O’Neill’s H3 Campack
After watching all those cool snowboarding documentaries you get free with your copy of White Lines, or whatever mag takes your fancy, I’m sure many of you have launched yourselves off a slope or rail holding a video camera in one hand. Trying to eliminate the crazed arm-waving in order to get a steady picture almost always results in you capturing some incredibly boring snowboarding… or a lot of falling down. I personally have lots of video of the latter, on varieties or boards and wheels. It’s interesting the first time, and after that the yelp and skiff of snow as the camera goes flying starts to get old.
So O’Neill have picked up on the trend for all things DIY and digital, and provided an affordable (ish) way of videoing your antics. Their latest set of goggles actually have a mini camera set into them, with a lead going into the backpack. The DV lead can then attach to whatever recording device you’re using, to give you a hands-free and light way of recording your first-person-view of whatever stunts you’re going to ride.
As the shamelessly nicked screenshot above (from O’Neills website about the H3 here) shows, the camera looks pretty hi-tech, meaning it’s likely to give you the kind of quality you need whatever piece of recording kit you’re using. Plus there’s a mic on there, for recording those raw screams as you chop chunks in your leg during your latest snowboarding stunt. (sure the intention might have been to record your thoughts or observations, but how many of those are you going to be able to coherantly form when you’re zooming down an incline at 80mph?)
This certainly opens the floodgates to ten tonnes of amateur snowboarding videos however, and I would anticipate YouTube becoming the first victim of such attempts as snowboarders get a hold of this little camera. But there are always gems amongst the rough, and had I a slope and a board handy I’m fairly sure these goggles would be next on my shopping list too.
