ATC Mini Action Camera: First Impressions

You may have read how I acquired a new helmet camera from Oregon Scientific?  It's only fair that now that I've opened the box and had a little play I should share my thoughts.

In the box comes the camera itself, along with:

• Battery
• 8 Gig Mini SD Card
• USB to mini USB cable
• TV-out jack cable
• Quick release mount
• Attachment to strap onto helmet via the vents
• Tripod attachment 
• Manuals

...and as a nice touch from Oregon Scientific, a surfboard mount.  I don't own a surfboard, but I'd imaging using it to attach the camera to the mountainboard shouldn't be too much of an issue. I don't think this is part of the standard package however.

Please note that I was hoping to avoid a direct comparison with the Contour 1080 HD at this stage, but seeing as it's the only other action camera that I've spent much time with, reference to it will be inevitable.  Oh well.

 ATC Mini - Chunky Buttons

First impressions are good. The unit is chunky enough to reassure me that it's in place, without being too heavy and the three buttons - Power / Video mode / Camera mode are all large enough to be operated without too much trouble whilst wearing my thick Hillbilly gloves with self improved reinforced finger pads.  The hard plastic outer shell feels robust but is covered by an additional soft rubber outer-shell and gut feeling tells me that it should bounce or at least take the odd knock or two without any issue.  The literature also says that the camera is waterproof to a depth of 20 metres (60 feet).  Whilst I'm curious about this, I'm in no rush to try this out so it's a good job that others have done so:

Filling the stream (under water) - Dougal lick

Suffice to say, the rear flap that opens to expose the battery and mini SD card appears to have a pretty good seal on it.

Waterproof hatch to battery, mini SD card, USB port and TV-out Jack

Charging up the unit is done like most small devices these days via USB with an LED flashing away on top to indicate battery status.  The unit gives a good, loud reassuring 'beep' when turned on and recording started, so it's just a case of memorising button locations in order to use whilst on the move.  When plugging in for the first time, my Windows 7 laptop recognised the unit without problem and allowed me to view the (currently empty) mini SD card as an external drive.  Manual states that Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 or Apple Mac OS X 10.6 or above should all be fine.

The unit comes without drivers or software, and so video playback will have to be done via your favourite video playing programme.  I like VLC player, it just seems to play everything I throw at it.  Changing the camera time and date can be done by creating a file on the mini SD card and is thoroughly explained via the manual.  As yet, I don't think any other settings on the camera can be changed but then, in truth, the Contour had all sorts of settings and after an initial play, I ended up recording most things using the default settings.

The 8 Gig of memory included in the package is a great bonus, far bigger than the 2 Gig offered as standard by the Contour.  I used to think that the 2 Gig option was fine as I found that the battery would be likely to run out far before the card was full.  This was however before I bought a cigarette USB charger off ebay for a couple of quid in order to charge the battery overnight on a long away weekend.  Once again, memory on the action camera would be the limiting factor but obviously more cards could be bought if necessary, or a single larger card up to 32 Gig. Flicking through the manual it quotes recoding time as being approximately15 minutes of video per 1 Gbyte, so a couple of hours worth in this case.  Seeing as my total riding time at Whinlatter was around 16 minutes in length, this should give me more than enough video!

 USB car charger - handy for long weekends

The video camera specs are reasonably high at 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) in 16:9 (widescreen) ratio at 30fps.  Previously I'd recorded on the Contour at 720p in order to a) produce smaller file sizes that were only going to end up on Youtube anyway and b) take advantage of the 60fps to produce smoother footage.  This was the norm until earlier this year when a camera firmware update switched the unit back to 30fps and I didn't spot the difference.  Point being, 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) in 16:9 (widescreen) ratio at 30fps will probably do me fine.

The mount fixings feel a lot more sturdy that they look in the on-line literature and allow the camera to be fixed into place in 90-degree intervals - very handy as I intend to mount the camera on the side of my helmet.  From this position, the mount itself can then rotate a full 360-degrees with a secondary adjustable angle pivot.  From all this, it'd have to be a pretty unusual situation to not be able to get the required angle required.

The helmet strap mount would fit nicely onto my cycle helmet as the vents are in the right position but I had trouble attaching to either my piss-pot helmet or full face 661 so I'd probably do better with the Hardshell Helmet Mount sold separately.

A very welcome addition is the included tripod mount which will allow you to quickly attach to a tripod with standard screw thread which should mean that it is relatively easy to hook up to all sorts of camera mountings that are available or you have tucked away.  In particular, I'd be keen to cobble together a pole mount sooner rather than later if only because of the cool shots of the rider available from this angle. I'll inevitably blog the results as and when this happens.  Edit:  I did and the results are here.

Finally, a nice option not seen on the Contour is the TV-out jack that allows you to quickly view recorded media without having to link the unit to a laptop.  I'm pleasantly surprised that it isn't HDMI like most other things seem to be these days, but it works great on my big old tele.

Don't get me wrong, I would jump at the chance to get my old Contour HD back in my hands and out again recording and you really do get what you pay for.  In the case of the Contour, you pay a lot and you get a lot of features (and I suspect a slightly better sensor - will investigate). However, in the case of the ATC Mini you get a solidly built camera that will do what it's been built to do with non of the extras, but with a significantly lower price tag - £120 including the 8 Gig card and with plenty of special offers if you shop around - for example, Oregon Scientific were offering 10% off last weekend to their twitter followers.

Next up will be a few examples of footage once I've been able to get some examples together at different times of the day and different mountings. Seeing as I tend to do most of my riding in the woods in the evenings, it'll be interesting to see how the camera operates in lower light conditions.