DogCam and the PVR-500r Digital Hard Disk Recording System
Tonight I’ve been on the hunt for a good camcorder to bring with me to Chile next Friday. I’ve been flip flopping between hard drive cameras and MiniDV. For a while, the Panisonic (like Gavin’s) was sounding very tempting. They’ve got this nifty optical stability system. Still, the idea of a hard drive keeps appealing to me. I’ve been told that a hard drive based camera runs a higher risk of freezing up than a MiniDV cam. That’s where this next product comes in with a big win.
DogCam has a couple of helmet cams that hook into digital recording devices. This means you can carry the recorder in your pocket – near your body heat. The PVR-500r reads to have an amazing spec, but I haven’t really found much material outside of DogCam’s website. They claim some very impressive quality recording options and up to 5 hours worth.
Back to the cam itself for a moment, DogCam provides some videos on their site. Snowboarding through the trees came out particularly neat, imho. The cam is a bit fish-eyed and there’s no zoom option so the camera wouldn’t really cover all of the same bases a camcorder would. Still, it’s a very tempting option. I would love to hear more from anyone who’s used one!