Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

UPDATED September 18, 2020 - I’ve replaced the images with better examples. The first two are of a mirror in an allegedly haunted and abandoned house. One is infrared and the other full spectrum. Notice in the infrared shot the wood grain in the mirror’s frame and how much of that detail is lost to full spectrum. Also look at the many lens flares. The next two compares both methods on a staircase in a completely dark house—I could not see my hand in front of me. The last is a full spectrum image from a professional camera. Notice the crisp detail in the leaves. This is how full spectrum should look. UPDATED June 24, 2019 - After using this camera for several months I am changing my recommendation to DO NOT BUY! New information has been added throughout this review in brackets. [I recommend instead any of the Sony night vision cameras that run from $210-$1k. Sony - Handycam CX405 Flash Memory Camcorder - Black] This Zohulu camera comes in a variety of names and custom configurations for different sellers. I liked this particular bundle because it came with two SDHC chips, a great little IR flashlight [which we discovered does not come with batteries or a charger], and a Macro lens that some others didn't have [the macro lens blocks the built in IR light]. You should check around for the bundle that meets your needs. The names can be Ancter, Zohulu, or even Cleveland Paranormal. The main brand is Zohulu, a trademark of ShenZhen PuFeiSi Electronics Co. I spent a lot of time in China looking at digital video systems for security and was very impressed with the Chinese brands of night vision security systems. [In our testing my partner bought a different model, the Ancter and for some reason, it performs better than this one, although it appears to be essentially the same.] AFFORDABILITY - The main struggle with any hobbyist "Ghost Hunter" is money. We do this hobby for the love of the sport and we don't do it for money. For every millionaire plumber doing this, there are tens of thousands of us struggling to pay our bills, So when I evaluate equipment I hold the "value for the money" as the single most important feature. This camera was made for Paranormal work which is what [I thought was] so sweet about it. I can film an abandoned house, switch on the spot to Infrared or with a couple of menu clicks get to the Full Spectrum feature. [I have since learned that full spectrum is a gimmick. If you have an object in focus, then you change the lighting type your object will need to be refocused because the focal point is based on the wavelength of the light. Because ultraviolet is much shorter wavelength than infrared, it is a physical impossibility for a full spectrum shot to be totally in focus. It will always look a little fuzzy. Plus, infrared is a stronger wavelength that tends to wash out the ultraviolet. There is no hard evidence that full spectrum provides any advantage in ghost hunting. People will show you evidence and claim that is their proof of the value of full spectrum, but the image was most likely made with infrared light and tinted purple by ultraviolet. It would have been more clear in pure infrared] I can connect to the camera with my phone and while I leave one downstairs guarding the front door I can watch it on my phone while I'm upstairs. I can review the footage using the camera LCD screen or my iPhone, then easily download it on the spot to my iPhone. Because I am one of those Apple techies, I have the full Apple entourage - a Mac Pro, iPod, and iPad at home. By the time I get home, all my footage has been downloaded to the Mac and to my iPad and iPod automatically. It's inexpensive, it gets the job done [poorly], and it is very well affordable! LENS IMPERFECTIONS - Now for the rest - I am an actor and a cinematographer, I have had films play at SXSW, Tribeca, and Cannes. My favorite camera is my Blackmagic Cinema Camera. Nothing beats it for Mirror Images Phenomenon. Because it records in raw, uncompressed digital negatives, I can adjust all my white balance, ISO, etc at the computer just as if I am still at the mirror with my camera. That camera was $2,000 for the body and $1,000 for the Canon lens. This paranormal camera was $200 for everything. We have to keep that in mind at all points in the review. I only have the Blackmagic because I was filming customer commercials with it. I couldn't afford it otherwise so I was lucky. It doesn't handle infrared so it requires visible light - a real downer for paranormal work. This paranormal camera actually has three lenses. It has the standard lens with an average field of view. It also comes with a Macro lens for super closeup work which is fantastic. Then you add yet another lens on top of that Macro lens to come up with their Ultra-Wide lens configuration. The result is horrific lens flares. See my two pictures. Lens flares are the result of imperfections in the lens glass - round objects will take on a hexagon shape when they get a little out of focus. This is the lens inability to handle out-of-focus light. I'd say those shots above look fantastic for a cinematic choice, but are a disaster for paranormal work. Determining which anomalies are paranormal and which are lens problems can be quite difficult. [after shooting a variety of investigations