Good Spearo HD Camera (UK)

Dogcam Bullet underwater video here in pea soup

I did a quick dive on Sunday at Bangor Pier and tried out the DogCam Bullet camera again. Usual pea soup visibility I'm afraid but hopefully you can see the potential for use in good vis.
I spliced a clip in Avidemux & then uploaded to Youtube. Make sure you change the quality to 720p when viewing
However in conclusion I'm going to have to say that this camera is very irritating and probably not a good purchase. Its really flaky with numerous operating problems from useless LED's which cannot tell you when its charged to invalid & spoiled movie files.
I do think that the bullet style camera is much better suited to spearfishing than something like the GoPro though - its so much more convenient and maneuverable so paying quite a bit more for a quality bullet cam may be the way to go.
I will persevere with this because I have no other choice but the camera button has also stopped clicking which makes it difficult to know whether you have actually turned it on/off and has really wound me up. I'll send it back for a replacement and will let you know how I got on with the customer service at DogCam.
It would be nice to know how Pembroke is getting on with his wide angle though?
There's a good review for the wide angle Dogcam and everything 'in the box' is the same as my cheaper narrow angle model.

artiz said:

I'll send it back for a replacement and will let you know how I got on with the customer service at DogCam.

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I can say with confidence that customer service with DogCam is second to none - I sent it back for £2.70 first class on Thursday lunch time and had a brand new one delivered 8am Saturday morning. LED's seem to work properly now as well. I get the feeling that the 2GB card which came with the camera may have been the problem - I have replaced it with a SanDisk 16GB card which cost £7 from Amazon.

jpp said:

Be interested to know how you get on with it and if you could post some video of it in action underwater.

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jpp - I've done a couple of pea soupers if you look back through the thread. I've found it hard to get away this year though. Lack of money & Uni work has taken its toll and the 2 times I have managed a day out its been hopeless viz - have you had any luck this year?

OK so I know I'm probably boring everyone (if anyone is actually interested that is) now but I have just discovered that this camera actually has 2 O rings - one is fitted inside the cap as per instruction manual
The second one fits on the shoulder of the camera body at the end of the screw. There seems to be no reference to the second one in any of the information provided so just make sure both are fitted if you do buy one.

For anyone still interested I have at last had some reasonable viz in Pembrokeshire this year so I took some video with my DogCam Bullet HD and the example below seemed the best test. I start off in open ocean and then fin my way into a lagoon with calm, clear and shallow waters.

DogCam Test- YouTube

The biggest problem with this camera is knowing if you are actually filming, mainly because the LED's are too small and not bright enough. In general though I think the potential of the camera is pretty obvious. I got nearly 2 hours from the battery and about 10Gb of film on a 16Gb card. In a 4 hour dive I only saw 2 fish big enough to take, one was a reasonable Bass and the other was the biggest Grey Mullet I have ever seen - I missed them both messing around with the camera???
In conclusion I think this is a good camera to get started with - its inexpensive but takes reasonable footage and is extremely maneuverable in the water. Its also easy to attach and remove from most guns.
I have found that the easiest and most convenient way to operate it is just to click it on when your actual hunt begins and let it run until the battery is out of power - a bit hit and miss but better than fiddling with it all the time and losing fish.
The .MOV files are very easy to edit in Avidemux and for me its well worth the price and a good beginners underwater HD-ish camera.

BarnacleBoy said:

I'm interested. Would be nice to see it in action in clearer water, so if anyone has one of these and has access to some clear water...post a video!

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The viz for my clip is the best I have encountered this year but I will post any further video if I find some decent visibility... which has been pretty rare in UK coastal waters for me.
However it's good to see a comparison with Robbo's Contour camera which is nearly twice the price of the Dogcam Bullet HD especially if you use the Promo code - HTDC05 which is still valid here and at £77.85 (delivered) a real bargain for the novice like me - and no I'm not a salesman, just an avid bargain hunter.
I have posted another little clip here tracking small pollock in about 3-4 meters, but make sure you 'change quality' to 720p HD.

