I’m oddly drawn to devices like the uCorder, wearable video-cameras which measure their shooting time in chunks of a day rather than minutes. At first it seems vain and boring, or even a little creepy, to shoot your own point-of-view for hours at a time, but I’d bet that once you got your hands on one, all kinds of great projects would suggest themselves.
The uCorder comes in two flavors: 1GB and a 2GB, for $80 or $100, both of which shoot 640 x 480 VGA video. As both come with an SD-card slot, through which can be added an extra 8GB, we see little point in buying the $100 uCorder (although it does double as a webcam). Fully loaded, you can get seven hours of footage from a small, light package that will clip into a front pocket, hang around your neck or mount onto a helmet.
The movies are in AVI format, and you import them by plugging the camera into a USB port and dragging the files across. The camera also charges via USB. The most obvious use is sports, or at least non-contact sports. Here in Barcelona last weekend we held a Europe-wide bike polo tournament (yes, it was awesome, and we won). A couple of these cameras on players in the final would mix nicely with all the crowd-shot video.
One rather disturbing example from the uCorder site is a crotch-level bowling-cam: the camera is hanging from the players belt to film the pins tumbling. You could also just set the thing running after you leave the house and be sure you’ll capture something interesting enough to cut out and keep. And because it is a standalone device, you don’t have to worry about killing your cellphone’s battery. Creepy? Maybe. Fun? Hell yes.
uCorder Cameras [uCorder. Thanks, Mike!]
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