Christmas must be coming. No sooner do GoPro and Contour release new actioncams, than we now see an updated camera from Drift Innovation. Called the Drift HD Ghost, it’s a feature-laden alternative to the company's existing Drift HD – which is already a pretty nice sports video camera.
Like the HD, the Ghost has a 170-degree lens that can be swiveled independently of the rest of the camera. This allows the camera to be mounted at whatever angle is most convenient, with the shot subsequently being leveled out via a twisting of the lens. Another one of the big selling features of both cameras is their integrated LCD viewfinder/playback screen, although at two inches, the Ghost’s is larger – it’s also fronted with high-impact Gorilla Glass.
Both cameras also come with a wireless remote, although the Ghost’s is a two-way remote – not only does it send user commands to the camera, but it also receives a signal from the camera, allowing the remote to indicate the shooting mode that the Ghost is currently set to.
Some of the camera’s other extras include connectivity with smartphones via built-in Wi-Fi; timelapse and adjustable photoburst modes; a 3.5-mm external mic input; a built-in speaker; and waterproofing to a depth of three meters (9.8 feet) – it still might not be a good idea to take it scuba diving, but it should do fine in whitewater activities.
Video can be shot at resolutions of 1080p (30 frames-per-second), 960p (30/50 fps), and 720p (30/60 fps). WVGA is also available, for users who want to take advantage of its 120 fps shooting speed. Still images can be snapped at up to 11 megapixels, as opposed to the HD’s 9. As with the HD, the Ghost can take MicroSD memory cards up to 32GB in capacity.
A final unique feature of the camera is its Video Tag/Loop function. When this is selected, the camera will start temporarily storing footage of whatever is in its field of view, continuously overwriting that footage, so there's never more than the past five minutes stored at one time.
If something interesting happens, however, the user can tag that footage. This causes the camera to save the past five minutes and set it aside, so it isn't overwritten. Afterwards, the user can retrieve all of their tagged 5-minute blocks of footage for editing. In this way, there's much less raw footage to sift through to get to the good parts, and memory space isn't used up as quickly.
The Drift HD Ghost is available now for preorder, at a price of US$399. It is expected to start shipping as of November 19th. Footage shot with the camera can be seen in the video below.
Source: Drift Innovation via Technabob
