The Drift Innovations HD170 is a rugged outdoor sports video camera, that is easy to use. It has an excellent usage factor, combining loud indicator beeps for mode changes, a fully rotatable lens and a useful LCD screen, that does horizontal alignment and recorded viewing. The camera records high definition video resolutions of 720p and 1080p, and has proven itself to take excellent footage with great clarity and beautiful colors.
Note: This article is meant to be read in conjunction with Lee Lau’s article, where he discusses usability of the HD170 for shooting video, mounting setups, and a plethora of excellently done video footage.
Drift Innovations HD170
The HD170 is a POV (point of view) high definition sports CMOS camera, that can record video footage in 1080p, 720p and SD formats. It records data onto a SD card up to 32GB in size, and is powered with an internal rechargeable Li-Ion battery that gives around 2 and half hours of recording time. The somewhat large oblong camera has an LCD viewing screen, is made of plastic and fiberglass, with a rubberized strip around its circumference and screen, has a fully rotatable lens, and is impact and shock resistance, and waterproof to half a meter. The camera attaches to an assortment of mounts, including a goggle, flat surface and helmet, and handlebar, using their proprietary universal clip system, which attaches to the camera via a quarter inch universal camera adapter.
Drift HD170 Camera Kit
The kit comes with the HD170 camera with its universal clip, a wireless remote with a wrist strap, a flat surface/helmet, goggle and handlebar mount, head strap, stick on Velcro pads, an instruction guide, a USB cable, a rechargeable 3.7V 1110mAh Li-Ion battery and an HDMI TV cable.
Video Resolutions
The Drift HD170 can shoot in three video resolutions, two of them HD. It can shoot in 1080p (widescreen) , 720p (widescreen), and SD, all at 30fps. Each of the video resolution’s are captured at different bit rates, which entails varying recording times and storage requirements, meaning greater resources are needed for the higher usage formats. The resolution settings are done within the camera’s menu system, which is viewed from its LCD screen and managed by four buttons. The camera records in two viewing angles, unique to its video resolution, so 1080p is 127 degrees, while 720p and SD are at 170 degrees. It uses the H.264 video codec, AAC audio compression, and a .mov file type. The 720p is the default mode for the camera.
Photos
The HD170 can shoot 5 Megapixel still photos in either a manual or automatic mode. In the manual mode, it can shoot a single photo, while the automatic mode allows photos to be taken every X number of seconds, where X is 3 (default), 5, 10, or 30 second intervals.
