, the display screen etc. but one thing that I can say that is flipping awesome on the Drift is that the remote comes standard and communicates with the camera. So depending which mode the camera is in (recording, taking photos, taking burst shot etc.) the camera tells the remote what its doing and the remote lights up different colours. This is awesome as once the camera is mounted on your shoulder, you don’t have to dismount it continuously to see what’s going on!!

• THE TAG FUNCTION: bear with me here, because it’s technical. On the Drift Ghost it has a certain function that sets it apart from anything else available on the market. For any action activity ITS INCREDIBLE, let me say that again, IT’S INCREDIBLE!! The function simply allows you to pre-set the recording process to intervals of 1/2/5/10 min.
These intervals let’s say 2 minutes for example, allows the camera to "soft" continuously record without saving to the memory card, until you press the record button. The Drift then goes back in time 2 minutes, before the moment you pressed record, and saves back up to that moment. It then gives another 2 minutes immediately after you pressed record and in addition another 2 minutes into the future before saving the total video to your SD card.

In other words: 2 min before fish hooked -- (Fish hooked and record button pressed) -- 4 min after hooking him which covers you nicely landing your fish and getting the whole thing on high definition film.
With all this being said, I put still believe that each to their own but as said this is why I love my camera.

Feel free to check out any of my videos on YouTube on the below links, where you can see the quality of picture and what I’ve been able to do with it. Remember im not a professional, just someone that loves fishing and basic editing on movie maker.

• www.driftinnovation.com

MY VIDEOS:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4NqBUKC7PI
CHANGE THE VIDEO SETTINGS ON YOUTUBE TO HD TO SEE THE PROPER QUALITY. ON THE BOTTOM OF THE VIDEO, CLICK ON THE GEAR AND THEN SELECT 1080/HD QUALITY.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f_HUp9b788
CHANGE THE VIDEO SETTINGS ON YOUTUBE TO HD TO SEE THE PROPER QUALITY. ON THE BOTTOM OF THE VIDEO, CLICK ON THE GEAR AND THEN SELECT 1080/HD QUALITY.

If you want to order your own, don’t hesitate to contact me anytime as I will be running a special where with every Drift HD Ghost that you purchase ill send you a shoulder mount on the house to the value of R 540. Incl.
Really looking forward to hearing from everyone and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about the product.

Cheers for now
Ed Martin
074 366 1111

[GGY]

I've fished off a boat with Ed when he was using this camera. I'd like to give my 0.02 plus add a few comments which Ed did not mention. ( I have NO affiliation to the product at all.)

PRO's
Waterproof to 3m out of the box without the need to a housing. Good when we can expect it to get wet.
WiFi enabled - can control camera & download content from your Android Mobile or iPhone.
Built-in colour screen with audio so you can check that you have it setup correctly and can immediately view directly on the camera what you have recorded.
Screen & lens is Corning Gorilla Glass, which is highly scratch resistant (same as what you would find on your older generation Samsung or iPhone mobile screen - current mobiles use GG2)
LONG battery life (which is GREAT for fishing, since you don't know when the action will be happening).
The shoulder mount is definitely better than the normal chest mount on other camera's, especially for fly-fishing.
The FLASHBACK ability to save to disk what has already happened in the past is ESSENTIAL for fishing, again since you don't know when the action will be happening.

CON
Only one that comes to mind for me is that HD is 30 frames per second (fps) versus 60fps for it's rivals. Now the human eye see's ~24fps, which is why TV is usually 25fps, so you won't notice any judder in normal speed viewing. BUT if you want to do very high-speed action or nice slo-mo video, then you would want 60fps, but for fly-fishing 30fps is likely to be perfectly sufficient.

IMHO - for *fly-fishing* applications, the Drift HD Ghost thus has a number of advantages over it's competition, with limited down side.

[smallstreams.co.za]

WiFi enabled - can control camera & download content from your Android Mobile or iPhone.

Interesting point/question/statement regarding this. Sunday I spoke to Gerrit Redpath about this (he has the GoPro 3 Black) and said it would be very cool to drop your camera down into the water and check what is going on via your smartphone. He said the issue is, that after only a couple of cm the wi-fi signal drops and you basically loose connection with the camera - meaning you can't really see anything that you won't be able to see just normally. Actually, you can see further into the water without the camera

Not sure how this one would work, but I'm assuming the water would affect the wi-fi signal equally.

[Korrie]

Solution
Put in water, record, take out water and play back on Smartphone via WIFI
Not ideal, but probably a 20 or 30 second delay in action

[smallstreams.co.za]

Solution
Put in water, record, take out water and play back on Smartphone via WIFI
Not ideal, but probably a 20 or 30 second delay in action

Jip, but does not have the same coolness factor as live underwater

[Edmartin01]

Hi Guys

Unfortunately, with the limitations to any devices wifi, it will operate outside of water as the water acts as a damper. Agreed it would be great if you could have live feeds to your "strike zone" but for the moment can, as mentioned by korrie, record and watch on the cameras build in lcd screen.

Dont hesitate to call me if you have any questions.

cheers Ed

[Korrie]

Jip, but does not have the same coolness factor as live underwater

Delayed live, factor.

[saflyfish]

how much are these things?

[Korrie]

It seems that there are a plethora of the "action video cams" now available.
saw the Polaroid advert on the TV last night as well.
http://www.polaroidstore.com/store/c...eo-cameras.htm

Remembering this thread, had to check it out.
Big write up about it, but no images on the website.

[Korrie]

http://connect.dpreview.com/post/723...6mp-action-cam
a little more about it.