GamePlan Gear Review Page

GamePlan Gear

 BVR

2008

Size comparison to Roscoby Risercam

Purchased from:  GamePlan Gear

This is another small camera that is specially designed to film action during a hunt. Originally designed to be a witness cam mounted on a weapon that would record such things as procedures leading up to an arrest. This tells me that even though it is sold as a bow cam it would also probably work just fine on a weapon. This round four and a half inch long rubber armored camera is about  an inch and three quarters across the back and tapers down in a bullet shape to the counter sunk camera lens. To adapt this camera to a mount that would screw into the stabilizer hole in the bow they chose a base that resembles the standard scope bases used on a rifle. This is a three inch long base with a swiveled threaded stud and jam nut on one end. To attach the camera to the base they use a single ring, also resembling a rifle scope ring but much larger with a claw on the bottom to match the base. This setup would allow easy removal of the camera for other purposes or to take it into the house to download pictures using a USB cable or TV out cable. This scope ring claw looks to be the same as those on a rifle scope so some industrious individual could just buy extra rifle scope bases and adapt them to the 4 wheeler rack or helmet to broaden the use of this cam. The back end unscrews to expose the O ring protected SD card slot and USB-TV out ports. Below the SD card slot is a hinged door that accesses the twin AA battery compartment. While I was doing my out of the box evaluation and installing the batteries and SD card I found the first flaw in this design. The very close tolerances can cause the battery compartment door to be un latched when ever a person is truing to remove the card. To prevent this, the user must hold one thumb across the bottom of the battery door to prevent it from moving while using the other hand to remove the card. I have not tested to see if the opening of the door would cause a loss of programming but I would assume that it would probably cause loss of pictures that are stored internally and on the card if that action caused corruption. It takes two revolutions to screw the cap back on to maintain the water tightness. The SD card when installed is about 1/16 of an inch recessed into the slot. The end cap that screws over the back has a foam pad inside the lid that is suppose to push against this area, I assume to prevent the card from dislodging during recoil. A small bit of putty inside some saran wrap on the back of the card and having the lid tightened down showed that the card could still move out about that same distance as the recessed amount of 1/16 inch. The rubber pad inside the lid shows a mark of the SD card slot but does not quite make the distance. Some bows with very heavy recoil might cause a problem. This device has a weight of a little over a half pound and is advertised as still having a stabilizing effect to the bow when the arrow is launched. I cannot see that it would take the place of some of the better stabilizers but on a well designed bow it should work just fine. Down the top of the tube is a set of buttons and a window that has a LCD display under it. These are a large round button which is the video start/stop button and small pointed buttons on each side of the start/stop button that are labeled on/off/enter and the other is the menu button. The adjustable rail that attaches to the bow has an allen screw to refine aim so that the camera is looking where the arrow is traveling. The camera will take up to a 2 gig SD card and when the camera is turned on, an icon will appear on the screen and display the remaining recording time. Programming?????, First you need some very good light and in my case a magnifier to read the small icons. This is an operation that needs to be done somewhere other than an early morning deer stand. The operation is simple once you figure out that the shutter button is the advance (no up/down) button. To turn the cam on you must hold the on button for two seconds according to the instructions. Well the writer probably had a low quality watch because the time was variable up to over five seconds and the same to shut down the cam. Once on you must hold the menu button for a couple of seconds also then these tiny icons begin to flash The first is a series of dotted squares which represent the resolution. The 4X5 dotted square represents the 640X480 setting, the 4X4 dotted square represents the 320X240 resolution, and the 4X3 dotted square represents the 160X120 resolution setting. These are toggled through by hitting the shutter button while they flash. When the desired rez setting is reached push the enteer button. Advance on through the selections which are sound on/off, delete last video footage, delete all video footage, date time (pay close attention to the small year, month, day, hour and minute icons above the numbers), and frames per second setting. All these selections are in one direction so to get to the setting you choose you advance to that setting and press enter. Should you pass the desired number then you must advance all the way around until that number comes up again and then select enter to move on to the next setting. This is pretty strait forward but because of the small indicators that are hard for these old eyes to see require close attention to do. The specs are based on a VGA image sensor (640X480) with 32 MB of internal storage. Three selectable rez settings mentioned above with time indication on the LCD for space remaining on the card for that setting. Fixed focus from about 1.5m to infinity. Movies are stored in the AVI format. Operating systems are windows 2000 and XP (no indication about vista in the documentation). A strong point is make sure that the camera is in off position anytime the card is inserted or removed. This is to prevent corruption to the data stored. This is also the time to be careful that the battery door is not dislodged while taking the card in and out I also would not try to shoot the bow with the camera end cover unscrewed and removed. It is a good idea to not use the same card that you have been using for practice on the big hunt of a lifetime. The impact of bow recoil has been known to literally destroy the internal workings of some lesser grade cards. We have seen it written that the San Disk brand cards seem to be the toughest. We also are a firm believer of using the Lithium batteries by Energizer for the big hunt but regular cells will do for all the practice stuff. This camera definitely has some features like the multiple rez settings and the ability to change the frame rate that many folks will take as a big plus when shopping for that perfect bow camera. We still have not been able to track the arrow in flight with any of the other cameras; maybe we will get luck with this one. The big tendency to drop the bow down after the shot and not follow through or follow the shot animal is a matter of training that needs to be instilled so the user will get all the desired footage. We will get this thing hung on the old Mathews and see if we can dislodge the card or capture some clean footage. This just might be the best one yet, time will tell because hunting season is just around the corner.