Brier Dudley’s Blog at the Seattle Times website reported last week that camera maker Contour has closed its doors.
Geekwire added, “As of Friday Contour is CLOSED,” wrote Jacob Hase, the company’s former social media manager, in a public post on his personal Facebook page this week. ”Ya, it shocked all the employees even more. Incredibly hard to just walk away from something you put so much energy into.”
Attempts to purchase products are met with “temporarily out of stock” notices.
Guess I won’t be getting that sample of the latest model to try out after all. I gave the first one they sent to me to a tactical trainer. Hopefully, we’ll see some good footage from him in the future. This closure is unfortunate for the shooting sports and training community as the Contour’s shape is well suited to use mounted coaxially to firearms and helmets.
Tags: Contour
Quite a surprise. From the outside looking in, their business didn’t seem like it was hurting, but who knows what it looked like behind closed doors. Shame as I prefer those over GoPros.
Damn! I wonder what caused it?
GoPro
Market dominance of the Hero caused it.
Great cameras but they have (had?) some finicky attributes.
Like after charging, they’ll stay on with no indication to the user that they’re drawing power (until you learn to hit the status button to force-shutdown, or remove the battery until you’re on the OBJ).
Below a certain charging threshold (66% battery life?) Bluetooth control (AWESOME app) becomes touch and go. Everyone I know has spare batts for this reason.
There were times when it would cease to recognize the memory card. Meaning you could (a) carry around spares (b) dump your accumulated footage or (c) stop the op until you could offload footage to a drive, then initialize the card.
Loved the dessicant paper in the waterproof housings (Hero will fog if you’re not watchful), loved the lens tilt that let you tuck it in close to the side of an Arc-railed helmet. Way easier to be discreet with a Countor than a Hero as a helmet cam. Better gun cam too.
I wonder if Unity will be scrapping their Contour mount now?
There’s some good IP in the Contour approach. Hopefully someone can pick it up and dust it off.
GoPro
Shocked to hear this. I better buy a spare! The new versions were great cameras.
We will NOT be scrapping the mount as it also serves as a multi-purpose light mount. We actually just finished a final design change on it and were looking at rolling it out this fall with some improved features….
The Hero is a nice camera as well, but the form factor leaves a lot to be desired for tactical use. The Contour had some truly great features like the record slider, rotating lens, and great mounting options.
Hmm…….
Great to hear that you’re continuing development and refinement.
Yes please don’t scrap your mount, I was planning to get one as soon as you launch it.
Well it definitely did not help that everyone and their brother got in on contours market while only Sony tried to get in on Go Pros market.
Better buy soon then, before the prices are jacked up by retailers on amazon and eBay.
As an option, take a look at Drift Cameras. Somewhat similar format to the Contour, rooted in the auto scene. http://driftinnovation.com/
So many mainstream camera companies are offering similar product, but can’t beat Contour…Very sad!
What a shame, was a bigger fan of them than my own GoPro while in A-Stan.
The Drift Innovations GhostHD takes all the profile factors of the Contour I liked and packs them in with waterproofness, built in screen, exposure settings, iPhone controls, and a remote… All with the standard package, no add ons necessary like with GoPro.
http://driftinnovation.com/camera/drift-hd-ghost/
And it has a 1/4-20 standard tripod mount!
And!!! A Picatinny rail (MIL-STD-1913 rail or STANAG 2324 rail)