There are a lot of important features to consider when shopping for a new security camera, like power source (battery or hardwired) and installation location. (Good indoor security cameras generally don't need as much reinforcement as outdoor ones.) As far as great outdoor security cameras go, Philips Hue has made a contribution to the home security space.
Theft is one of my main fears about using security cameras. Whether it's to disable the device or profit from the camera itself, it's a legitimate, costly concern. And many outdoor security cameras make removal quite easy, attaching to their mounts via a magnet, a simple clip-in mechanism, or one measly screw all methods that could be undone in the blink of an eye.
Last week, Reason reported on the rising trend of Colorado police departments increasingly using aerial drones as first responders to certain 911 calls.
A new investigation out this week reveals how such a system could work in practice, with startling implications for privacy and civil liberties.
In WIRED, Dhruv Mehrotra and Jesse Marx write about Chula Vista, a town in southern California roughly equidistant between San Diego and Tijuana. In 2018, the Chula Vista Police Department (CVPD) launched the Drone as First Responder (DFR) program, allowing 911 operators to deploy drones either in lieu of or in addition to uniformed officers—the first U.S. city to do so.
DFR "is not a replacement for officers, it's an enhancement," Police Chief Roxana Kennedy told KPBS at the time. In the program's first week, drones responded to 30 calls and led to three arrests, including a domestic violence case in which a man suspected of stabbing a woman fled back to a homeless encampment and a pursuing drone led police to his location. The program was initially limited to within one mile of the police station, but it expanded over time before receiving federal authorization to operate citywide in March 2021.
In the nearly six years since, as Mehrotra and Marx detail, CVPD drones have taken nearly 20,000 flights, "often dispatched for serious incidents like reports of armed individuals [but] also routinely deployed for minor issues such as shoplifting, vandalism, and loud music. Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, the city even used drones to broadcast public service announcements to homeless encampments."
WIRED examined "nearly 10,000 drone flight records from July 2021 to September 2023," encompassing "more than 22.3 million coordinates from flight paths," to assess CVPD's claim that drones are only dispatched in response to specific 911 calls or lawful searches and do not merely go roaming in search of suspicious activity.
"Drones were used in about 7 percent of the city's service requests," the authors found, including "nearly half of the incidents involving reports of armed individuals and about a quarter of those related to violent crime," plus mental health and domestic violence calls.
"The vast majority" of the 10,000 flight records analyzed "could be linked to corresponding 911 calls. But not all of them." In fact, about 10 percent "lacked a stated purpose and could not be connected to any relevant 911 call; for 498 flights, the department lists the reason as an 'unknown problem.'" Further, "nearly 400 [flights] didn't come within half a mile of where any call in the preceding half hour originated."
Even specifically sanctioned flights may be cause for concern: "Operators are trained to start recording with the drone's camera immediately, capturing video throughout the entire flight, from takeoff to landing," Mehrotra and Marx note. The cameras, "powerful enough to capture faces clearly and constantly recording while in flight, have amassed hundreds of hours of video footage of the city's residents," the vast majority of which the city has refused to release.
"On average, each drone flight passes above 13 census blocks and potentially exposes approximately 4,700 of the residents below to a drone's camera," the WIRED analysis found. And potential exposure did not fall equally: "Residents on a typical block in the working-class and largely immigrant west side of Chula Vista had drones in the skies above 10 times longer than a resident of a typical east-side block," Mehrotra wrote in WIRED's Politics Lab newsletter yesterday. West-side residents "alleged that police drones were following them personally, lingering unnecessarily in their backyards, or watching them during their most intimate moments," and others complained about the noise of drone rotors. (The CVPD claimed the disparity is due to the unequal number of 911 calls that each area receives; the WIRED analysis "confirm[ed] that this is largely the case.")
Interestingly, support for the drone program is also strongest among the lower-income Chula Vista residents most likely to be subjected to it. One Latino man—who lives in an apartment complex that CVPD drones have flown over more than 300 times since July 2021—told WIRED that the drones make him feel safer, especially after a stranger tried to steal his child and police deployed a drone to look for the suspect. This isn't unheard of: Polls show black Americans are significantly more afraid of the police than their white neighbors, yet they still want a strong, effective police presence in their neighborhoods.
