Drift Ghost HD

[TheArchitect]

On the market for a new helmet camera as my contour roam has given up the ghost.

Looking to get a used Drift Ghost HD. Have read/watched a lot of reviews of this but none seem to be long term use reviews.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has used these for a long period, through all weathers and how they have faired.

Also is it worth paying the extra for the Ghost S version?

I intend to use it purely for recording my commutes for ass-covering purposes (not vlogging) and to mount on my RC cars just for lulz.

I'm not overly bothered about having super crisp quality footage, but I acknowledge that having HD footage to show more detail (number plates etc.) can be very helpful in certain scenarios.

Cheers

TL;DR: Need new helmet cam, thinking of Drift Ghost. Thoughts?
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GSXR 600 K6 - Stolen
GSXR 600 K6 - Stolen
MT09 - Almost stolen

[doggone]

The Ghost S does better in low light, but don't expect miracles.
They seem surprisingly robust, I've had the Ghost HD since about January and the only real issue is it sometimes steams up slightly inside the lens. This seems to be related to temperature changes rather than water ingress, and clears itself sooner or later

Sound is badly affected by wind noise to the extent it will mostly need muting unless you get an external microphone and put it somewhere shielded.

Battery life is about 2 1/2 hours.
You can get reasonably good stills from screenshots, though they will need fisheye effect reducing as a rule.
They can do stills but not very good IMO.

[Al]

The Ghost S has about 30 min or so longer battery life but you could just buy a second battery for the ghost HD or power it off the bike to save money if that is your only reason to buy the S over the HD.
I get the misting up lense issue sometimes as well and I've managed to break the plastic clip on the back, the odd time it has frozen up and needs the battery removing to reset but generally I think its pretty tough.
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Yamaha FZR400RR 3tj
My Instagram Thingy

[TheArchitect]

Cheers for input guys. Just to double double check, it is waterproof out of the box without the need for a case/cover isn't it? That was the beauty of the contour, in that it was waterproof straight up with no need for a clunky case.
____________________
GSXR 600 K6 - Stolen
GSXR 600 K6 - Stolen
MT09 - Almost stolen

[doggone]

It should be if you fit the solid rear door - that you can't plug a mic in.
Like that you can even film underwater (apparently, not tried)

[Al]

Waterproof out of the box upto 3 meters apparently, I've used it in shallow water and heavy rain and its been fine.
The remote control is only supposed to be splash proof but mine survived going in the washing machine.
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Yamaha FZR400RR 3tj
My Instagram Thingy

[-Matt-]

If you aren't interested in crisp footage i'd look at the Drift HD's.

I got a Drift HD720 around the start of this year as my first helmet-cam. The footage is fine for what i'm after - even for grabbing pictures from footage - its no crystal clear Go-Pro/Ghost quality, but its still a decent picture quality [lots of samples here - the pictures where i'm riding https://www.bikechatforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=291335&highlight=]. I bought it new for 99 quid on ebay. You can easily find them for around that mark now - including all mounts/additionals. Battery life is about 2.5h - spare batteries/battery-chargers can be had for under 15 quid for the pair, so you can have one charging on the bike whilst the others in use if you want to record long trips. Takes a 32GB card which at the quality it records lasts a hell of a lot of hours. Its also very streamlined and good for top/side-mounting on a helmet.

Only complaint i've had with it was as a result of a long motorway journey in severe rain. It worked throughout. Worked during the beginning of the next sunny day. But later on started misting up and the screen failed. Had to open it up and dry it out a bit. I think it might of just been the pro-longed use at high speed in severe rain/bad luck though, as i've dunked it in a bath before and it was absolutely fine as it claims to be, as well as using it in rain for weeks during winter. The other potential 'complaint' as someone else I think mentioned is the sound - the mich might as well not exist once you're above 30MPH as the wind noise becomes intollerable. But personally I don't care about the audio and if you do stop and need to record road-side audio for any reason J&S Aberdeen style then it will be up to the task.

Drift surgery courtesy of Aff
https://i59.tinypic.com/s64t20.jpg

[Lone-Wolf]

Wotcha.

I've had my HD Ghost for over a year. OK, it did have a slight, and I mean slight, problem. If you left the battery in the camera, even with it turned off then the battery would go flat in about a week.

I got in touch with Drift Innovations and even though the warranty period was up they still sent me a replacement camera - as in camera, remote, battery, spare mountings. I thoroughly recommend this camera. Most of my video stuff can be found HERE

In short: Good camera - good company.
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Cheers.
^..^
L.W. - www.moonshiners.org.uk

[TheArchitect]

Excellent, thank you all.

I think I'm going to go for the Ghost version purely for the fact that second hand prices are still within budget so makes sense to get the most I can out of it.

I'm now trawling ebay for that perfect bargain, missed one last night by minutes.

As a thought, it might be worth one of you long term owners of Drift camera to do a long term owners review on youtube. There is nothing currently on there that I could see, and the new/unboxing reviews never give you a true insight into any flaws that may be lurking.

Anyway, thanks for the advise and tips.


____________________
GSXR 600 K6 - Stolen
GSXR 600 K6 - Stolen
MT09 - Almost stolen

[Cadbury]

As to the low light, this is from my DriftHD Ghost with (I think) +1 on exposure. A little grainy, but you can clearly see number plates etc should you need to.

https://i61.tinypic.com/2ij1cm1.jpg

I've had mine for over a year now, through very heavy rain, not let in a drop yet. Battery life is about 2 1/2 hrs, perhaps a smidgen more. the remote is really handy with the 'feedback' lights lets you know at a glance if its recording (and makes it really easy to take a photo etc whilst riding)
Mounts are great, the 3M adhesive one on my helmet shows no sign of budging, and the camera has a standard screw thread on the bottom should you want to use any regular tripod/camera mount for any other purposes.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with mine.

[Al]

There was a firmware update for the ghost HD that gave it a couple of extra modes recently, one of them is low light so that may make it less grainy I've never bothered to switch the modes.
I think the firmware update also gave it some kind of loop recording feature but I still always just use the tagging mode for general riding.
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Yamaha FZR400RR 3tj
My Instagram Thingy

[doggone]

[doggone]

Sounds like the mic sensitivity might be screwed with that new firmware though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1pQhyHB1A0

[Al]

At the time I remember a couple of people commenting saying they couldn't get their remote controls to sync after the firmware update but I never had a problem.

Mine has been fine with the mic sensitivity, a lot of people claim that anything other then mic sensitivity 1 is useless but I've found the opposite. I think I've found a pretty good mic set up using the external drift mic mounted in the rear of my helmet in a sponge envelop I made and behind the helmet padding, with it set on mic sensitivity 3. It wouldn't be much good for vlogging but for bike audio it eliminates most of the wind noise and the bike still sound fairly crisp.

I couldn't even get mic sensitivity 1 to work using the internal mic when I used it to record mountain biking footage the audio was almost muted which is making me think that somehow the mic sensitivity is different on my camera
____________________
Yamaha FZR400RR 3tj
My Instagram Thingy

[doggone]

I did put the new firmware on mine but haven't tried it yet.
I usually set it on 2 anyway as I rarely use it for voice even though it's in the helmet as a less windy place.
Since they are aware of it no doubt there'll be a new fixed version shortly.