MIDLAND XTC 280: SPEARFISHING POV CAM 

TEST AND COMPARISON WAITING FOR THE XTC 400

A few months ago MIDLAND introduced on the market the brand new XTC 280 replacing the XTC 300 and 200 but the revolution is not over yet as a new top model camera is about to come: the XTC 400 (we will soon publish a test article).

The XTC 280 is sold in an attractive package that is an high-tech product itself as you can even find on its back the unpacking instructions! Inside the box you can find the camera submergible case, the lithium battery, the usb cable and the helmet adhesive mount, let's see them in detail.

The submergible case has undergone several modifications in comparison to the early versions as it is now guaranteed up to 60 meters depth and not just thirty, The lower threaded tripod mount is now secured by four screws and finally the flat lens can be unscrewed to facilitate its cleaning.

The battery pack is the same as the model 200 XTC, that is a 900mah battery which can last up to three hours recording, which in our case means about 90 2-minutes dives.

In opposition to the XTC 200 in the 280 box we cannot find neither the adapter for microSD’s nor the power adapter to recharge the battery through the sockets in our own house. However, both operations may be carried out with the supplied USB cable. A very negative aspect of this product is the absence of the goggle mount, replaced helmet one which is absolutely useless for our activity. Never mind, you can buy it separately, a small sacrifice for a high quality product you will be satisfied of.

Dimensions and weight of both the case and the cam have not changed but the video and audio recording quality is unmatched. First, the audio is totally different in fact the gunshot noise, sounded as a cannon shot in movies filmed with the XTC 200 instead with XTC 280 all the sounds appear to be more delicate and equalized.

In regards to video instead, the XTC 280 records in FULLHD with a 1920x1080 resolution at 30 fps and has a 130° degrees wide angle (not 110 as you can read in other sites), finally it is equipped with a 5.2Megapixel CCD sensor. So go through these technical terms in order to understand them better. The higher the wide-angle value is, the farther objects will appear in our films, as a consequence the lower that value is the closer the objects will appear. The main advantage for all spearos is that fishes will look bigger and closer in our spearfishing action films.

UNDERSTANDING THE TECHNICAL TERMS

The resolution is nothing more than the size of the rectangle in which the images are captured, in other words if you think the movie is a collection of many pictures taken in rapid sequence by the cam, the FullHD resolution makes each picture measuring 1920 pixels (points) width and 1080 pixels height. The advantage is that the greater the number of dots (pixels) is, the higher the sharpness of the image will be. An important contribution is provided by the number of "snapshots" taken per time unit (fps = frame per second), so the higher this value is, the better the quality of the output video will be.

The XTC 280 can also record in "low mode" with a 1280x720 resolution and 90° angle and in opposition to what happened with the XTC 200 both the LOW and the HIGH mode keeps the 16:9 format. Finally, the CCD is an integrated circuit whose task is to interpret and transform light into digital information. Its sensitivity is measured in megapixels and, in principle, the higher its value is, the better the image definition will be.

The format of the output file for the XTC 280 remains unvaried from the XTC 200 one, that is Mp4 with H.264 compression.

The functioning is basically identical to the previous models one, everything is driven by a single button and three LEDs (accompanied by a beep) help user to understand what is happenning. The mimetic variant called XTC 285 instead, only differs for the absence of sound signals .

Find below some comparative examples of filming with the two cams this article is about and a summary of the technical features.

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