Product: Samsung SC-X105 Sports Miniket Price: $5,980 Pros: Impressive image stabiliser counters camera shake Cons: Erratoc on-off function resulted in lost footage
Samsung's promotional material enthuses that 'customers lead adventurous lives and they want to capture every second of it on video'.
Ignoring that slightly dubious proposition, I was certainly captivated at the prospect of filming an as-it-happens downhill mountain bike ride.
Any downhill sports enthusiast (whether biker, skier or snowboarder) will attest that third-party footage rarely captures the full thrill and steepness experienced by the rider. The Samsung SC-X105 Sports Miniket deals with the problem through a helmet-mounted remote camera attached to a featherweight recording unit that can be stowed on a belt or backpack.
The SC-X105 sports a 10x optical zoom and instant 'power on' option which promises (dubiously) full protection against lost footage. A two-inch 211-pixel colour LCD screen comes packed in a hardy rubberised case with a high degree of water resistance.
An image stabiliser function provides impressive compensation against camera shake. The unit has 512MB of memory and an mpeg 4 recording option allows for easy file sharing by e-mail.
