I've had a chance to try the new Drift HD camcorder for a few weeks now and I really like it a lot. What follows is my take and illustration of what you can do with it. First off just a quick note on the attached video review. I'm not really an extreme sports guy I go mountain biking now and then but that's it but I love these Action POV cameras for the cool shots they can add to even ordinary video productions. I saw a sequence in the AMC show Breaking Bad where they mounted a camera for a moment on a shovel, and that gave me the idea for this little sequence just to suggest some of the possibilities. The stable shots are from my Canon VIXIA HFS10, and the shots mounted on the shovel are from the Drift HD. To illustrate the audio that you get from the Drift HD, I kept all of the audio from the Drift until the very last shovel, when the audio comes from the Canon. Be aware that the video is compressed somewhat in order to be uploaded, and so this isn't up to the original quality of the video footage.
In brief, Drift's latest point-of-view action camera takes the design of the Stealth HD 170, and streamlines it, but also makes it even smarter. The body is more compact, literally smaller than the palm of my hand, which means it can fit into even tighter spaces, but it still retains the features that make Drift's POV cameras stand out among other, similar, products: the rugged design, and the on-board LCD screen that allows you to see what you're going to get ahead of time.
What's surprising is that even with this smaller design they really do not seem to have sacrificed anything, and have actually added a few useful features. It's still a handsome, "stealthy" black design, and you can still rotate the lens to change the recording angle, making it easy to adjust to whatever wicked angle you've got it mounted on and still capture straight horizontal or vertical footage, as you like. It still comes with a wearable "wrist watch" style remote control. The more compact frame does mean that the sensor is closer to the lens, which means that at its widest this is a wider lens than you get on the Stealth model. That can be good or bad, depending on what you want. It does mean that the "fisheye" quality of the lens especially when you are shooting in full 1080p HD is accentuated. Because of the smaller size, they went with micro SD this time around rather than standard SD cards to capture footage.
One very cool thing they added this time is that the model comes with two rear covers, that cover up the battery and the micro SD card slot and the HDMI connector and the USB and external mike output. This time the external mike input is a more standard 2.5mm input rather than the proprietary input on the HD170 and the HD170 Stealth. One cover is standard and seals everything tightly to ensure a water resistant body. The other cover has two flaps that can be opened one that allows for plugging in an external mike and the other that allows for plugging into the USB output. That makes this a lot more convenient on the old model you either needed to leave the back end open and exposed in order to plug in a mike, or you needed to purchase an accessory that would keep the back end mostly protected with a mike plugged in, but wouldn't allow you also to plug in the USB. On the HD 170, that meant that to transfer footage to my computer I tended to remove the SD card and plug it into the SD slot on my Mac. With this new cover, given that I don't even have to open the back end to plug it into the included USB cable, I tend just to plug in the camera directly which is especially convenient because I can leave it plugged in afterwards to charge the battery.
Another very smart move with this design was to make the lens replaceable. I haven't had any need to replace the lens on my HD 170, but if I did I'd be pretty upset. With this one the lens is mounted with little hex screws, that can be taken off in order to replace the lens.
Like the Stealth HD 170, this one comes with several standard mounts, that allow you to shoot from a handlebar of a bike or motorcycle, or attached to a helmet or other convenient surface. I know that these were designed mostly for extreme sports, but I tend to like them more for their ability to get unusual and unconventional shots in situations where you wouldn't want to risk a more delicate camera, or where you couldn't fit a larger camera. See my attached video for an example. It is worth knowing that the onboard microphone is next to useless. That's largely because it's on the side of the camera, and it needed to be covered up with a thin rubber plug in order to maintain the weather resistant quality of the body. That means that by itself this is mostly designed for the visuals but as mentioned it does allow you to plug in an external microphone if, say, you want to record voiceover at the same time as you're recording action visuals.
Like previous models, you can shoot pictures with this one as well as video. The megapixels have gone up from 5mp in the Stealth to 8mp with this one. You can also, as with previous models, shoot in time lapse mode, with sequence intervals ranging from 2s to 30s per shot.
Of course, what's most important is the quality of the visuals. As far as I can tell there's no loss in quality with this smaller design. There are some differences. As I mentioned the smaller design means that the fisheye effect (rounding at the extremes, that does give a stronger feel of point of view than standard video footage, but also can distort images that are close to the camera) is more pronounced. Somehow they've managed to design this so it gets better quality images in low light (even when it's not set in "night mode") but outdoors, at least the way they've got the firmware set up right now, there seems to be a bit more contrast in the images, which means that darks get slightly darker and the brights tend to wash out a bit more. You can correct for this a bit by adjusting the exposure in a bright situation, but it is worth noting that the images you'll get from this without any adjustment won't match exactly what you get from the HD 170. Still, this is an excellent little device that I'm very happy to have. Essential for extreme sports enthusiasts and very useful for independent filmmakers who'd like to try and incorporate interesting or difficult or dangerous shots into their projects, especially shots where you wouldn't want to risk damaging a more delicate camcorder.
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