Regardless, Chula Vista's drone program could be a concerning sign of where American policing is headed. Even apart from DFR, city residents have been subject to a shocking amount of surveillance in recent years: automated license plate readers, facial recognition software, and a partnership with Amazon for access to its Ring doorbell cameras. In December 2017, the CVPD partnered with a company to share its data with other law enforcement agencies, including federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
As Colorado's example makes clear, police departments increasingly see DFR programs as a plausible alternative to traditional policing, in which an officer would be dispatched to the scene of an emergency. While that's certainly true, it would also expose everyday citizens to a shocking new world of state surveillance.
The post Police Flew Drones Over One California City Nearly 20,000 Times in 6 Years appeared first on Reason.com.
© Acer
Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.
Enjoy today’s videos!
Do you have trouble multitasking? Cyborgize yourself through muscle stimulation to automate repetitive physical tasks while you focus on something else.
[ SplitBody ]
By combining a 5,000 frame-per-second (FPS) event camera with a 20-FPS RGB camera, roboticists from the University of Zurich have developed a much more effective vision system that keeps autonomous cars from crashing into stuff, as described in the current issue of Nature.
[ Nature ]
Mitsubishi Electric has been awarded the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title for the fastest robot to solve a puzzle cube. The robot’s time of 0.305 second beat the previous record of 0.38 second, for which it received a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS certificate on 21 May 2024.
[ Mitsubishi ]
Sony’s AIBO is celebrating its 25th anniversary, which seems like a long time, and it is. But back then, the original AIBO could check your email for you. Email! In 1999!
I miss Hotmail.
[ AIBO ]
SchniPoSa: schnitzel with french fries and a salad.
[ Dino Robotics ]
Cloth-folding is still a really hard problem for robots, but progress was made at ICRA!
Thanks, Francis!
MIT CSAIL researchers enhance robotic precision with sophisticated tactile sensors in the palm and agile fingers, setting the stage for improvements in human-robot interaction and prosthetic technology.
[ MIT ]
We present a novel adversarial attack method designed to identify failure cases in any type of locomotion controller, including state-of-the-art reinforcement-learning-based controllers. Our approach reveals the vulnerabilities of black-box neural network controllers, providing valuable insights that can be leveraged to enhance robustness through retraining.
[ Fan Shi ]
In this work, we investigate a novel integrated flexible OLED display technology used as a robotic skin-interface to improve robot-to-human communication in a real industrial setting at Volkswagen or a collaborative human-robot interaction task in motor assembly. The interface was implemented in a workcell and validated qualitatively with a small group of operators (n=9) and quantitatively with a large group (n=42). The validation results showed that using flexible OLED technology could improve the operators’ attitude toward the robot; increase their intention to use the robot; enhance their perceived enjoyment, social influence, and trust; and reduce their anxiety.
[ Paper ]
Thanks, Bram!
We introduce InflatableBots, shape-changing inflatable robots for large-scale encountered-type haptics in VR. Unlike traditional inflatable shape displays, which are immobile and limited in interaction areas, our approach combines mobile robots with fan-based inflatable structures. This enables safe, scalable, and deployable haptic interactions on a large scale.
[ InflatableBots ]
We present a bioinspired passive dynamic foot in which the claws are actuated solely by the impact energy. Our gripper simultaneously resolves the issue of smooth absorption of the impact energy and fast closure of the claws by linking the motion of an ankle linkage and the claws through soft tendons.
[ Paper ]
In this video, a 3-UPU exoskeleton robot for a wrist joint is designed and controlled to perform wrist extension, flexion, radial-deviation, and ulnar-deviation motions in stroke-affected patients. This is the first time a 3-UPU robot has been used effectively for any kind of task.
“UPU” stands for “universal-prismatic-universal” and refers to the actuators—the prismatic joints between two universal joints.
