I've been after a small HD camera for ages after seeing a friend's GoPro Hero. Thankfully, at a recent angling trade show I chanced upon Ultra Sport Europe (http://www.ultrasporteu.com), who were displaying fishing kayaks but also distribute Contour, one of the main rivals to GoPro. I'd heard about these cameras but didn't know the spec and to be honest, wasn't sure on what spec was required; all I knew was I needed a small HD camera that could be attached to a fishing rod, submerged in the margins or secreted somewhere out of shot to get cuts that could be edited into DSLR footage.
Anyway, I ended up ordering one (thanks to USE for giving me a bargain price) and today it turned up. So what are the initial thoughts? Well, it's a simple camera, as these units tend to be because they're being operated by skiers, rock climbers, surfers (etc) who all have limited time to be faffing around with buttons. Build-wise it feels like it'll take some abuse and one great plus point is that it's waterproof straight of the box - no underwater housing is required if you want to give it a quick dip, which is what I want for filming fish coming to the net. There is a housing for deep work but I believe that as it is, it'll be safe for a metre of so of submersion.
I'll have to do a bit of reading up about changing modes and frame rates - there's no real instruction manual supplied - but other than that, it seems a logical product. There are two sticky mounts for attaching it to hard surfaces such as helmets, cars, stuff like that, but there's a pole clamp that'll I'll get on order for getting on-rod action of anglers fishing. For the time being I'll mount it on a landing net pole and use it like that.
I just now have to hope that I get to venues that have clear water - in reality many of the venues I'll be visiting over the winter will suffer from colour due to excess rain, but fingers crossed that I'll start getting great underwater footage ASAP....
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