The best action camera – What to pay attention to?
Magnification type. Digital magnification cuts and expands the source image and actually deteriorates its quality. To magnify an image using an action camera, it is best to use optical zoom, as it makes it possible to get magnified frames with the necessary resolution without loss of quality.
Image stabiliser type. An image stabiliser is a device that compensates image disturbances caused by camera shaking in the operator’s hands. Electronic stabilisation reserves some pixels on the camera matrix that won’t take part in image generation. Optical stabilisation uses eyepieces and gyroscopes. Professionals recommend for you to buy action cameras with optical stabilisation because of higher efficiency.
Viewing angle – lens field of view along diagonal line. Most action cameras are equipped with wide-angle lenses. A wide viewing angle makes it possible to “capture” most of the space within a frame. Note that a viewing angle that’s too wide and low resolution deteriorate image quality, e.g. it becomes more difficult to differentiate the tiny details in a frame.
Battery capacity – the higher the capacity is, the longer the device will operate.
Maximum image resolution. The following video record formats are popular: VGA, HD, Full HD, 4K. The higher the resolution is, the brighter, sharper and more realistic the image will be. It is necessary to decide what it will be used for. If you decided to buy an action camera to make home videos, pick Full HD. To make bright videos to view online (for example, for a YouTube channel vlog), buy an action camera from 1080р.