Capturing great videos at night is a tricky business without throwing movement into the mix. Now use something like a GoPro and you’re just asking for gloomy, blurry clips of indecipherable activity. SiOnyx wants to change that with its Aurora, an action camera with a “patented Ultra Low Light IR” sensor that can record even the darkest scenes as if they were shot in full-blown daylight.
The Aurora, currently available as a $US719 ($982) preorder (but not for Australia sadly — we’ll get to that later) features a one-inch (2.54cm) CMOS designed specifically for nighttime video capture.
Technical specs for the sensor are thin on the ground, but in terms of general performance, the Aurora comes with an OLED display; 16mm lens with apertures of f/1.4, 2.0 and 5.6; support for 720p video in MOV format between 8-60fps; and storage in the form of microSD up to 32GB. The battery should last for two hours of continuous activity.
OK, this is all good and well, but what does the footage look like? Here are some comparison videos from SiOnyx, pitting the Aurora against the GoPro Hero5.
Now, here’s the bad news — SiOnyx is only taking US orders. So if you want one, you’ll have to use a post-forwarding service or call a mate in the States for help.
Otherwise, you’ll just have to cross your fingers for a local distributor in the future, or carry around a bunch of massive halogen lights.