[ BAS ]
Thanks, Tony!
BRUCE Got Spot-ted at ICRA2024.
Parachutes: maybe not as good of an idea for drones as you might think.
[ Wing ]
In this paper, we propose a system for the artist-directed authoring of stylized bipedal walking gaits, tailored for execution on robotic characters. To demonstrate the utility of our approach, we animate gaits for a custom, free-walking robotic character, and show, with two additional in-simulation examples, how our procedural animation technique generalizes to bipeds with different degrees of freedom, proportions, and mass distributions.
[ Disney Research ]
The European drone project Labyrinth aims to keep new and conventional air traffic separate, especially in busy airspaces such as those expected in urban areas. The project provides a new drone-traffic service and illustrates its potential to improve the safety and efficiency of civil land, air, and sea transport, as well as emergency and rescue operations.
[ DLR ]
This Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute seminar, by Kim Baraka at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, is on the topic “Why We Should Build Robot Apprentices and Why We Shouldn’t Do It Alone.”
For robots to be able to truly integrate human-populated, dynamic, and unpredictable environments, they will have to have strong adaptive capabilities. In this talk, I argue that these adaptive capabilities should leverage interaction with end users, who know how (they want) a robot to act in that environment. I will present an overview of my past and ongoing work on the topic of human-interactive robot learning, a growing interdisciplinary subfield that embraces rich, bidirectional interaction to shape robot learning. I will discuss contributions on the algorithmic, interface, and interaction design fronts, showcasing several collaborations with animal behaviorists/trainers, dancers, puppeteers, and medical practitioners.
[ CMU RI ]
Instead of dispatching an officer each time, several Colorado police departments may soon dispatch a drone to respond to certain 911 calls. While the proposal has promise, it also raises uncomfortable questions about privacy.
As Shelly Bradbury reported this week in The Denver Post, "A handful of local law enforcement agencies are considering using drones as first responders—that is, sending them in response to 911 calls—as police departments across Colorado continue to widely embrace the use of the remote-controlled flying machines."
Bradbury quotes Arapahoe County Sheriff Jeremiah Gates saying, "This really is the future of law enforcement at some point, whether we like it or not." She notes that while there are currently no official plans in place, "Gates envisions a world where a drone is dispatched to a call about a broken traffic light or a suspicious vehicle instead of a sheriff's deputy, allowing actual deputies to prioritize more pressing calls for help."
The Denver Police Department—whose then-chief in 2013 called the use of drones by police "controversial" and said that "constitutionally there are a lot of unanswered questions about how they can be used"—is also starting a program, buying several drones over the next year that can eventually function as first responders.
In addition to Denver and Arapahoe County, Bradbury lists numerous Colorado law enforcement agencies that also have drone programs, including the Colorado State Patrol, which has 24 drones, and the Commerce City Police Department, which has eight drones and 12 pilots for a city of around 62,000 people and plans to begin using them for 911 response within a year.
In addition to helping stem the number of calls an officer must respond to in person, some law enforcement agencies see this as a means of saving money. One Commerce City police official told The Denver Post that "what we see out of it is, it's a lot cheaper than an officer, basically." And Denver intends for its program to make up for an $8.4 million cut to the police budget this year.
On one hand, there is certainly merit to such a proposal: Unless they're of the Predator variety, drones are much less likely than officers to kill or maim innocent civilians—or their dogs. And as Gates noted, drones could take some of the busywork out of policing by taking some of the more mundane tasks off an officer's plate.
But it also raises privacy concerns to farm out too much police work to unmanned surveillance aircraft.
"Sending out a drone for any time there is a 911 call, it could be dangerous and lead to more over-policing of communities of color," Laura Moraff, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, told The Denver Post. "There is also just the risk that the more that we normalize having drones in the skies, the more it can really affect behavior on a massive scale, if we are just looking up and seeing drones all over the place, knowing that police are watching us."
Indeed, while this sort of dystopic panopticon would certainly make life easier for officers day to day, it would signal the further erosion of the average Coloradan's Fourth Amendment rights.
