FPV-Community Reviews

My first thought was “wow, so many colors on the case”. All of the buttons on the cam for changing the settings are in different colors. The OSC cam appears unusual but nice to look at, at the same time.  The metal casing gives it a very solid first impression and both connectors, as well as the mounting screw for the lens confirmed the camera was going to be a winner.

Setting options

The buttons on the back are quite small, leaving not a very good feeling of pressure. On the other side you can change all the settings without special tools even on the field and that is quite an advantage. It’s useful to mount the cam in a way you can push the buttons on the back to have the full advantage of changeable settings even on the field.

The menu to change the settings is overlaid on the camera view. That means you can see immediately the results of your changes. But on the other side it’s hard to see the active menu entry because it’s displayed in a not really bright yellow color. The difference to the other white menu entries is not very good to see. The manufacturer should add an arrow cursor or something to improve the visibility of the settings menu. But anyway, after some training time the menu is usable good enough.

If you have completely adjusted to the parameters, there is a reset option. If you use this, you should know where to change the language back to English. Maybe the manual will help you to find the menu option for language setting, so it’s better to have your manual also on the field.

Hardware

The Cam is stable through the housing, but also relatively heavy. To attach the cam on the flight model there is a bracket and some screws delivered with it. This is really helpful, but unfortunately the screw thread and screws are not that well manufactured. So it’s a little bit tricky to get the screws in.

The cable with the power is very good, for audio and video. All individual wires are color coded to the usual format. For example black for ground, red for positive, yellow for video and white for audio.

The Cam has a built-in microphone which can be helpful. As example if there is an audio battery warning on board you can hear this in flight.

Also the microphone is good to estimate the flight situation on board with the engine and wind sound. The cam needs 12 V + / – 10% and consume approximately 100mA. Because of strong fluctuations and disturbances that can be expected it’s  not a good idea to connect the cam to the flight battery. It would be better if it was filtered, with a constant source such as through appropriate electronics, or an extra battery.

Image quality

With the preset parameters, the quality is very good. Depending on your environment and application, it can be optimized for every situation and that’s a great advantage.

For example, it may be preferred for fast flight around obstacles with equally fast light-dark phases, you can set the shutter to a fixed value! On the other hand you may want the shutter operate automatically while relaxed soaring at height.

Comments on the video

The video is unfortunately not the full quality of the cam, because my capture device is not the very best. To get an idea of the Cam there are some scenes recorded in different situations.

• Scene 1: Without video rx/tx from the window during sunny weather
• Scene 2: Flight on sunny weather with unfavorable settings
• Scene 3: Flight on a completely overcast sky
• Scene 4: Flight on a sunny day with some cloud. “Back Light Compensation”  (BLC) on the entire image area
• Scene 5: Fly in the sunshine with BLC on the lower half of the screen
• Scene 6: Flight with partial cloudiness with BLC on the lower half of the screen, BLC value at 2 / 3, White Balance on Fixed, Mode 4, AGC slightly increased

Sure, the tests do not show you the optimum quality on the cam. I’ve also a lot to learn how to optimize the setting for every occasion.

Conclusion

The GF-420TVL OSC is a very nice cam for almost all flying styles and locations. The settings capabilities are really great to have! Unfortunately, in the manual there are only the menu items listed and not the meaning of what it can do. This is especially for hard for beginners, but with the default settings and BLC on the full display you get in most situations, really good results.
The mounting bracket should still be made somewhat more precise, but most of FPV pilots are don’t need them because of their Pan / Tilt / pod use.

OSC Cam

+ In case with mounting bracket
+ Through housing well protected
+ Many options
+ Balanced image, no blasting
+ Screw to fix lens
- Fixing screws for bracket are hard to mount
- Slightly high weight
- Guide lists more or less only the menu items, without explaining
- Buttons on the back are difficult to use
- Menu cursor is hard to see
- Reset sets the language back to something other than English

I would like to Thank “Cosha” for the small help with this review

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.