Friday, December 2, 2011

Drift Innovation HD170 Stealth Action Camera with HD Recording, 4x Digital Zoom and 1.5-Inch LCD Screen (Black)


Manufacturer : Drift Innovation
Model : SHD170
ASIN : B004L5AF4Q
Price : 349$
Last Price : 234$(Discount 32.9512893982808%
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Product Description

Drift Innovation HD170 Stealth Action Camera with HD Recording, 4x Digital Zoom and 1.5-Inch LCD Screen (Black)
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
A rugged and versatile POV cam - that's not just for extreme sports
        
This review is from: Drift Innovation HD170 Stealth Action Camera with HD Recording, 4x Digital Zoom and 1.5-Inch LCD Screen (Black) (Electronics)


What's struck me is that the real value of this camcorder is its combination of a rugged and durable design with its versatility. It's emphasized for use with extreme sports - but it's useful pretty much anywhere you wouldn't risk another more fragile camera. It's water and weather resistant - not water proof - so you could use it in light rain, maybe even during a hurricane if it was securely mounted, but certainly in extreme conditions where you'd be worried about a standard camcorder. (I've heard that Drift Innovation - the company that makes these - will be coming out with a fully waterproof case for the Stealth some time soon - so that you can add cliff diving and snorkeling to the list of extreme sports you can capture subjectively with the Stealth) The camera comes with three different mounts - one that you can secure to any kind of narrow belt (and it comes with an elastic belt), one that you can put on a handlebar, and one that you can secure to a helmet with the included velcro adhesives. It's easy to orient the camera, even if you've got it mounted in an odd spot - the shooting orientation can be changed simply by rotating the lens manually, and the quick release mount can also be rotated so that the unit can be oriented however you like with respect to the mount.


You can shoot decent photos (5 megapixels - and they look fine, but as you'd expect on a device that's tailored for video capture they don't really compare to the images you'd capture on a compact camera in this price range - expect a few notches up from the quality you'd capture on a phone and you won't be disappointed), and very cool time lapse sequences (with shooting intervals from 3 to 30 seconds apart), plus it takes surprisingly good HD video for such a small camera. It's not as nice or as versatile as my Canon, but the video is at least as good or better than what I can capture on my Flip Mino HD - plus it's got a much wider lens, which is ideal for "point of view" shooting. At 720p it captures a 170 degree view, and it's got a bit of a fisheye effect - which is kind of nice, it looks very cool with POV sports footage but could be effective in other applications as well. At 1080p it captures a slightly narrower range of 120 degrees, and there's less distortion, but not as many options for frame rates. At 720p you can shoot at frame rates from 25fps to 60, and shooting at 60fps allows you to slow the footage down in an editing program without things looking jerky as they would if you'd shot at a standard 30fps and then played back at an effective 15 frames per second. At 1080p you can shoot either 25 or 30fps. (You can also shoot standard definition video if you like). The video is encoded with H.264 in a Quicktime (.mov) wrapper - so it's easy to import and play or edit in a variety of applications.

One other nice feature is that the set comes with a remote control "watch" - you can wear it on your wrist (it's got a velcro band) and it has two buttons: for record and stop. There's a bit of a time lag on the stop function - it takes a couple seconds and sometimes I've found I've had to press the button twice to get it to respond, but otherwise it works quite well. The weak element on the camera is the onboard mike - it doesn't capture clear sound at all. It's noisy and would really only work as reference and not playback. In other words if you spoke into the mike or near the mike you would be able to hear what you'd said - assuming you weren't on a motorcycle, or free falling from high altitudes - and it might help you to remember something - but you wouldn't want to even consider including the audio in a completed video. The main reason for the weakness of the mike seems to be that its input is protected by a rubber seal - in order to ensure the water resistance of the unit. The real value of this camera is in capturing video you wouldn't be able (or willing) to capture in other ways. There is another option with this camera that not all cameras of this type allow, which is to plug in an external microphone - but I'm pretty sure the input is proprietary, which means you either have to buy the mike from Drift or you have to buy one of the input cables for your mike from them. When you do use an external mike you have to keep the rear hatch of the camera open - and Drift sells a kind of silicon boot to help keep things sealed and protected when the mike is connected and the door is open.

The Stealth is not a one-size-fits-all camcorder that will meet every need and wouldn't by any stretch replace a standard camcorder for ordinary shooting, especially given its fixed, extremely wide lens and its substandard onboard mike - but it can capture images you'd never dream of trying to capture with your standard camcorder. If all you want to do is capture extreme sports from the point of view of the athlete, or other extreme images that would put an ordinary camera at risk, this would be a very good option. For someone like me, who only rarely has a need for "extreme sports footage," I know I won't use this all the time, but I'm very happy to have it in my "bag of tricks" because, as I think my little video shows, it's a very versatile camera that can capture some very cool and fairly good quality images and video that could fit nicely into a wide range of different kinds of video projects.