In Michigan, for example, police hired a drone pilot to take pictures of a person's property rather than go to the trouble of getting a warrant. Earlier this month, the state supreme court upheld the search, ruling that since the purpose was for civil code enforcement and not a criminal violation, it didn't matter whether the search violated the Fourth Amendment.
Thankfully, there are some positive developments on that front: In March, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled against state troopers who flew a plane over a suspect's house and took pictures with a high-powered zoom lens to see if he was growing marijuana.
"The fact that a random person might catch a glimpse of your yard while flying from one place to another does not make it reasonable for law enforcement officials to take to the skies and train high-powered optics on the private space right outside your home without a warrant," the court found. "Unregulated aerial surveillance of the home with high-powered optics is the kind of police practice that is 'inconsistent with the aims of a free and open society.'"
The post Colorado Will Replace Cops With Drones for Some 911 Calls appeared first on Reason.com.
A resident of Chino Hills, California, noticed an odd rock and pile of leaves across the street from a neighbor's home. Upon inspection, they found a hidden camera embedded in clay and a USB power bank under the leaves. Who, asks the woman targeted by the device, is watching her? — Read the rest
The post Woman finds hidden camera disguised as rock pointed at her home appeared first on Boing Boing.
A resident of Chino Hills, California, noticed an odd rock and pile of leaves across the street from a neighbor's home. Upon inspection, they found a hidden camera embedded in clay and a USB power bank under the leaves. Who, asks the woman targeted by the device, is watching her? — Read the rest
The post Woman finds hidden camera disguised as rock pointed at her home appeared first on Boing Boing.
A resident of Chino Hills, California, noticed an odd rock and pile of leaves across the street from a neighbor's home. Upon inspection, they found a hidden camera embedded in clay and a USB power bank under the leaves. Who, asks the woman targeted by the device, is watching her? — Read the rest
The post Woman finds hidden camera disguised as rock pointed at her home appeared first on Boing Boing.
In December 2022, Reason reported that both state and federal wildlife agents routinely trespass onto private land and plant cameras. Two Tennessee homeowners successfully sued the state over the practice, and a three-judge panel ruled in their favor. The state appealed the decision, and this week the court of appeals ruled in the homeowners' favor.
At issue is a state law allowing officers of the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) to "go upon any property, outside of buildings, posted or otherwise," in order to "enforce all laws relating to wildlife." In the case of Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth, TWRA officers not only entered their respective properties but also installed trail cameras to look for hunting violations, all without a warrant and ignoring "No Trespassing" signs. A lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice (I.J.) on behalf of Rainwaters and Hollingsworth asked the court to declare the law unconstitutional and issue an injunction against the TWRA, barring it from carrying out any further unwarranted intrusions.
Under the "open-fields doctrine," Supreme Court precedent dating back to Prohibition holds that undeveloped land on someone's property lacks the same rigorous Fourth Amendment protections as their home and the "curtilage," the area immediately surrounding the home.
In March 2022, a three-judge panel from the Benton County Circuit Court ruled in the homeowners' favor, finding that the state constitution provided more protections than the Fourth Amendment. It determined that the state law allowing the TWRA practice created an "intolerable risk" of abuse and was "facially unconstitutional," but it stopped short of issuing an injunction. The state appealed the decision the following month.
In a hearing before the Tennessee Court of Appeals Western Section on June 20, 2023, I.J. attorney Josh Windham argued that the state law is unconstitutionally broad. "It allows TWRA officers to enter and roam around private land, fishing for evidence of crime," Windham said. "It doesn't require consent. It doesn't require warrants. It doesn't require probable cause….It's a blank check for officers to invade private land whenever and however they please."
Amanda Jordan argued for the Tennessee Attorney General's office that the statute was not unconstitutional and that the policy was necessary for the TWRA to do its job. She argued that "it's the particular purpose and function of the TWRA which makes such warrantless entry reasonable."
