In case you hadn’t noticed, here at singletracks we’re pretty serious about documenting mountain bike trails around the world with photos, videos, maps, and reviews. So we were pretty excited when we heard about the newest helmet camera from Contour, the ContourGPS. It’s the first wearable action sports video camera to integrate a GPS which makes documenting mountain bike trails pretty much a done deal. Talk about a virtual reality trail experience!
Here’s one of the first videos the Contour folks created using the new camera. Beyond the cool tech, I gotta know what trail this is – looks sick!
One of the things I like about tying GPS data to video is that it means you can’t speed up the tape to make yourself look faster (your actual speed is recorded by the GPS). Admittedly it’s a little tough to watch the map and the video at the same time but still, it’s pretty interesting from a tech perspective.
I’ve always wondered why more digital (still) cameras don’t include GPS for easy geo-tagging, though I never really thought about adding GPS to a video camera. Perhaps someone will come up with a slick iPhone app to do the same, though they’ll need to ship an innovative helmet mount along with the app. 🙂 Thankfully the ContourGPS sticks with the same versatile design as the original ContourHD and the whole unit weighs in just under 5 ounces.
Of course the video is still high def and we can tell you the ContourHD was already one of the best video cameras for mountain biking. No word on when exactly the ContourGPS will be shipping but you can pre-order it at Amazon.com for $349.99. How would you use a GPS-enabled helmet cam?
