Shotkam

Take a quick look at Youtube and amongst the excellent gun reviews by a certain Mr Moore (always worth creeping to the boss….) you will find plenty of action cam footage. It may be taken from a camera strapped to the bumper of a Porsche screaming round the M25 some way north of the speed limit, or it could be of dirt biking, mountain climbing, in fact practically every outdoor activity you can think of.  Look carefully and you might also find some shooting-related clips, usually filmed using a camera strapped to the shooters head and with any luck the dot off in the distance that they are shooting at might just be visible.

AN IDEA FORMS

A Scot called David Stewart who now lives in Florida happened to be looking at just that kind of footage a few years ago, searching for a camera that he could use to record his sons 10 year old exploits while duck hunting. He found plenty of people on the net selling equipment that could be head-mounted but he wanted more! In particular a gun camera that would show exactly where the gun was pointing in relation to the target at the moment it was fired. Sure enough he found some but soon discovered that they weren’t up to the job. Some broke after one shot, others lasted a bit longer, plus lenses fell out and mounts broke! It seemed that there wasn’t anything on the market that did what he wanted and was built to a standard that could cope with the stresses associated with being strapped to a barrel.

It was at that point that David decided to build something himself. Having come from a background in defence engineering, specifically laser targeting for munitions and hard drive manufacturing. He had a thorough understanding of what was needed to first produce an interface that gave the shooter the feedback needed and engineering required to survive the shocks and vibrations that the electronic components would be exposed to.

18 MONTHS ON

18 months of development followed, at the end of which he was ready to unveil the Shotkam; a barrel-mounted, ‘smart camera’ whose output shows the shooter exactly what they are doing right on each shot, and more importantly what they are doing wrong.

It’s a versatile piece of kit and can be fitted to 12-gauge Over & Under or auto loading shotguns in its standard form and an adaptor can be purchased to allow it to fit side by side guns or 20-bores if needed. Its usefulness doesn’t stop there though and it can also be fitted to any 1” scope tube meaning that rifle shooters using any/all gun types can take advantage of what it offers.

Normal action cameras tend to have an ON/OFF switch simple as that. Which in a shooting environment means that you end up with plenty of extraneous footage of empty sky or your shiny new boots which you have to wade through to get to the interesting stuff.

SMART BY NAME

The smart side of the Shotkam is its activation method, once in standby it waits for the on board accelerometer to detect a movement which generates sufficient G force to start it recording. Which might be generated by closing the gun, though the G required can be set within the systems accompanying software.

The clip that the camera writes to the onboard SD card records before, during and after the shot and again the duration can be controlled through the software interface. Frame rate is a rapid 60 per second and playback can be at either 1/8, ¼ or ½ speed so you get a slow motion view of the shot as it leaves the gun and heads for the target on the screen of your PC.

The camera also magnifies the narrow angle target image by a factor of four which means that even those long shots are still big enough on your screen to give you the information you need. The fact that its been designed primarily for shotgun use is clear when setting up the unit. You can specify choke, speed of the cartridge, average range to target and other variables including various programs that suit specific shotgun disciplines such as Trap, Skeet and Sporting Clays.

FAULTS ADDRESSED

One of the key faults with generic action cams, apart from their propensity to break is that they don’t show where the gun is pointing. Shotkam solves this by projecting a reticule onto the screen that shows exactly where the pattern of the gun should be in relation to the target. Several options are available from basic cross hairs through to circles and even a profile of the barrels and action. To make sure the camera is pointing where it should it has a built in laser that can be calibrated to match your weapons point of impact. The 200 gram weight does affect the balance on lighter guns but a few ounces of lead in the stock in the form of cartridge ends soon cured any imbalance in a matter of minutes.

Having only tried the Shotkam on a shotgun I was impressed with the results! Slow motion 720P HD footage of a couple of driven pheasant days showed some interesting facts and a few habits that needed correcting. Namely a habit of overdoing the required lead on the closer 30 yard birds, due in part to using the maintained lead method while the longer 40, 50 and 60 yard shots showed that the pull away method was consistently producing good kills. A trip to the clay ground also showed that it works very well, even in the very dull light of a snowy January afternoon and there are definitely coaching applications where the feedback from the Shotkam could prove invaluable.

MEMORIES TOO

Apart from the technique aspects of a day’s shooting, Shotkam also allows you to keep hold of the memories of those special shots that otherwise would blur in your memory with the passage of time. Some of the pheasants shot on the driven day were as good as I have ever seen and it’s great to be able to play them back and re-live the moment, even if it’s just to remind myself that now and again with a following wind I can pull off a very good shot!

At £699 pounds the Shotkam isn’t what you’d call inexpensive but remember it’s not some cheap and cheerful throw away item! Made from aircraft-grade aluminium and speced to take everything you can throw at it; US SWAT Teams have already used it in training exercises which should prove that this is no toy.

As a way to record and understand what you are doing shot after shot after shot I can’t think of anything on the market that does the job as well for anywhere near the price! If you want to improve your shooting and have some fun in the process take a closer look at the Shotkam.