Monday, June 23, 2014

23 June 2014 – Gear Review 7 – cameras/laptop


Video – GoPro Hero 2. This is the original version and the newer ones have more bells and whistles but this does a good job. Makes very nice video but here are my complaints (on this version anyway):

1                     Two button system is difficult to use while riding motorcycle and missed shots happen as a result. Is it on? Is it recording? Even the little red lights that are there to answer these questions can’t be seen in bright light and you have to look at front of camera to see what mode it is in while riding down the highway!

2                     Does not have remote control (newer versions do I know but not sure how well it works).

3                     Wide angle lens distorts real world (makes difficult ride seem like riding river-walk bike path). I know the wide angle is good in other situations.

Jim used a different camera on his helmet with remote control so there are alternative solutions out there. I just didn’t want to buy another camera at the time.

Pictures – I wanted a camera with good resolution but used AA batteries as power source. I found the answer to these requirements for $87; Nikon CoolPix 20.1 Megapixels. It has a physical zoom lens and a digital zoom and took great pics. My big complaint was it was not a grab and shoot camera. It took several seconds to get the lens extended and ready to shoot plus the follow-on pics took almost as long. Not good when you are 30 feet from a bear and you want to get a couple of pics before he starts chewing on your leg. The name on front of the camera says “easy auto mode” but not FAST easy auto mode. For the money I would buy it again. BTW I used the same batteries in this thing for almost the whole trip and I took lots of Pics. I really got mad at this camera the day I got home. No one was around to take an arrival pic so I was going to use the self-timer and take one. I could not figure out how to do it or it doesn’t have the capability. I finally gave up. The good point is that I downloaded every night my pics from the camera SD card into my laptop.

Laptop – On AK1 I carried an iPad 1 to download my pics and post on Facebook. It was a pain in the %^&*. For AK2 I bought a cheap ASUS laptop/netbook from Best Buy for $300 and I love it. Everything works, it has a keyboard plus wifi and I’m using it to write this and make all my post rafter than use my desktop PC. BTW Jim used some type of pad (not iPad) without a keyboard and cussed it out every night. He swore he was getting something like mine as soon as he got home.
 

 

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