The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

You may remember that I recently wrote (Got To Wear Shades?) about the temptation towards buying a set of sunglasses with in-built devices like MP3 player, Bluetooth and, most notably, a digital pinhole camera.

Unsurprisingly, I caved to the urges – well, it’s one of the few urges I’m actually able to cave to on my own – and put in the order from the China retailer.

In a way it felt like I was ordering from those advertisements that used to fill up the back of comic books, except instead of the $4.99 and postage, I was paying out about £70. I was still filled with that giddy ignorant innocence that makes you watch the mail – and in this day and age, the order process status page – and dreaming up how I would set right the worlds wrongs, document fun conversations and seamlessly integrate my own POV shots in my vlogs.

There were a few problems in getting my sunglasses to me though. I had chosen the week following the Chinese New Year to place my order and then fell afoul to the worst bit of considerate business practice, a company that quality assures products it distributes. It only then took forty-eight hours to get from China to East Midlands (UK), via Hong Kong and London. Of course, it then took extra days just to go the three hour drive from the Midlands to here.

But you can judge for yourself the outcome in the following vlogs:

Now, there are some Pros and Cons to the camera, I could make compelling arguments either way, but instead I’ll just list a few thoughts.

• Con: The switching between modes is not the easiest, requiring you to press a Mode button and the required device button. One would wonder why they don’t just use a sliding switch, which would be a much more fluid method.

• Con: The buttons aren’t necessarily consistent in the amount of pressure required to operate and don’t really give much of a cue as to whether you’ve done it right.
• Con: On the issue of cues, most of the operating lights are located on the inside of the sunglasses arms, completely hidden. The only audio cues are when you’ve definitely done it right: the MP3 kicks in or you hear faint buzzing.
• Pro: There aren’t any telltale external signs of the devices being in use.
• Pro: For so many devices, the sunglasses aren’t actually that big and bulky. They are not, for example, Bono-sized goggles, but more akin to a cross between Dog the Bounty Hunter and Geordi LaForge.
• Con: Despite not being huge, they are not the most subtle or stylish and there does seem to be a fair bit of excess plastic that could be streamlined. They aren’t exactly Oakley or Raybans standard.
• Con: Yes, it is asking a lot, but it would be very useful if the lens polarised a little more or started off at a darker tint.
• Con: On a similar note, the video mode seems to suffer from brightness balancing when used in brighter surroundings. I don’t think I need to raise why this is somewhat ironic for cameras mounted in sunglasses.
• Con: I was aware that the resolution was only VGA quality – decent enough VGA quality at that – but it would have been a huge advantage if they had managed to include widescreen recording. For those thinking about video quality and aspect ratio on pin hole lenses, I’d like to point to the iPhone’s pinhole camera which is roughly same resolution.
• Pro: 15 minutes of footage only takes up 350MB and the sunglasses have 8GB (8192MB) capacity, which at my rough maths would give about five odd hours of recordable hours.
• Con: The microphone is affected by wind, picking up the grainy noise even in a slight breeze.
• Pro: The MP3 player is pretty good with some pretty nice earphones built into the frame, I could have done with the earphones being a little more flexible to fit my ears, but even outside they are audible.
• Pro: The Bluetooth seems to work decently, though you can’t adjust mic volume and it gets a bit crackly, especially near traffic. However, compared to holding the phone to your ear whilst cold air whips around you, it’s quite a wonder.
• Con: Very bad instruction manual with plentiful examples of Engrish.

There might seem quite a few cons, but this is actually a great gadget. A while back I bought a handheld digital video camera for a similar price, which was also VGA quality, but the actual end quality was much lower and the camera was a brick. The sunglasses camera combo is practical, slightly more subtle and leaves your hands free to carry other stuff.

I think this may be quite helpful in letting me do a few extra things in the vlogs or for catching those rare moments between proper filming. I’m hoping to pick up a proper video camera soon, ahead of the trip to Seattle, so it’ll be interesting to use the two together.