P.S. Robbo can you let me know how to embed the Youtube video into a post (like yours above) rather than as a link please?

manalive! said:

I'd say that's comparable to my Gopro HD2, which can be seen at a similar depth (don't forget to change to 720p top make a honest comparison). I would say the gopro is a little better.

first bass of the year - YouTube

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I really don't think there is a comparison here though. The Gopro is a very cool camera but not if you can't afford it. You are talking hundreds (including mount) compared to £77.85 - also the Gopro is so much bigger and far less maneuverable in the water for spearfishing. This Dogcam is the size of your thumb and as stated earlier definitely for the cash challenged like me.
Nice vid & catch though!
Any chance you could let me know how you embed rather than link to Youtube please?

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pffs2M-S6ho"]small pollock - YouTube[/ame]

sheesh - that simple - thanks Manalive

manalive! said:

I'd say that's comparable to my Gopro HD2, which can be seen at a similar depth (don't forget to change to 720p top make a honest comparison). I would say the gopro is a little better.

first bass of the year - YouTube

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It's also nice to see someone catching Bass this year. I spent over 5 hours hunting last Saturday near St Davids in Pembrokeshire where I have taken plenty of Bass and only managed to see 1 and a big mullet in all that time. The South Devon lot are also not seeing any Bass in numbers yet so where did you take yours?

manalive! said:

Yes, there doesn't seem to be too many bass taken this year, I think partially due to the conditions being so poor that less spearing has taken place, but also there just seems to be a lot less around. This one was taken somewhere off Anglesey, but I've seen/heard of a few being taken from various locations around the Llyn.

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Hopefully the Bass season is still ahead of us and this weekend is looking pretty good for weather so I'm off to SE Devon tomorrow - anyone reading this and looking for a dive buddy down there - please get in touch!

After having a good weekend in East Devon I thought I would post up a compilation of results from this frustrating little underwater HD camera and conclude my review of it.
My first dive on Friday was almost perfect regarding mill pond sea and clear blue skies. Visibility was really good so I clicked the camera on as soon as I hit the water... no LED indicator and the camera didn't work... F**K. I tried a few more times with no luck and I can't tell you just how irritating it was. I connected it to my laptop that evening and formatted the mini SD card and it started working again ... so I can't be sure that it was not user error. Saturday was also pretty good weather but slightly less intermittent visibility as you can see from the video below and of course by the time I caught my 2 Bass the power had drained... but I had been in for 4 hours and missed more fish than I would like to mention. Including a very big Mullet in the caves, which my spear just bounced off, it stunned him for a second or two but by the time I tried to grab him he was gone - and yes I sharpened my spear tip after that novice error. On return that evening I downloaded from the SD card without a hitch and then the camera stopped working again with LED's showing permanent blue and then red and then combinations of both. The silly instruction booklet says absolutely nothing about these LED combinations. After a couple of hours of faffing I was looking for a rock to smash the camera to hell but just left it. Lo and behold next morning it's working fine??? Sunday's weather & viz had changed but I had a few hours left before leaving so I did a quick dive and saw the John Dory & caught a smallish Mullet and of course without the camera I would have been devastated not to have caught it on video???
So I have to say that I would not recommend this camera but then again it may just be me who is useless at operating it properly... but probably not, as I am pretty tech savvy. On balance the problems that I have had make this a very flaky bit of kit which can produce some great results but at a cost of being unreliable. I bought this as the only affordable HD-ish (720p) underwater camera a mature student like me could afford and it really pains me to say 'YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR'
In conclusion then the positives are the size & shape of this camera make it perfect for spearfishing, the bullet camera is ideal for our uses and so much better than big bulky GoPro type cameras which obviously impede maneuverability underwater. Some of the video produced can be spectacular but the unreliability is always omnipresent. This camera produces .MOV files (Quicktime-Apple) so it may be more suited for people with Mac's rather than PC's but Avidmux a free video editing software does a reasonable job with these files and is even able to produce a whole series of high quality jpg's from your video (click on thumbnail above). The price is also good but subject to all of the comments above.
The cons are that it's unreliability is a real pain in the ar*e.
I hope this review has helped someone and any questions, comments, pi*s takes or observations will be gratefully received.