Check out the Ion Air Action Pro demo on my GlobalTV Sunday Morning News Tech Talk segment: http://www.globaltvedmonton.com/video/tech+talk/video.html?v=2266510501&p=2&s=dd#newscasts
If the Ion Air Action Pro sports action camera was good
enough for Nik Wallenda to use
on his historic high wire walk across Niagara Falls, then it’s good enough for
anyone.
Its small, light,
waterproof to 10 meters, long lasting on battery, easy to use and more. It can
record up to a 170 degree wide view, is
a 5 megapixel still camera and can record still images or sequenced one at a time, three in one second, or one photo every 10, 20
or 30 seconds for cool time lapse videos.
The WiFi
version allows you to wirelessly connect and upload to a laptop, any smartphone
(there is also an iPhone App) for emailing or posting on social sites. It even
has live streaming video to share on your PC or phone screen or online. All Ion
cameras include 8 GB of free cloud storage.
It smartly has
a real mini HDMI port…a much easier HDMI cable type to find than the crazy size
micro ones. You set settings with the included software (also iOS devices) and organize your vids.
It records exceptionally
smooth 1080P 30 frames per second video for eye-popping action movies from anywhere. It really impresses when shown on a large HD TV screen. It also
records WVGA thumbnail vids at the same time for easy online sharing and you can shoot stills during
video.
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The Ion Air starts at $259.95 for the Pro Action Camera,
$319.95 for the Pro Plus Action and $379.95 for the Pro WiFi Action Camera. It
comes with enough hardware to mount on bikes and helmets but an expansion
mounting kit is also available for a reasonable $79.95 .
Wish list? GPS tagging and tracking…still a nice package
that nicely snuggles between the GoPro and Contour brands. The WiFi makes it a real winner.
Remember, Nik Wallenda liked it! And so do I.
Store availability is hit and miss, but the good news is the
distributor, Gentec International is in Canada.
Check out the Ion Air Action Pro at: http://www.youtube.com/user/iontheaction?feature=results_main
For more information go to: http://www.gentec-intl.com/all-brands/?s=+&brandID=108
SHOPPING FOR SD OR MICRO SD FLASH MEMORY?
Check out my Tech Talk segment on GlonalTV Morning News on choosing the right flash memory card: http://www.globaltvedmonton.com/video/tech+untangled/video.html?v=2266825434&p=1&s=dd#newscasts
Today’s smartphones and digital cameras have a voracious
appetite for memory. Not only do they consume more storage space in media,
especially pictures and songs but they gulp it all up much faster.
The most common flash cards memory cards are SDHC, found on
most consumer digital cameras, including DSLR models. The other format gaining popularity are
MicroSD cards, found in today’s smartphones and a growing number or new digital
cameras and tablets.
When shopping around for one, don’t be fooled by price.
Cheaper ones of the same capacity perform slower and are adequate for digital
cameras that are several years old. SD and MicroSD cards are categorized by
speed, indicated by a circular capital C
(Class) around the number 2, 4, 6 or 10, the latter being fastest on recording pictures and movies
(write) and transferring them to your PC (read).
Newer cameras usually recommend a minimum Class number,
usually 6. Better quality cameras have enough internal cash to accommodate slower
cards. But for 16 megapixel cameras that record better quality video or shoot
in larger RAW picture format, a faster card will work better, even letting you
shoot more sequential pictures in DSLR models.
But it’s just not camera and smartphone recoding speed that
matters.
It’s how fast it takes to transfer files from the SD card to
the computer that matters too. Typically, the newest 64 GB high speed SDXC UHS-I
cards from companies like Kingston and Lexar, $179, can record more than 6,000
20 megapixel JPEG photos or about 2,000 RAW files. Files from them are transferred
twice as fast as a plain SD card. These cards take about 30 minutes to transfer
their content, or about 30 seconds for one Gigabyte of data, compared to one
minute for a plain SD Class 10 card and two minutes for a Class 6 card.
In the case of Kingston and Lexar, I found their cards performed
much the same despite their fancy names and X numbers.
The same goes for Micro SD cards. Currently, the Kingston 32
GB Micro SDHC Class 10 card, $45, keeps up with its class 10 full SD
counterparts, in fact even faster when transferring files to the PC. That’s
four times faster than your likely current Class 4 Micro SD card.
If your PC is USB 3.0-capable then Kingston’s USB 3.0 Media
Reader FCR-HS3 ensures the speediest files transfers and reads 15 types of
cards. Lexar’s Professional USB 3.0 Dual-Slot Reader only handles all SD and CF
cards, is bulkier but closes tight after use to keep dust away.
USB storage is getting larger too. Kingston’s capless DataTraveler
Elite 3.0 64 GB can be had for about $85 and performs similarly to SDXC flash
memory cards.
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