Spring Is Coming – How To Choose An Action Camera

What’s the first thing you’d take on an adventure of a lifetime? That’s right – a reliable companion, tough enough to be able to tell the story of your heroic acts in all their magnificence. And these days you won’t have to beg your friends to accompany you on yet another skiing tour or annoy them with requests of taking your picture or filming you as you attempt yet another stunt.

Now, all you need is a trusty action camera, that will be a fearless witness to your rebellious fun.

Before embarking on your exciting journey, you will have to go through the process of choosing the action camera fit to accompany you and do that carefully, bearing all your requirements in mind.

So how do you go about choosing an action camera?

First, think about the sport/action you’ll be using the camera for. There are quite a few camera options, best designed for specific sports and with the relevant mount mechanisms. Say, if you are into BMX, kayaking, cycling – or any similar sport that requires you to wear a helmet – going with a helmet action camera seems like a reasonable enough decision. Since you will be wearing a helmet anyway, why not use it to mount your action camera and enjoy hands-free filming wherever you go?

When choosing your helmet camera, make sure your camera mounts well on the type of helmet you are using. Most helmet cameras will come with standard mounts, but a biking helmet might be quite different from a kayaking one – so keep an eye out for a good fit and a reliable mounting mechanism.

If you prefer to keep your options open, you may go ahead with the standard action camera that would be able to be mounted on practically any surface and thus – go with almost any sport. So what will you be looking for then?

Stability

First, action video cameras are chosen for the shooting stability – meaning that while a normal camera would be giving you a blur of a picture when you are riding with it down the hill, an action camera will record a smooth picture, no matter how much it and you are shaking.

Storage Space

When checking out the specs, mind the storage space. This will directly determine how many pictures and videos you’ll be able to shoot, of what length and in what quality. For instance, with a camera sporting 64GB of memory, you will be able to shoot HD videos of a shorter length and longer standard quality videos, as well take lots of pictures. These days the majority of sports cameras come with the ability of shooting HD videos and it all comes down to how much available space you have.

Image Quality

When it comes to image quality, look for cameras that will be able to give you good resolution and a good number of frames per second. For instance, a camera that has the ability to record video in 720p with a frame rate of 60 frames per second will give you the quality of shooting as well as the ability to play back your videos in HD and slow motion.

A great choice is a device that would handle both 720p and 1080p and offer a nice selection of frame ranges.

Sound

Here it all depends on the conditions you plan to film in, as well as how much you want to capture the sound. If you plan to accompany your video with commentary, you will have to look for noise-cancelling features in your action camera, like wind-noise reduction. This will come in especially handy if you record in high speeds and there’ll be the sound of waves or strong winds ripping in the background.

Add-ons

Mounts are an important accessory when it comes to action cameras. Shooting at a slightly different angle can make a big difference to the scope of your shoot and the actions you’ll be able to catch. So you may want to consider getting a few additional mounts or the ones that correspond to your goals.

Getting a case for your camera is also a must – so that your device and footage are well protected from water, dust, shocks and drops.

You may also want to have your camera sporting a set of more specific features: like watch remote control, letting you see what your camera is seeing, no matter where it is mounted, Wi-Fi connectivity or time-lapse montage.

You can take a look at various types of sports action cameras from Chinavasion here.