using other infrared and cinema cameras, I don't bring this one along anymore. The lens problems are extreme.] So I only shoot now with the standard lens which cleans up most but not all of the flares. They make a distinction in their manual that the image is not an infrared image. It has an internal infrared light (which the ultra-wide lens blocks by the way) and pushing the IR button on the back of the camera automatically switches off the infrared filters and turns on the light. The camera looks at the scene and then recreates a black and white image to represent it. At least, that's the way the manual is written. It's an interesting read because the English is very good in the beginning but it looks like the interpreter got tired as she/he worked through the manual. The English started getting worse and by the time it got to the Full Spectrum explanation at the end it was almost unreadable. So it's possible it was a poor translation but the camera doesn't have the traditional greenish hue of night vision, it looks black and white. FULL SPECTRUM - Full Spectrum mode adds a fuzziness or haze to the image. The IR shots are much cleaner than the Full Spectrum. I have tens of thousands of images from investigations with hundreds of apparitions in infrared. I've yet to capture anything in ultra-violet. Full Spectrum is made by merging 3 separate images - one from the near-IR range, one from the visible range, and one from the near-ultraviolet range. That's why the image looks fuzzier, these are different focal lengths shot in one focal plane so of course it would be a little fuzzy. I'm not convinced yet that there is any value to Full Spectrum. IR is a snap, push a button on the back of the camera. When I’m out on a hunt being able to tap one button that turns on the infrared light and switches to black & white mode is sweet. Full Spectrum, however, requires doing that, plus going into the menu settings under ‘Color’, and changing the setting to ‘Vivid’. So for me, I use just the single, built-in lens, and switch between visible light and IR by using the simple push button. This also makes the internal IR light usable again as it is no longer blocked by the wide angle lens. Additional information about full spectrum from Wikipedia says: It is important to note that while the converted camera sensor is capable of recording in both the ultraviolet and infrared region, when mixed light hits the sensor it will be the longer infrared waves that will predominate in the recording. Little or no shortwave ultraviolet light may be recorded unless selective filtering is applied to cut some or all of the infrared light. The longwave infrared light may also wash out a considerable amount of the visible light in the blue and green areas in a full spectrum photograph. Similarly if infrared light is entirely blocked, the visible light can overwhelm the recording of the ultraviolet light. So there is no truly full-spectrum photograph that can be made [with this camera. Good full spectrum cameras exist and the standard method is to shoot the still-subject well-focused three times, with three different filters and merging the 3 images into one. Video requires a complicated method of realtime splitting of the image 3 ways, applying the appropriate filter, then recombining before saving. $$$. This camera has no manual focus, it is set for infinite focus.] ODDITIES, RESOLUTION & FRAME RATE - This is a really strange method, there is no separate setting for frame rate. The rates are matched to the resolution. If you want a higher frame rate, you will have to accept a lower resolution. If you want 4k or 3840 x 2160 you will have to accept 24 frames per second. That's not a problem for me because that's what all my movies are shot at, but I can't match it to my iPhone's 30FPS - just let the editing software figure it out. Another oddity is that for UHD they use the free disk archiver program "DAR" to compress the image to save chip space. It's saved as a 4:3 video on the chip, then the DAR software uncompresses it back to 16:9 format. However, my editing software says this clip is actually 2880 x 2160 @ 24fps. [This probably contributes to the poor quality of the image] The next choice is QHD or 2560 x 1440 and you get this size at 30fps, no other option. Next is FHD or 1920 x 1080 at 60fps. That is standard HD running at 60fps. [In bright light this seemed to produce the best possible video for this camera]. Next is HD or 1280 x 720 @ 120fps. What? 120fps. Crazy. No other choice. Historically I believe that was the first HD format that came out followed quickly by 1920x1080p. Finally, we have VGA or 640 x 480 at 30 fps. What? 30 fps. That's just...weird. It uses JPG for still images and the container is MP4 for video. My editor says it is H.264 compression but my guess is that it's motion jpeg compressed again (barely) by H.264 getting it into the MP4 container, that would make sense. The two samples I provided show the first mistake I made - it's low resolution. Evidently, it defaults to that every time, at least I haven't been able to get it to stay at HD so be sure check it before every shoot. It does provide the recording format symbol on the LCD screen so it's easy to check. The documentation said VGA is 640x480@30fps but my software said it was actually 640x360@30fps. The third