Judge Jeffrey Usman asked Jordan why, if the state would need a warrant in order to enter someone's property to look for criminal violations, it should not also need a warrant to do the same for civil violations of hunting laws. Jordan agreed that "while normal law enforcement officers would not be able to enter" without a warrant, "you have to look at the state's interest in furthering its duty of protecting and preserving" Tennessee's wildlife.
But Usman pressed further, asking whether the state has "an even stronger interest in protecting persons than wildlife." Further, he asked, "If you can't enter to investigate a crime being committed against a person…why is the interest greater to enter to protect wildlife?"
In a decision issued Thursday, the court of appeals ruled in favor of the property owners. The TWRA claimed that the homeowners' claims of injury were "speculative" as "TWRA agents have not entered the Plaintiffs' lands since September 2018." The court disagreed: Writing for a unanimous court, Usman noted in the decision,
Even if the TWRA has not entered the Plaintiffs' properties since 2018, it continues to assert its power to do so. The TWRA has asserted a continuing right to enter upon the Plaintiffs' properties. At oral argument, the TWRA suggested that if the Plaintiffs want to keep the TWRA off of their land in the future that they should desist in hunting.
"At the most foundational level," the court determined, "the statute is facially constitutional because there are applications of the statute that are constitutionally permissible," including "wild waste land areas." But in this specific scenario, where wildlife agents planted cameras on homeowners' land without ever even pursuing a warrant, the court found the TWRA's actions unconstitutional as applied.
"The TWRA's contention is a disturbing assertion of power on behalf of the government that stands contrary to the foundations of the search protections against arbitrary governmental intrusions in the American legal tradition, generally, and in Tennessee, specifically," Usman wrote. "What the TWRA claims is reasonable is not."
"Our entire theory of the case was vindicated by this decision," Windham tells Reason. "The part that goes against the trial court ruling [says] that the statute can be constitutionally applied to land where people haven't taken any steps to exert control or exert their privacy, which is a rule we don't particularly object to."
The post Tennessee Appeals Court Rules Against Wildlife Agents Who Planted Cameras on Private Land appeared first on Reason.com.
Taser long ago locked down the market for “less than lethal” (but still frequently lethal) weapons. It has also written itself into the annals of pseudoscience with its invocation of not-an-actual-medical condition “excited delirium” as it tried to explain away the many deaths caused by its “less than lethal” Taser.
These days Taser does business as Axon. In addition to separating itself from its troubled (and somewhat mythical) past, Axon’s focus has shifted to body cameras and data storage. The cameras are the printer and the data storage is the ink. The real money is in data management, and that appears to be where Axon is headed next. And, of course, like pretty much everyone at this point, the company believes AI can take a lot of the work out of police work. Here’s Thomas Brewster and Richard Nieva with the details for Forbes.
On Tuesday, Axon, the $22 billion police contractor best known for manufacturing the Taser electric weapon, launched a new tool called Draft One that it says can transcribe audio from body cameras and automatically turn it into a police report. Cops can then review the document to ensure accuracy, Axon CEO Rick Smith told Forbes. Axon claims one early tester of the tool, Fort Collins Colorado Police Department, has seen an 82% decrease in time spent writing reports. “If an officer spends half their day reporting, and we can cut that in half, we have an opportunity to potentially free up 25% of an officer’s time to be back out policing,” Smith said.
If you don’t spend too much time thinking about it, it sounds like a good idea. Doing paperwork consumes a large amounts of officers’ time and a tool that automates at least part of the process would, theoretically, allow officers to spend more time doing stuff that actually matters, like trying to make a dent in violent crime — the sort of thing cops on TV are always doing but is a comparative rarity in real life.
It’s well-documented that officers spend a large part of their day performing the less-than-glamorous function of being an all-purpose response to a variety of issues entirely unrelated to the type of crimes that make headlines and fodder for tough-on-crime politicians.
On the other hand, when officers are given discretion to handle crime-fighting in a way they best see fit, they almost always do the same thing: perform a bunch of pretextual stops in hopes of lucking into something more criminal than the minor violation that triggered the stop. A 2022 study of law enforcement time use by California agencies provided these depressing results:
Overall, sheriff patrol officers spend significantly more time on officer-initiated stops – “proactive policing” in law enforcement parlance – than they do responding to community members’ calls for help, according to the report. Research has shown that the practice is a fundamentally ineffective public safety strategy, the report pointed out.
