There has been a stalwart in the action video camera world for some time now. Mention the term GoPro and everybody will know what you’re referring to. However, I knew that competition wouldn’t be far behind, so before embarking on my trip, I made sure I did some homework before making any camera purchases.

Introducing the Drift Ghost S

So what makes the Drift my action camera of choice? In short my list of why “NoPro”

First the physical things.

1. Waterproof out of the box (up to x3 metres), no silly plastic box to encase. Note, if you want to dive down to 60 metres, you can purchase an additional external case.

2. ISO standard camera fittings. So instead of buying purpose built branded fixtures, you can just use any off the shelf tripod, mount or fixture.

3. 300° Rotating lens - never worry about how you mount your camera on whatever surface. Once mounted you can rotate the lens to produce your vertical/horizontal plane.

4. Excellent remote control. Strap your remote to your wrist or handlebars. You have x2 large easy to use buttons. One button to start and stop, one to change mode. Easy. And you can pair one remote with up to 5 different cameras. It also flashes to the colour of each different shooting mode. In record mode, your remote flashes green for standby and red for record. (Gripe later)

5. 1080p 60/fps video, 8 Megapixel stills and x3 angles of shooting. I’m not going to get into a battle about image quality. Just know that it’s good.

6. 3.5 hour battery life with full-time recording.

Now the software things.

1. Tagging feature. By far one of the coolest things. Set your camera to “Tag” mode and set an interval of 1, 3, 5 10 mins etc. Hit the record button. The camera will constantly record, but only keep footage for as long as you have set your tag interval. So if you set to 1 minute intervals and you are driving down the street. You see an accident, or go through a sweet piece of road. Hit the action button on your remote. The camera will remember the 1 minute before you hit the action button, then the next minute from that point on and one more minute after. So that way you never miss your history, and you don’t fill up your memory card with stuff you don’t want to keep. You can make it record an additional minute by pushing the action again too.

This is a KICK ASS feature!

2. Slave Mode. If you have more that one camera (I have two), you can set one to be a master, and connect your “slaves”. Any setting you change on the master will replicate to the slaves.

3. Video mode, tagging mode, time lapse more, single shot mode and rapid shot modes.

4. Mentioned in the hardware, but pairing 5 cameras to one remote is super sweet. You can have one camera set to rapid fire stills and one to movie mode, pushing the action button will fire each different action on each camera.

So what don’t I like?

I really only have one gripe so far with this camera. I try to keep my camera charged up and plugged in on the bike, especially on long rides. Trouble is, when you plug in a USB cable to charge, the red light flashes. How do you determine whether the camera is recording or is charging??? This is made all the more difficult due to the camera being smart enough to shut itself down when fully charged as to protect it’s own battery. So my advice is to not keep your camera charging while using, just in case.

If you want to know more about these cameras, take a look at store.driftinnovation.com - I’ve been seeing these cameras pop up on a few extreme YouTube clips too to help warrant my purchases. Want more info? Just fire through some questions and I’ll happily share my knowledge.