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Nikon KeyMission 80 Unboxing

October 30, 2016

(John Warkentin)

 

John Warkentin here from the Michael’s Camera Social Media Team.

Today we’re going to do an unboxing of the brand new Nikon KeyMission 80 action camera.

This is the third in their series of action cameras; the first one, which we unboxed last week, is the Nikon KeyMission 360; now it’s the fully panoramic camera; it’s got a couple of 20 MG sensors in it; 2 fisheye lenses; produces a fully spherical image; does 4k video; and has lots of really interesting features.

Next up we had the KeyMission 170; now, this is a conventional action camera; mostly video centric; does 4k video; has image stabilization in full HD; it’s got some interesting time-lapse modes; is a still camera as well; it has a simple interface with three buttons on the back here and a small LCD.

 

So let’s get into the KeyMission 80.

Now, this one’s got a touchscreen on it, so that’s first order business; it’s going to be a little bit different.

Let’s open the box!

Okay.

 

[Opens box lid]

 

Looks like we’ve got a couple things that are upside down here; so we’ve got the “Telling your story” postcard here; so they’ve created a social media site which you can subscribe to - I haven’t set my account up just yet - we’ve got our warranty card here; we’ve got, looks like the user’s manual; Quick Start Guide; let’s just open this up here.

 

[Removes the Quick Start Guide from the plastic wrapping]

 

Now, most of these guides are available online, and I’ve cheated - already downloaded the full reference guide earlier and gave it a bit of a read.

Looks like we’ve got some safety information here; little Australian information; another little postcard here; your mission to capture experience has just got more rewarding! Okay!

Sharing my mission.

 

Okay, looks like we’ve got the battery charger here for it; now keep in mind, this is a North American style; it’s got the flip-out double prongs here; and for Australian use, and I assume for all the other international customers, there will be different adapters available.

 

[Removes charging adapters from plastic wrapping]

 

I’ll just pop this one out.

So you see this has got the bent prongs for Australia, New Zealand; and that just snaps in here like so; keep in mind this is a bit of a one-shot deal, once you snap it in you’re going to need to get a pin in here and pry it apart; so I’m not going to snap it together just yet.

 

Okay, let’s get the plastic out of here.

Let’s take a look see what we’ve got.

 

[Opens white cardboard box to reveal cables]

 

Okay.

USB cable; now the batteries in these new action cameras with Nikon, charge within the camera; so this USB cable is for charging.

It can charge it from your computer; you can obviously connect and control the camera from your computer; it’s got a micro USB on the camera side and standard USB 2 on the computer side; so that also plugs into the charger here, as you can see, so there’s the USB port on the back of the charger.

 

So I’ve got our cable; looks like we’ve got a strap; looks like we’ve got… oh, now, this is the little caddy which the camera can snap into, and from what I can understand, you can mount this to like a strap on your backpack, through here; it has a little rubber thing on it, and the camera can just sort of snap in, so that you can wear this action camera.

And lastly, here’s our camera.

 

[Removes the KeyMission 80 from the box and unwraps it]

 

Okay.

Now, nothing else in the box.

It has a little tag on here telling us about the Nikon Snapbridge app.

Now for this camera; it’s a different Snapbridge app as you can get from your Android or Apple App Store; the KeyMission 360 and 170 have a special Snapbridge app which is called, Snapbridge 360/ 170; whereas this one is the same one that works with the Nikon digital SLR, so they’re just reminding you of that.

 

Okay, let’s just put that aside.

 

Now, I’ve cheated a little bit in advance here, I brought another one, I made sure this one was charged up.

Now, the battery on this camera is internal and it’s user accessible but with screws; so you’re not going to be just taking this a battery in and out and having multiple batteries.

So it’s not easy to get at it, but you can get at it - it is user accessible.

So a little bit different than a lot of smartphones, which are not user accessible; but keep in mind the other action cameras in the line have memory card/battery doors such as this, where you can pop the battery in and out.

 

So it’s a little bit different in that regard.

I think that helps keep it weather-sealed and maybe keeps costs down a little wee bit, and keeps the size down.

So, what do we have on the camera here: it’s got a very simple layout; it’s quite nice to the touch; got a little like a metal foot here; now, there is not a tripod socket on it, and there is an optional tripod holder for it; so there’s no tripod socket here, so this is designed as a wearable camera or to use it handheld; there’s a screen on the back of it here, and we’ll just turn the camera on by pressing the menu button, and as you can see here - it’s got a touch screen mode; we’re getting two settings; hits back; it’s a very simple user interface; it’s a much like the GoPro in that regard; it’s not a complex interface like a phone though; so, once you get into a setting that you want to do some work with - like for instance if I go in here and I want to go into camera settings and let’s see here, we can scroll a few things here, and say charge by computer. Now you’ll notice it doesn’t have a back button here, so basically once you choose one of these options it will then set that option and then go back, so that’s fine.

Okay.

 

[Holds the little camera up and displays the various buttons and controls]

 

Now let’s take a little look around it as well.

So we’ve got a front lens on the camera - now that’s a 12-megapixel, 4:3 aspect ratio sensor on this side, and on the back we’ve got our little selfie camera; as I understand it, this one’s about an equivalent of 22 mm focal length; this one’s about 25. This is a 5.6-megapixel camera.

The KeyMission 80 also does video; it records, depending whether you got a pal or NTSC, there’s 30 frames per second or 25 frames per second full HD; this is predominantly aimed at the still market, with video as options; whereas this is predominantly video with some still options, and of course on the KeyMission 360, it’s really all about the 4k spherical video.

 

We’ve got a rotary switch here to choose between our still modes and our movie mode; so I just put in still here; that’s in movie mode; we’ve got a shutter button down here; so we’ll just take a quick picture.

 

[Focus beep and shutter click]

 

Okay.

We’ve got the shutter sounds; and we got a little button here to toggle between - there I am, there you can see the Canon camera here, that I’m using to record this video - toggle between the front and the back screen.

Now, what’s this camera all about?

It’s lightweight; it’s waterproof; it’s shockproof; it’s wearable, and it’s a bit wider angle than what your cell phone has got.

So this is an additional camera that you might want to have with you all the time; it’s very thin; easy to move around; obviously, it’s rugged and it’s weather resistant, so you would not have a problem using this where you might not want to pull your cell phone out; and of course, it’s a little wider field of view; and at 12 megapixels, it might be a little higher resolution than your cell phone as well.

 

[Presses a button on the camera and an LED begins to glow]

 

Oh, there’s also an LED here for lighting up – apparently, you hold this down for two seconds, and that’s going to turn on - there we go!

So we can do illuminated videos - I guess we just hold down and it’ll probably turn itself off again. There we go.

So that’s, sure you could use that as a flashlight as well.

 

There’s also quite a number of timelapse functions on this, so you can do like a route log; you can make some time-lapse movies; so you do an awful lot of interesting things.

A difference between this camera and the other cameras in the line, is this one also has optical stabilization on the lens, as well as a digital stabilization system; so when we put it through its video test, it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

 

Anyway, that’s enough for our short introduction to the KeyMission 80, and of course, that completes our trilogy of cameras in the Nikon KeyMission line.

 

[Lines up the KeyMission cameras]

 

So let’s just put them all on display here, and there we go.

 

Hopefully, you have enjoyed our introductions and unboxing videos with the Nikon cameras.

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Thank you very much for joining us!