I’ve been a big fan of the Drift Stealth camera for a couple years now. I take most of my on-the-water videos with it and even set at just 720 dpi the videos look fantastic on a 40 inch large screen television.
Today I received the new Drift Ghost model. It operates pretty much just like the earlier one (which is nice since I won’t have to relearn much of anything) but is a much smaller and more compact unit than the Stealth unit. Not that the older one was large by any means, but the new Ghost model is no larger than a pack of playing cards. This will make it even easier to mount in various locations.
The Ghost does have some nice new features among them the “zoom-in” and “zoom-out” feature will be quite useful. It’s also completely waterproof down to about 13 feet. I don’t submerge mine and never had any water issues with the Stealth, but this’ll give me a lot more peace of mind in heavy spray or a rainstorm.
The remote is where another big change has been made. If I had any complaint about the Stealth it regarded the fact that you couldn’t see if the camera was recording or not without actually looking at the side screen on the camera. More than once I failed to turn off the recording mode with the remote and returned to the dock with an hour of video that I didn’t want. The Ghost renders that situation mute, as the remote now has an “on-off” (red/green) light on the remote itself. Sweet.
The remote is a lot larger than the older one. About twice as large. However, in this instance bigger may turn out to be better since the buttons are larger and easier to hit in cold weather or while wearing gloves. It’s also shaped so you can wear it on your wrist, if you want. A wrist strap is included.
It carries the same internal noise cancelling microphone as the Stealth, but I plan to add the external mic so I can position it closer to me when the camera is set a bit off.
The large capacity battery is now standard and is simple to install on or off the water.
The unit ships with several mounts of various type and style. I’ll just add a small nylon RAM ball to the side and use the matching RAM mounts on my boats as I did with the earlier model.
The Ghost will record video at 720, 960 and 1080FPS, has photo and photo burst modes, a time lapse mode and will even operate in a combination of these.
On-screen playback remains standard, although now with a larger screen. The camera is Wi-Fi equipped and several apps are said to be nearly ready for release.
Cost was around $400 but is likely to drop a bit as more of these get into the dealer’s hands.
I don’t sell them nor have any interest in those that do. I’ve just had good success with mine and would like to see more kayak fishermen carrying a camera of some sort. If you want to shoot video, this is certainly one of several very good ones on the market for 2013.