New tools to document your life – Action Cam and Flying Camera

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There are many ways to record our daily lives. We often take a picture of wonderful moment or record video of pleasant times that later make us delighted at those good memories. Tools for doing so have been mainly cameras, camcorders or smartphones. Recently, however, 'action cam' and 'flying camera' have caught popularity as new tools to document our lives.

 

 

Action cam​

Action cam is a small camcorder attached to clothes, handlebars or helmets so that it can continuously record without touching it to control. Mainly it is not a hand-carry type but a type that is attached to something. While going on a tour or enjoying an outdoor sport, action cam helps you easily record the moment you want, not missing a single second​

 

 

 

In addition, action cam is typically waterproof and rugged to be used in the tough circumstanced like snowy or rainy weather. GoPro, one of popular models of action cam, has high waterproof performance that works underwater while enjoying surfing or scuba diving, and various types of mount adaptors are available that can be attached to surfboards or helmets.​

 

 

 

Those video clips that were taken by other people with action cams on their cloth while they are skydiving, scuba diving, surfing or snowboarding convey vividly the excitement and pleasure of those people at that moment. Action cam has recently been upgraded with the functionality to capture a moment, and with the full-HD camera performance, attracting interests of a lot of people.​

  

 

Flying camera​

Along with action cam, flying camera is also gaining more interests recently. Do you remember helicam? It became popular after it was shown in the popular TV show "Grandpas over Flowers". The word 'helicam' is a combination of helicopter and camera. It is a kind of flying camera or filming equipment that records video from the air or from the inaccessible place like cliff area. Aerial shots taken by helicam give cooler and more dynamic images, by which the popularity of "Grandpas over Flowers" was boosted​

 

 

 

 

Flying camera like helicam is a small-sized unmanned helicopter with a camcorder installed in it, and can be radio controlled by a remote controller. It can give a variety of scenes depending on flight range or flight angle. Especially using 'panning' technique, recording video while flying fast in a horizontal direction, we can get wonderful scenes that can hardly be taken in the normal condition on earth

 

 

 

 

It has been less expensive compared to its high price before. Therefore more people become willing to enjoy it as their hobby. Several types of flying camera are now on the market. Among them, China's DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus is the most popular one​

 

 

 

Wearable drone​ 

 

 

A wearable drone, named Nixie, is a new concept flying camera. It's really a novelty. Although it is under development, not yet released, but it won the first prize in Intel's Makes It Wearable challenge.​

 

 

 

 

Nixie is made of flexible band, so you may wear it on the wrist at other times. But anytime you want, you can make a gesture of flicking the wrist to let it fly to the air and to let it take pictures or record videos. It has swivel camera that can tilt up and down, so it can take pictures from various angles​

 

 

 

It would be a great match between watches and Nixie, when it is released in the market. It seems to be not yet possible to check the time with Nixie, but once it imports a clock into it, there would be nothing strange about wearing Nixie on the wrist instead of a watch​

 

 

 

An interesting thing about flying camera is "Follow me" functionality that a drone is following the subject and automatically recording videos. By using this, you can get the videos of yourself taken from the air while jogging, riding a bike or surfing because your drone is recording while following you at regular distance and angle​

 

 

 

 

 

Iris+ (Iris Plus) quadcopter, made by 3D Robotics, is one of the flying cameras with Follow Me functionality installed. It implemented Follow Me functionality in a way that synchronizes GPS of both air vehicle and smartphone, and the vehicle follows the subject by means of its sensors.​

 

 

In addition, it provides automatic flight planning functionality that you draw a flight path on the smartphone using its app, and the GPS of drone will fly along with the path in the picture. Flight path can be made in either way, returning to the starting point after passing a specific point or just traveling to the specific point and finishing there.​

 

 

Flying camera is a drone, unmanned flight vehicle, combined with a camera on it. Recently it is getting popular among those who enjoy sports and leisure. For it's such an excitement to control the camera flying around you, to get images or videos of your activity taken from various angles, and to enjoy those videos with wonderful scenes which are rarely seen or taken by ordinary people so far. So it is likely that more people will be enjoying flying cameras.​

 

 

But such unmanned flying vehicles with camera are raising issues of safety and privacy. So legal rules and regulations have to be established which stipulate when and where flying cameras should be used