INTOVA HD SPORT CAMERA

AND FACE MASK MOUNT

 

The INTOVA HD SPORT is a POV camera built into an underwater housing guaranteed up to 60mt. With its 140° wide-angle lens it can capture beautiful 12 MP stills and record full HD 1080p movies.

On first glance you can notice that it comes with a small 1.5” screen, an easily accessible MicroSD card slot, a standard tripod mount, a row of five buttons that allows user to fully interact with the camera and a big flat lens on the front. As above, the camera is actually built into the waterproof housing, so there is no need to pull it out of it. The unit is made of antiglare UV-injected polycarbonate, it looks solid and the rear door closing system firmly locks it up. As a matter of fact, you need to strongly pull the rear door in order to open it up once you have released the locking system.

 

Also pushing buttons takes some strength, which works well against accidental operation, but it takes time to get used to. However the chance to use all the camera functions even beneath the water is definitely worth the effort. The flat housing lens prevents the camera to get underwater distorted images/movies and it is very important when you consider that other manufacturers do supply it as non-standard feature, this means you have to buy it separately.  Just to understand its tiny dimension you can see it in the pictures below compared to another POV camera you are surely familiar with. 

 

 

Another very important feature is the manual white balance option, but before going through it I suppose it is better explaining what the white balance is important for. The white balance allows the camera to provide the real colors to the picture/movies it captures, preventing the sensor to provide an interpretation of them. The manual white balancing can be simply performed by selecting the proper function on the camera and by subsequently pointing it towards something white (or grey). By “telling” the camera what white is like in that circumstance, the other color tones will be closer to real ones.

 

Although the straightforward menu offers all the options one would expect, there is not an underwater preset for the white balance. However you can easily find the common presets for stills (art, vivid, sepia, monochrome and negative) and some important power saving options.

 

 

The most important power saving option can be accessed without entering the menu. By pressing the leftmost button on the back of the camera in fact, you can rapidly switch the LCD screen off while in use. Turning it back on only takes a further touch on the same button.

 

Usually spearfishing at sea means being in the water for longer than 3 hours so saving as much power as possible can help avoiding the frustration deriving from filming many useless dives and once you finally catch a big fish your camera is no longer operating.

 

Video recording qualities range from VGA to Full HD and the out coming videos are as clear as expected, but what makes this camera different is the feature that allows you to digital zoom up to 4X while filming (not possible when 1080 resolution is set).

 

Due to its size the LCD screen cannot be used for checking image quality or video analysis of freediving technique (although in the water everything appears increased in size) but it is an important thing to have when it comes to align, for example, the camera to the barrel of the speargun and to check whether the camera lens is centered on the catch you are taking pictures of.

 

Also the battery pack is built in, however if you treat it properly it will last many years and since it is a very good one, I am not concerned about this at all. In the new coming upgraded model the battery pack will be replaceable and there will be wireless features that the actual model does not include.

 

The Sport HD has a dedicated line of accessories that make it the top choice for your needs but two among them are in my opinion the most useful ones in regards to underwater use: the red filter and the face mask mount.

 

The red filter is actually a red lens to place on top of the standard one in order to get underwater videos/images that include all the colors spectrum and don’t look all green or all blue once you dive deeper than 10mt.

 

The face mask mount instead is a pure innovation that only INTOVA has introduced on the market. It is a standard mount with an adjustable clip below designed to fit all diving masks. It is supposed to be fixed on the front part of the frame and it gets locked on it by a knob.

 

By operating on another knob instead you can easily adjust the inclination of the camera on the vertical axe in order to be sure that it captures what you are actually seeing.

 

After having described all the technical features I cannot avoid to tell you that this camera makes also the difference when it comes to the price as it is far cheaper that its direct competitors on the market.

 

I must say that I am sincerely satisfied with the quality of the product I have tested and I have the feeling that they are actually designed by people who really care and, more important, who have really used them before selling them worldwide.

At the this stage I cannot wait to test the upgraded model that will soon be reviewed on this website, stay tuned!

 

 

TECHNICAL FEATURES

 

Video Resolution:

 

HD 1920x1080p, 30fps

 

HD 1280x720p, 30fps

 

WVGA1 848x480p, 60fps

 

WVGA 848x480, 30fps

 

VGA 640x480, 30fps

 

Still image resolution:

 

12 MP: 4000x3000 pixels (by interpolation)

 

8.0 MP: 3200x2400 (by interpolation)

 

5.0 MP: 2592x1944

 

3.0 MP: 2048x1536

 

Lens:

 

140° wide-angle

 

Digital Zoom:

 

4x (All modes except 1080p)

 

LCD:

 

1.5" (3.8 cm) TFT

 

Burst Mode:     

 

No, 3, 5 or 10 photos

 

Settings:          

 

Size, EV, Quality (Normal, Fine, Super Fine), White Balance, Metering, Contrast, Sharpness, Effect, Self-timer, Burst, Photo Flip, Time Lapse

 

White Balance Modes:

 

Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent

 

Exposure Compensation:          

 

+/-2, +/-1.7, +/-1.3, +/-1, +/-0.7, +/- 0.3, 0

 

Exposure Metering:       

 

Average, Spot, Center

 

Contrast:         

 

Standard, Hard, Soft

 

Sharpness:      

 

Standard, Hard, Soft

 

Effect:  

 

Off, Art, Sepia, Negative, Monochrome, Vivid

 

Self Timer:

 

Off, 5 sec, 10 sec, 30 sec, 60 sec

 

Time Lapse:     

 

Off, 1 sec, 2 sec, 5 sec, 10 sec, 30 sec, 60 sec, 120 sec, 180 sec

 

Slide Shows:    

 

No, 1 sec, 3 sec, 5 sec

 

Auto Power Off:

 

Off, 1 min, 3 min, 5 min

 

LCD Off:

 

Off, 1 min, 3 min

 

Light Frequency:           

 

50 Hz, 60 Hz

 

Flash Memory:  

 

32 MB (internal)

 

SD Card Slot:   

 

microSD/ SDHC - accepts cards up to 32 GB 1

 

Construction:   

 

UV-injected polycarbonate Housing

 

Depth Rating:   

 

200' (61 m)

 

Battery:        

 

Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion 1400 mAh capacity

 

Battery Life:     

 

2.5 hr recording time

 

Connectivity:    

 

TV Out (NTSC or PAL), mini USB ports

 

Supported Languages:  

 

English, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, French, Japanese, Chinese

 

Dimensions:    

 

2.8 x 3.3 x 2.4" (7.1 x 8.4 x 6.1 cm)

 

Weight:

 

0.38 lb (170g)