New(ish) Action Cameras

I've been looking at cameras lately and have noticed some more action cams have cropped up over the past year.

My DriftHD's still work great, however, their casings are starting to break down (4-5 years of Texas heat will do that to plastic), and it's difficult to get replacement shells.  I still think they're overall the best helmet camera for paintball given their overall design.

Sony HDR-AZ1

This revision of the camera received a significant shrink from its previous versions; enough so that I would actually consider using it now.  It kind of looks like they just ditched the retarded accessory shit on the bottom.

A large part of the shrink is probably the removal of the internal GPS.  I kind of suspect maybe some other things under the hood, but that's the biggest one.  The GPS is a part of the live view remote now, which is actually a sensible thing to do.

The SteadyShot mode I think will be pointless for paintball use, but possibly more interesting for RC, which is the primary reason why I'm looking at it.

The remote feature I really like.  Originally, I didn't think it would be that big a deal, but having used Drift's remote for a while, it's something that I appreciate much more.  (Like forgetting to turn the cam on before a game, and being able to turn it one while you make your initial breakout.)  You can also use it with a smartphone instead of the official remote, which is really nice.

The lens housing looks kind of crappy.  If I'm not mistaken, there will be 3 layers of glass before the sensor.  The waterproof "exo-suit" is one layer, then the inner camera will have one layer, and then you get the lens.  That screams "lens flare" to me, and some of the sample footage I've seen confirms this.

(Drift HD, when run bare, which I do, has 2 lenses, and not very much lens flare.)

The online video samples of the HDR-AZ1 unfortunately seem kind of "meh".  Most of the videos look like someone farted on the lens, kind of like when GoPro's seem to go in one of their moods.

The housing and mount options are still shit, but the size reduction might help alleviate some of that.

The bare unit itself is "splashproof", but I wouldn't trust that alone against a paintball hit.

Other notable about the HDR-AZ1 is the file format and the editing software it comes with.  Haven't had much time to look into those, but they might make nice bonus features.

Also notable:  the WiFi control API might actually be documented.  Something about some JSON-RPC interface.

Oh, and the battery is replaceable.

Questions remain:  can the thing record on external power alone?  Apparently it will pick up the time from the Android phone that connects to it, but does the live view remote keep time as well?

What is the threading on the front mounting hole?  1/4-20?  Looks smaller than that.

Panasonic HX-A1

This one's not out yet, but it's pretty small and has a nice, sane round body which will be much easier to make mounts for.  Also appears waterproof without another outer housing, which I like.

They appear to support an external power supply by default, which is somewhat unusual, and sounds great at first that they thought ahead...

...  but then you realize it's probably because you can't get at the internal battery.

This is speculation until the camera comes out, but we'll see.

(Drift HD allows access to the battery AND an external power supply to be used.)

(I'm telling you the Drift HD's are kind of the gold standard for usability.)

Panasonic HX-A500

Totally crazy 4k action cam.  I can barely handle 1080, and now we're moving to 4k?!  This one goes back to the remote-image-sensor unit design of old, which fell out of fashion for obvious reasons.

It's tough to say whether this form factor will ever really be popular.  You only do it because you have to.  In this case, for the 4k.

4k itself is interesting because it will allow for digital zoom down to 1080p, so you can still possibly see what happened on arc'd shots if you gun mount.  Kind of.

They might have some image stabilization as well, but again, for paintball I think that's pointless.

I can say that having the battery on a remote unit can be useful for cold-weather usage, but then again, an all-in-one unit which supports and external battery pretty much can do the same thing.  Details on the battery are sketchy right now.

Drift Stealth 2

Drift came out with some other models as well, but the one I think is really interesting is the Drift Stealth 2.  Basically, it has all the features I liked about the Drift HD, but minus the live screen, which is replaced with WiFi connectivity, which is just as good (I'm pretty sure the screen absolutely chewed up power, even when it was off).  Slight size and weight shrink I think which is also good.  Good picture quality, good mounting options, rotating lens, works without an extra exo-suit, replaceable battery, external power capable, remote control, the whole bit.  My favorite action camera.  And some of you know that it's rare that I give something top billing, but this camera gets it.

Possibly significant caveat:  WiFi preview appears to cut off when it starts recording.

What I'm Actually Going to Do

Right now, I'm leaning toward the Sony for use in both paintball and RC, mostly because I want to try the stabilization out on my quadcopter.  If only for paintball, I would go for the Drift Stealth 2 hands down.  In fact I will probably wind up buying both.

On, and as usual, GoPro came out with some revisions to their Hero's, and they all suck.  Shit case, shit mounting, shit overall.  A lot of guys talk a lot of shit on the forums about the Hero's, but surprise surprise, most of them don't post shit for videos.  Because Hero's are shit and unbearable to actually use for paintball.

If you're thinking of shitting on yourself with a GoPro, save yourself some money and just buy the Xiaomi Yi.

MCBers

You know, sometimes you find some people on MCB talking shit, and you're like...  are you really this much of a dweeb, or do you just have one of those personalities that doesn't translate very well to forums?

Well, I happen to click on some video links, and what I found, well...  everything makes sense now.

Oh dear.  Well, he's young.  Plenty of time to...  uh...  yeah.  Young Jeff Albertson in the making.  No gameplay videos despite the lulzworthy camera setup.  Cool wolf t-shirt bro.

Goddamn does everyone on MCB still live with their parents?  "Ergonomics" and "snake playing".  LOL.