In 2019, 88% of the time L.A. County sheriff’s officers spent on stops was for officer-initiated stops rather than in response to calls. The overwhelming majority of that time – 79% – was spent on traffic violations. By contrast, just 11% of those hours was spent on stops based on reasonable suspicion of a crime.
In Riverside, about 83% of deputies’ time spent on officer-initiated stops went toward traffic violations, and just 7% on stops based on reasonable suspicion.
So, the first uncomfortable question automated report writing poses is this: what are cops actually going to do with all this free time? If it’s just more of this, we really don’t need it. All AI will do is allow problematic agencies and officers to engage in more of the biased policing they already engage in. Getting more of this isn’t going to make American policing better and it’s certainly not going to address the plethora of long-standing issues American law enforcement agencies have spent decades trying to ignore.
Then there’s the AI itself. Everything at use at this point is still very much in the experimental stage. Auto-generated reports might turn into completely unusable evidence, thanks to the wholly expected failings of the underlying software.
These reports, though, are often used as evidence in criminal trials, and critics are concerned that relying on AI could put people at risk by depending on language models that are known to “hallucinate,” or make things up, as well as display racial bias, either blatantly or unconsciously.
That’s a huge problem. Also problematic is the expected workflow, which will basically allow cops to grade their own papers by letting the AI handle the basics before they step in and clean up anything that doesn’t agree with the narrative an officer is trying to push. This kind of follow-up won’t be optional, which also might mean some agencies will have to allow officers to review their own body cam footage — something they may have previously forbidden for exactly this reason.
On top of that, there’s the garbage-in, garbage-out problem. AI trained on narratives provided by officers may take it upon themselves to “correct” narratives that seem to indicate an officer may have done something wrong. It’s also going to lend itself to biased policing by tech-washing BS stops by racist cops, portraying these as essential contributions to public safety.
Of course, plenty of officers do these sorts of things already, so there’s a possibility it won’t make anything worse. But if the process Axon is pitching makes things faster, there’s no reason to believe what’s already wrong with American policing won’t get worse in future. And, as the tech improves (so to speak), the exacerbation of existing problems and the problems introduced by the addition of AI will steadily accelerate.
That’s not to say there’s no utility in processes that reduce the amount of time spent on paperwork. But it seems splitting off a clerical division might be a better solution — a part of the police force that handles the paperwork and vets camera footage, but is performed by people who are not the same ones who captured the recordings and participated in the traffic stop, investigation, or dispatch call response.
And I will say this for Axon: at least its CEO recognizes the problems this could introduce and suggests agencies limit automated report creation to things like misdemeanors and never in cases where deadly force is deployed. But, like any product, it will be the end users who decide how it’s used. And so far, the expected end users are more than willing to streamline things they view as inessential, but are far less interested in curtailing abuse by those using these systems. Waiting to see how things play out just isn’t an acceptable option — not when there are actual lives and liberties on the line.
If you’re a content creator or YouTuber, camera companies increasingly want your business. Last year was no exception, with several new vlogging-specific models released by Canon, Sony, DJI and others. That means there are now over a dozen on sale, alongside regular mirrorless cameras that also do the job well.
Models specifically designed for vlogging include Sony’s new ZV-E1 full-frame mirrorless that launched last year, DJI’s Osmo Pocket 3 or Canon’s compact PowerShot V10. Others, like the new Panasonic G9 II and last year’s Canon EOS R6 II are hybrid mirrorless cameras that offer vlogging as part of a larger toolset.
All of them have certain things in common, like flip-around screens, face- and/or eye-detect autofocus and stabilization. Prices, features and quality can vary widely, though. To that end, we’ve updated our guide with all the latest vlogging cameras designed for novice to professional creators, in all price ranges. Engadget has tested all of these to give you the best possible recommendations.
