Almost here

It's pretty impossible to film a video and fish at the same time. Unless you have someone walking next to you. Yet my guess is that the ideal fly fishing video camera is almost here. With the camcorders getting smaller and smaller thanks to the high capacity memory cards, it's just a matter of time that camcorders are the size of a cellular phone. In fact, maybe the next revolution in video recording will come from a phone company.

The camcorder I'm waiting for is one that has a small lens on a wire to the main device. The lens on a wire should be small enough to be attached to the visor of a cap. Together with a decent wide angle lens, a large capacity SD memory card and you got an amazing camcorder which records every thing you see! Kinda neat huh?

It isn't here yet, but there are a few developments that comes close. Here is an idea on development for a device which connects to a cellular phone to 'film what you see'. Here's a (video)camera that can be attached to a helmet. I've never seen a fly fisherman wearing a helmet. But if we do see one, he might be a pioneering with the first ever first person fly fishing movie!

In the mean time, the Canon Powershot TX1 might be an interesting alternative to the fly fisher's camcorder. This hybrid camera/camcorder is really tiny!


Update 28 dec 2007:
This is the Samsung SC-X300L. This nifty little camcorder (also) has an external lens that can be clipped to your cap to shoot hands free. This camcorder is probably the closest thing that comes to my idea. The price tag is around $350.

According to some reviews the image quality from the external lens is very much a fish-eye view and a much lower resolution than the main lens. It's a very nifty little gadget still. Unfortunately this device doesn't have a Mac driver yet...