Late yesterday, a Liquid Image EGO camera I ordered from eBay arrived, so thought I'd post a bit of a review about my early impressions.
In the past I have drooled over the quality of the GoPro range of sports cameras and have always considered them the benchmark. However, I have always come up short of funds to actually purchase one, and instead, have spent more than the purchase price of a GoPro on a number of cheap and nasty horrors that promise awesome imagery but only deliver dull and grainy videos.
Liquid Imaging's entry into the non aqua sports camera market interested me when it was initially released, and I patiently waited until the unit appeared locally on various online and ebay outlets to see what local pricing was going to be like. I eventually acquired my unit for $165 +$10 postage and considered that fairly reasonable and went ahead with the purchase. I really wanted a decent camera to take down to Victoria for my planned Rail Trail tour at the end of the year as well as the usual recording of dangerous motorist behaviours.
As you can see, the camera is not much bigger in physical size than a Garmin 500. Also pictured is the protective case that comes with it, and a random ear plug that somehow landed on my desk and got in my picture.
The camera can be basically controlled from the unit itself, in so far as switching on or off, selecting a mode (720p, 1080p or still pics), starting or stopping WiFi, and start /stop recording or taking still photos. The power of this unit is in its WiFi capabilities, where so many more of the cameras features are available.
In WiFi mode, the camera sets itself up as a wifi hotspot, and you use your Android or Apple smartphone to connect to it via an app called ActionConnect. Through this app you can use your phone as a live view viewfinder to see what up your camera captures, a whole host of settings (white balance, resolution, view angle,... ah, just look at the screen shot...
Anyway, features is features, and the a camera is only as good as the picture it takes. I dodgied up a quick mount and attached the camera, at a very slight list, to the handlebars of the commuter bike and took it for a run to the local shopping atrocity. When viewing the downloaded image, I was astonished at the clarity of the video, considering it was only recorded at the default setting of 720p. I was a little disappointed in what youtube did to it by the time it uploaded, until I compared it with an earlier video I uploaded from a Kaiser Baas contraption I once used. Still, youtubes you see taken from GoPro units appear to be much clearer but it is possible that they are uploaded at 1080? Once I finish the permanent mount, I'll experiment further, and upload a 1080 file for comparative purposes. But as mentioned, the images from the camera played on your computer (or through the mini HDMI to your TV) are superb. The coppers will be assuredly impressed when you show them the video of the bogan giving you a close shave.
Not sure if this is a standard feature of this class of camera, but when you record, it does a second lo-res copy of the video. This is for playback over the built in wifi connection to your smart phone, and is saved to a resolution to match a typical smart phone screen resolution. The specs call for a class 6 micro SD, but initially all I had laying around was a class two card. This seemed to work fine for the video (below) but would probably croak if you tried to do a 1080 job. I've since acquired a class 6 card, with which I will test out 1080 and report back in due course. In the mean time, here is the test Vid:
[youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfqSMLyeYRw[/youtube]
Hmmm. previews suggest that embed doesn't work for me. The raw link is below:
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