Vlogging cameras are designed for filmmakers who often work alone and either use a tripod, gimbal, vehicle mount or just their hands to hold a camera. It must be good for filming yourself as well as other “B-roll” footage that helps tell your story. The biggest requirement is a flip-around screen so you can see yourself while filming. Those can rotate up, down or to the side, but flipping out to the side is preferable so a tripod or microphone won’t block it.
Continuous autofocus (AF) for video with face and eye detection is also a must. It becomes your camera “assistant,” keeping things in focus while you concentrate on your content. Most cameras can do that nowadays, but some (notably Canon and Sony) do it better than others.
If you move around or walk a lot, you should look for a camera with built-in optical stabilization. Electronic stabilization is another option as long as you’re aware of its limitations. You’ll also need a camera with a fast sensor that limits rolling shutter, which can create a distracting jello “wobble” with quick camera movements.
4K recording is another key feature. All cameras nowadays can shoot 4K up to at least 24 fps, but if possible, it’s better to have 4K at 60 or even 120 fps. If you shoot sports or other things involving fast movement, look for a model with at least 1080p at 120 fps for slow-motion recording.
Video quality is another important consideration, especially for skin tones. Good light sensitivity helps for night shooting, concerts and so on, and a log profile helps improve dynamic range in very bright or dark shooting conditions. If you want the best possible image quality and can afford it, get a camera that can record 4K with 10-bits (billions) of colors. That will give you more options when it’s time to edit the footage.
Don’t neglect audio either — if the quality is bad, your audience will disengage. Look for a camera with a microphone port so you can plug in a shotgun or lapel mic for interviews, or at least one with a good-quality built-in microphone. It’s also nice to have a headphone port to monitor sound so you can avoid nasty surprises after you’ve finished shooting.
You’ll also want good battery life and, if possible, dual memory card slots for a backup. Finally, don’t forget about your camera’s size and weight. If you’re constantly carrying one while shooting, especially at the end of a gimbal or gorillapod, it might actually be the most important factor. That’s why tiny GoPro cameras are so popular for sports, despite offering lower image quality and fewer pro features.
If you’re just starting out in vlogging or need a small, rugged camera, an action cam might be your best bet. In general, they’re easy to use as you don’t have to worry about things like exposure or focus. Recent models also offer good electronic stabilization and sharp, colorful video at up to 4K and 60 fps. The downsides are a lack of control; image quality that’s not on par with larger cameras; and no zooming or option to change lenses.
Compact cameras are a step up from smartphones or action cameras, with larger sensors and much better image quality. At the same time, they’re not quite as versatile as mirrorless or DSLR cameras (and not necessarily cheaper) and they lack advanced options like 10-bit video. For folks who want the best possible quality without needing to think too much about their camera, however, they’re the best option.
This is the class that has changed the most over the past couple of years, particularly in the more affordable price categories. Interchangeable lens cameras give you the most options for vlogging, offering larger sensors than compact cameras with better low-light sensitivity and shallower depth of field to isolate you or your subject. They also offer better control of your image with manual controls, log recording, 10-bit video and more. The drawbacks are extra weight compared to action or compact cameras, more complexity and higher prices.
© Steve Dent/Engadget
If you’re a content creator or YouTuber, camera companies increasingly want your business. Last year was no exception, with several new vlogging-specific models released by Canon, Sony, DJI and others. That means there are now over a dozen on sale, alongside regular mirrorless cameras that also do the job well.
Models specifically designed for vlogging include Sony’s new ZV-E1 full-frame mirrorless that launched last year, DJI’s Osmo Pocket 3 or Canon’s compact PowerShot V10. Others, like the new Panasonic G9 II and last year’s Canon EOS R6 II are hybrid mirrorless cameras that offer vlogging as part of a larger toolset.
All of them have certain things in common, like flip-around screens, face- and/or eye-detect autofocus and stabilization. Prices, features and quality can vary widely, though. To that end, we’ve updated our guide with all the latest vlogging cameras designed for novice to professional creators, in all price ranges. Engadget has tested all of these to give you the best possible recommendations.