11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
I've owned them all and this is the BEST by far!!
This review is from: Drift Innovation HD170 Stealth Action Camera with HD Recording, 4x Digital Zoom and 1.5-Inch LCD Screen (Black) (Electronics)
I've owned just about every helmet cam on the market and I even sell the GoPro HD Hero on my site and this is by far the best camera I've owned to date.

The thing I like about it most is the ease of use. The menu is like any other PAS camera instead of hieroglyphics like the GoPro and yes I have the LCD on my GoPro and it's still a pain to use. It does take great video but no better than the drift.

I love that I can adjust the mic on the drift and pretty much turn it off if I want to and I can add a remote mic. I have one but have yet to use it. No more clanking from the mount like the GoPro either.

The battery outlast the GoPro and it seems to have great video compression. Long videos have pretty small file size. I took a 48:00 video and it was just under 3 gig.

About the only thing I don't care for is the helmet mount. I haven't used it yet but it's not that clean of a mount, I do like the GoPro better for that. I wound up putting a RAM ball on mine and that's pretty much all I use. All and all I love this thing.


8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Good Concept - Poor Quality Control
  
This review is from: Drift Innovation HD170 Stealth Action Camera with HD Recording, 4x Digital Zoom and 1.5-Inch LCD Screen (Black) (Electronics)
Camera arrived and straight out of the box had a faulty microphone. Had a play with it for a few days waiting to hear back from Drift Support and found the picture quality to be excellent. Really liked the good clear images and colour was spot on. Although, I soon found that a fully charged battery would drain overnight if left in the camera (even though the camera was switched off).

Thinking I just had a dud unit, and given the quality of picture, I decided to go through the Amazon returns process and had a replacement shipped out.

Amazon were excellent in how they dealt with the return and replacement. No complaints on that front (Drift on the other hand, took more than a week for their Support people to reply to my emails to tell me that it was faulty and then they passed the buck back to Amazon).

Replacement unit arrived today and upon switching it on I notice the picture is absolutely stuffed, making everything look like a psychedelic music video from the 70's. Back to emailing Drift Support. This time I won't wait for a week for their response. If I haven't heard back by tomorrow it's on it's way back for a refund this time.

You really have to ask yourself where is the quality control? Does Drift not test each unit before it's packaged?

Two cameras and two different problems straight out of the box.

It's disappointing because the Drift is the only one of the top 3 (GoPro/Contour/Drift) that offers external mic and reviewing screen facility.

I won't risk another replacement.

Looks like I'll be switching my allegiance to one of the other two brands.

UPDATE: Received a GoPro HD this week and most impressed with the quality of build and the video taken to date. The mounting system is a little fiddly but not entirely unusable. Changing camera settings was awkward at first but after clipping on the LCD BacPac it was much more simple.

I've just bought a Contour HD as well ($138) and will test that out when it arrives.

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Great
This was purchased to video Motorcycle and Car driving. It is so useful and great sized that I also use it for hiking and general recording of the kids around the house...
by Martin D. White

Love this over a GoPro
If you are deciding between this and a GoPro, and don't want to spend the money on a new Drift HD, then go with this.
by The Scout

Pleased
So far I am pleased with this camera, no problems. With the optional high cap battery and a 32G card, I have never lacked for power or memory as long as I charge and upload at...
by William Elliott

Outstanding little camera
I purchased the camera for shooting video while flying. The image quality is outstanding. It does a remarkable job of absorbing small vibrations from the the aircraft.
by DeltaGolf

Wish I had Done Earlier.
Love this 'head' camera. I bought this cam especially for it's radio controlled freq. and hands free start/stop operation. The battery life isn't as long as I would wish.
by Saltykayak

Not So Sure.....
I bought this camera last March 2011 as I wanted a POV to use other than my hand-held Canon pocket camera for shooting video while riding my motorcycle.
by hoethree

Very good for autocrosser
This camera is easy to use, and with the LCD screen you can adjust the angle and position so that you know what you are recording. that's a huge advantage over gopro.
by Cesc

Great image, easy to set up and use.
I had the camera mounted on the motorcycle handlebars in less than a minute, the remote works as advertised. Video was very sharp, regardless of the road quality.
by Bob Partain

One of the best POV cams
I searched for many POV cams and think this drift hd 170 stealth is one of the best. I decided about it because the remote and the lcd screen.
by Lucas

carlos
Perfecta,
la uso para filmar dentro de aviones, el espacio es acotado pero la cámara rinde a full de calidad y ángulo de cobertura, excelente la entreda de...
by carlos

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