You know who he reminds me of?  Jon Lajoie, when he does any of those creepy singles dating videos.  Goddamn the guy is a windbag.  Half the time he's just talking a bunch of gibberish anyways.

So anyways, yeah, that pretty much settles it.  No more of that.

I've been doing this for a long time, and I've met lots of people from "online".  I'm no social butterfly, clearly, but the thing that has always struck me was that people always comment, "You seem like a totally normal person."

That's kind of always puzzled me.  I'm like, "What exactly were you expecting?"

It seems clear now that they were expecting one of these guys, and they got me instead.  That's fucked up, yo.  For the sake of humanity and paintball, don't be like one of these guys.

Field Operations Codified: The Chrono Station

Every field, that I have ever visited mismanages the chrono station procedure.

The daily chrono session is a serious bottleneck, particularly for large crowds.  Here is how it should be managed.

1. Player steps up and fires a shot.
2. If it's OK, fire a few more to make sure it's not a fluke.
3. If there is anything wrong, PLAYER GOES TO THE BACK OF THE LINE.

Step 3 is kind of the important one.  That entire line of 40+ people is waiting for 1 limited resource:  the chronograph.

There is no reason for someone with a shitty gun to stand in front of the chrono just to fuck with his gun.  He can do that in the back of line while other people proceed to get their guns chrono'd.

That's it.  It's real fucking simple.  Maximize throughput of people through the chrono station.

Field Operations Codified: Turnaround

A lot of fields seem to have issues with game turnaround.  They just don't run the games fast enough, and players are left in the staging area twiddling their thumbs.

The procedure seems to pretty obvious.

1. Walk out for a set of games.
2. After the games, check paint status.  If people need to head up, then head up.
3. When you get to the staging area, start a stopwatch.  Announce when the next walkout is, and give warnings a 2 and 1 minute marks.

That's pretty much it.

Pendleton actually took it a step further and was recording what groups were on what fields, as well as what fields they had already played on apparently.  I was actually kind of impressed by that.

The Efficiency Bullshit Parade

I mentioned what should be the test method for measuring efficiency in paintball guns a while back.

The topic came up again on MCB.  The MCB shitheads, as MCBers always do, proceeded to lie, mislead, and misinform each other with non-information, because that's apparently what decent people do to each other.

This time around, I decided to validate some of my previous findings with the test method.  I've run the test multiple times, and came up with the following numbers:

• Automag - 0.25g per shot
• Invert Mini - 0.25g per shot
• Spyder Compact 2000 - 0.20g per shot

Anyways, I reverse calculated the results and collated them together here:

Y CANT MCBERS MATH

The criteria for accepting a test:

1. They had to chrono the marker.  Duh.  An SL8R can get really fucking good results if you, you know, never chrono the fucking gun.  Idiot.  The most basic fucking thing, and you can't even do that right.
2. They couldn't be using the stock barrel.  Paint-to-barrel match is pretty important, and I figured if they changed the barrel, they might have cared about this.  If they were still using the stock barrel, then all confidence is lost in the tester's ability.

You'll notice a distinct pattern here.  Spools tend to do about 0.25g per shot, and poppets get about 0.20g per shot.  And as a further validation, the two Spyders and the Resurrection are actually using the same valve.

Misc. Takeaways:

1. I'm pretty sure my efficiency test works.  My data matches what others have found, as long as you filter out the shitty results.  The difference being that I didn't have to literally blow through hundreds of rounds to obtain it.  Don't fucking create a test that's so goddamn painful that nobody wants to reproduce it.
2. Why the fuck is everybody quantifying efficiency as "number of pods"?  Fucking pods vary from <140 to 160, depending on fill.  It's a bullshit way to report results.
3. Paintball player impressions are completely fucking unreliable.  For example, the person running the Resurrection test looked at the results and went "meh" when they were actually pretty good.
4. What's worse is the manufacturers themselves are just as fucking clueless as the players.  They have all this fancy talk of "engineers" and shit, but really, the poppet manufacturers could easily be claiming higher numbers.  You know those fuckers would take every opportunity to market that shit if they knew about it.
5. As fucking predicted, damn near nobody ever started from a full 4500 fill.  And yet you look at other threads where shitheads collate the data, and they don't fucking take the partial fills into account.
6. NO FUCKING EXCUSES.  We don't need to hear shit about how your results might be skewed because your gun was leaking or your battery was low or whatever.  FIX YOUR FUCKING SHIT.

Mag to Cocker Barrel Adapter

I've released my Mag to Cocker Barrel Adapter here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9Ub05cFvbYmZHNpUlJFTXRhU0E/edit?usp=sharing


Enjoy!

Sony AS30V/AS100V

Sony released some "updates" to the HR-AS(S) line of sports cameras.  Honestly, the only reason I was even looking at them was for stuffing on my RC plane.

The newer models are slightly smaller.  The AS100V is "splashproof" without the exoskeleton.  No idea if this means it can take a direct paintball hit, however.

They've added some features.  Like GPS, which is not particularly interesting for paintball.

The new remote control is actually kind of neat and I can see myself getting some use out of it.

However, the case and mounting are STILL overall fucked up.

They STILL haven't added even a image flip in hardware.  It's the easiest fucking thing for them to do, and they STILL can't fucking add the feature.  Hello?  Imager has to fill the memory anyways, and if not there, then when the frames are pulled they can be flipped at that point as well, still completely in "hardware" without making the user do it in post-processing.

It is fucking bizarre how inept Sony is.