Panasonic unveils 4K wearable camera – HX-500

24 Mar 2014

Panasonic has announced its first 4K wearable camera, the HX-500, aimed particularly at extreme sports enthusiasts and is expected to become available from May this year.

The device comes in two parts and resembles a medical instrument, with the main body of the camera being strapped to a person’s arm with the camera lens placed over the ear which are both connected through a wire.

It also features a clip mount to attach the camera to a helmet or bag; or gives the ability to use the ‘multi-case’ to combine the main unit, camera and cable into one body for single-handed use.

Given its design as a camera for the outdoors, it weighs 150g, and is dustproof, as well as waterproof up to 3 metres for up to 30 minutes.

The camera shoots at 25 frames per/second (fps) which is almost four times as many as a standard HD camera and promises a levelling correction function which will automatically detect when the recording is at a tilt and will level out final images, while the image stabilisation function aims to keep blur to a minimum.

The 4K resolution camera can also be set to two other shutter speeds, 200 frames per second (848 x 480) or 100 frames per second (1,280 x 720) for longer exposure shots.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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