If you guys want a 4K **GoPro** to record your pinball tournaments, Aldi has the Maginon 4K cameras again for $70

This time they include a dual battery charger and a wristband remote control.

A zillion mounts come with it (bicycle, underwater, belt, tripod..... , and 2 batteries.

I bought one last year and it records dim pinball games with no problem.

If you lower the resolution to 1080p, you can record 60 frames per second; so you can do slo-mo playback.

It also has an app for your phone where you can view and control.

Is it as good as a $500 GoPro 6 ? Nope. But it's better than the older GoPros, and plenty good enough for pinball

https://www.aldi.us/en/weekly-specials/aldi-finds-for-july-18/july-18-detail/ps/p/maginon-action-camera-1/
csm_071917_S_53955_MAG_ActionCamera_Angle_detail1_45de57db80 (resized).jpg

Without changing any settings, here is a frame grab, from a sys11 game in a completely dark room.

The lens is @ f/2, at 0 gain, 4K, 25fps:
Untitled-1 (resized).jpg

That's just the top of the box without the charger, batteries, remote, or any accessories .....looks stolen, lol

You must have something completely different.

This one has WiFi streaming, wirelessly connects to your phone for remote recording & remote viewing, has HDMI out, has SD memory card you can remove to move your clips to another device (if you did not want to use WiFi or were still using the camera with another SD card).

The Pixel is a great $800 cellphone, but it's too heavy, fragile and expensive to strap to my dog's neck while it kills a racoon, or put on my fatbike's fender when I hit the trails.

For Pinball use, $1600 is a lot of money to have one Pixel on the playfield and one focused on the backbox

They are PERFECT for recording pinball video.

The f/2 lens records in low light without having to artificiality crank up the gain settings.

They are lightweight enough to use the included handlebar mount and install them on a regular microphone stand to record the playfield (or you could use your playfield rotisserie with slight modification).

They are lightweight enough that you could stick the mount to the ceiling with 3Ms Command strips - and cleanly remove latter without removing paint.

Simply looking at your phone's screen tells you that the image is centered, and allows you to start the recording without touching the camera.

At only $70, you could easily buy 2 of them and do the backbox coverage with 1st, the playfield with the 2nd.

The phone app allows you to control 3 cameras, so you could also cover the player's face, or "ball's eye view" from the apron with a 3rd camera.

The fact that they are wireless allows you to quickly move from game to game, no dragging around cables or power supplies.

Right now I can't think of a better way to record pinball video.

It officially goes on sale the 18th, but many Aldi stores have them out on the floor right now for purchase.

I grabbed one and it rang up for $69, so it's already in the computer at the sale price - you just need the manager to put them out on the floor.

That would be funny if they sold out before they officially went on sale...

Also, remember to turn on the wifi of the camera first, then connect to your phone.

The wifi was off by default (probably saves battery life).

Even if your iPhone is too old, you have the included wrist-remote that can start/stop video recording, or take single shots as a conventional camera.

Every Android user has a drawer full of last year's phones, so ask around at work, someone will give you a free phone.

I use my old Moto phone as my bedroom TV remote, after the real one disappeared.

The fastest transfer is to pull out the SD card, and plug that card directly into your computer.

Same as a DSLR Camera. It takes too long to transfer a day's worth of shooting to your laptop by WiFi. Swap memory SD cards, and do a fast data dump.

Same with DSLR Cameras, they also only shoot in MOV for hi-rez video.

Don't worry, Youtube accepts all these formats:

.MOV
.MPEG4
.MP4
.AVI
.WMV
.MPEGPS
.FLV
3GPP
WebM
DNxHR
ProRes
CineForm
HEVC (h265)

https://support.google.com/youtube/troubleshooter/2888402?hl=en

It won't be a single solution, but a combination of things:

Take the glass off. Dirty or scratched glass will diffract light.

Make sure your camera lens is clean, dirty lenses will diffract light.

Make sure none of your LEDs are visible directly to the lens. All LEDs should be defused by playfield plastics, discs of cloudy milk carton plastic or aiming away from the lens.

Note on the screenshot of the Comet above, you don't directly see any LED bulbs.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-hardtop-restoration-comet/page/2#post-4485234

Shine bright lights up on the ceiling, and let the light naturally reflect down on the playfield.

Turn on all the room lights.

The absolute best is if you know a photographer, borrow a "softbox" and stand. Set this up above the game and you will have shadow-free even lighting. The softbox will scatter the light, so you don't get a shadow from the camera itself.

fpsb30603 (resized).jpg

Yep, they do 1080p@60, 2.7k@30 and 4k@25 fps

It's not up to the cam, you need a computer fast enough to process, and software to stream.

Just like when people try to stream with a high end DSLR, they often find that they don't have enough horsepower to do 4K.

You could use the camera's WiFi and the Periscope app on a high end phone and live stream, or you could use the camera's HDMI output to a desktop to stream

But remember, if your computer is a few years old and has a hard time playing back 4K MOV files, it's going to totally freeze trying to do a 4K live stream.

If you don't have enough memory and horsepower, turn the camera down to it's lowest resolution.

If you guys want to go ass-crazy with the sound, this USB recording interface will let you mic the player, the upper speakers (both if in stereo) and the lower speaker.

By recording up to 4 tracks separately, you can adjust each track's volume to get the most realistic audio.

You could edit out a player cursing, or bring up his voice if he is explaining a strategy.....

On sale for $69 with code = SUMMERHEAT

https://www.adorama.com/beumc404hd.html

beumc404hd (resized).jpg

Yes, people use it as a webcam

Yes, it just charges from the USB connector.

Looks like Menards has a similar (same?) camera for $17 right now :

https://www.menards.com/main/electrical/home-electronics/small-electronics/4k-wifi-action-camera/170721-ag-sc25/p-1526538562352-c-6299.htm?searchTermToProduct=3018831

Even if it's not as good as the Aldi, you could use it as the backbox camera, and keep the good one for the playfield.

301-8831_8 (resized).jpg