Vlogging cameras are designed for filmmakers who often work alone and either use a tripod, gimbal, vehicle mount or just their hands to hold a camera. It must be good for filming yourself as well as other “B-roll” footage that helps tell your story. The biggest requirement is a flip-around screen so you can see yourself while filming. Those can rotate up, down or to the side, but flipping out to the side is preferable so a tripod or microphone won’t block it.
Continuous autofocus (AF) for video with face and eye detection is also a must. It becomes your camera “assistant,” keeping things in focus while you concentrate on your content. Most cameras can do that nowadays, but some (notably Canon and Sony) do it better than others.
If you move around or walk a lot, you should look for a camera with built-in optical stabilization. Electronic stabilization is another option as long as you’re aware of its limitations. You’ll also need a camera with a fast sensor that limits rolling shutter, which can create a distracting jello “wobble” with quick camera movements.
4K recording is another key feature. All cameras nowadays can shoot 4K up to at least 24 fps, but if possible, it’s better to have 4K at 60 or even 120 fps. If you shoot sports or other things involving fast movement, look for a model with at least 1080p at 120 fps for slow-motion recording.
Video quality is another important consideration, especially for skin tones. Good light sensitivity helps for night shooting, concerts and so on, and a log profile helps improve dynamic range in very bright or dark shooting conditions. If you want the best possible image quality and can afford it, get a camera that can record 4K with 10-bits (billions) of colors. That will give you more options when it’s time to edit the footage.
Don’t neglect audio either — if the quality is bad, your audience will disengage. Look for a camera with a microphone port so you can plug in a shotgun or lapel mic for interviews, or at least one with a good-quality built-in microphone. It’s also nice to have a headphone port to monitor sound so you can avoid nasty surprises after you’ve finished shooting.
You’ll also want good battery life and, if possible, dual memory card slots for a backup. Finally, don’t forget about your camera’s size and weight. If you’re constantly carrying one while shooting, especially at the end of a gimbal or gorillapod, it might actually be the most important factor. That’s why tiny GoPro cameras are so popular for sports, despite offering lower image quality and fewer pro features.
If you’re just starting out in vlogging or need a small, rugged camera, an action cam might be your best bet. In general, they’re easy to use as you don’t have to worry about things like exposure or focus. Recent models also offer good electronic stabilization and sharp, colorful video at up to 4K and 60 fps. The downsides are a lack of control; image quality that’s not on par with larger cameras; and no zooming or option to change lenses.
Compact cameras are a step up from smartphones or action cameras, with larger sensors and much better image quality. At the same time, they’re not quite as versatile as mirrorless or DSLR cameras (and not necessarily cheaper) and they lack advanced options like 10-bit video. For folks who want the best possible quality without needing to think too much about their camera, however, they’re the best option.
This is the class that has changed the most over the past couple of years, particularly in the more affordable price categories. Interchangeable lens cameras give you the most options for vlogging, offering larger sensors than compact cameras with better low-light sensitivity and shallower depth of field to isolate you or your subject. They also offer better control of your image with manual controls, log recording, 10-bit video and more. The drawbacks are extra weight compared to action or compact cameras, more complexity and higher prices.
© Steve Dent/Engadget
Enlarge / Wyze's Cam V3 Pro indoor/outdoor smart camera. (credit: Wyze)
Wyze cameras experienced a glitch on Friday that gave 13,000 customers access to images and, in some cases, video, from Wyze cameras that didn't belong to them. The company claims 99.75 percent of accounts weren't affected, but for some, that revelation doesn't eradicate feelings of "disgust" and concern.
Wyze claims that an outage on Friday left customers unable to view camera footage for hours. Wyze has blamed the outage on a problem with an undisclosed Amazon Web Services (AWS) partner but hasn't provided details.
Monday morning, Wyze sent emails to customers, including those Wyze says weren't affected, informing them that the outage led to 13,000 people being able to access data from strangers' cameras, as reported by The Verge.
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