picture I uploaded is this UHD format but I cropped it. I simply wanted to show the quality of the image and the fact that it is an infinite depth of field focus. There is NO option for focus either manually or automatically. FACE DETECTING FEATURE - in a poorly documented section it explains that you can enable face detecting, which I assume will then ensure a good focus on the subject. Everything in your image will be more or less in focus, which could be a good thing I suppose for paranormal work. It's often a problem that the key shot is out of focus. Another poorly documented section is METERING. I'm assuming this is how it handles light in the scene, from averaging across many samples to a single point sample, ergo, face detect. Other than Full Spectrum looking fuzzy to me, I have no complaints about the instant focusing of this camera. Having said that, the Zoom lever on the top of the camera is too close to the menu lever. Trying to use your thumb to zoom your lens might accidentally kick it out of video recording mode sending it either the camera mode or menu mode. AUDIO - This is by far the worst feature of the camera. The audio is atrocious. It sounds like you are in a 55-gallon drum sinking to the bottom of the ocean. It's very bad, and it can really mess up your editing too. If you ever have trouble with things getting out of synch, look at the audio. This is a common synch issue across all types of editors. This camera shoots a mono signal, which I could live with but it is a bizarre 32 kHz. CD's and DVD's are 44.1 kHz, iPhones are 48 kHz and my best device, the Zoom H4n records uncompressed WAV files at 96khz. So they decided to record the mono file at 1/3rd of the digital audio of my Zoom. It's horrible. Good EVPs don't need microphones, I've captured many EVPs in experiments with microphones totally disabled.. [But this camera will shred the EVP.]. I've recorded EVPs with the mikes completely removed, so that does work, but I don't get as many EVPs as I normally would. I'm going to try to use an external mike, one that uses its own battery power and another that uses the camera power. This camera, fortunately, has a working hot shoe, so many different attachments from IR lights to external shotgun mikes are possible. I will update this review when I've done that. [I tried using different high-quality microphones, both stereo with adapter plugs for mono and mono microphones. The quality of the microphone makes no difference because the camera shreds it to death when saving it to the chip. I absolutely hate the audio of this camera] DON’T take my word for it! Look at the videos from other reviewers. Blow them up to full screen and look at all the distortion, artifacts and pixelation in the video. The compression destroys the video. Now listen to their audio, don’t skip over it just take a quiet moment and listen to it. It’s abysmal! BATTERY - this bundle comes with two batteries, a regular capacity and a high capacity battery. I used the high capacity battery on a recent investigation and it held up for an hour even using an external IR light on the hot shoe. I had disabled the onboard IR light because most of it is blocked by the wide angle lens. I'm happy that between the two batteries I should be fine. I've learned to leave a complete set of everything, batteries, media, etc out in my car because if the entities kill the batteries in my camera, they will also kill them in my pocket. For some reason, the ones in the car are not touched nor do they do a second attack. I'm usually fine after reloading. SUMMARY - there was a lot of negative in the last few paragraphs, for $200 this is [a terrible buy ]. By managing the issues [I still wish I would have bought one of the Sony handycams]. My final setup is this - I'm recording in UHD at 24 fps. I'm using an external Sony microphone on the top hot shoe that does not draw power, it has it's own battery. I disable the onboard IR light to save battery. I have the spotlight that this bundle comes with mounted underneath the camera. [it did not come with a rechargeable battery nor did it have a charger. I bought a kit with both for $23 off Amazon] I also carry a Zoom recorder in my top shirt pocket to synch to the camera's audio channel. Most of my evidence is then presented using the Zoom audio. If I can start off in visible light I do so, but most times I'm running Infrared the entire time. I can connect to the camera with my iPhone out in the field if needed, checking recorded evidence is a snap. I found that once I get home, it's easier and faster to pull the chip out and stick it in my Mac for downloading. The chip is formated in MS-DOS FAT32. MAC COMPATIBILITY - Once last note about compatibility. One reviewer said it is not supported by Apple, another reviewer said it is supported. They are both right. The files are standard JPG or mp4 files. Any Mac can read them. The SDHC Chip is formatted as MS-DOS FAT 32. Macs can read those too and can indeed reformat them in that format. However, while there is an app that one can use to view and download files onto your iPhone or iPad, they did not make one for an iMac. Further, when you connect the camera to your Mac via the USB connector, it fails to connect. The manual says it is not supported by Mac OS, only Windows or iOS devices such as iPhones. Still, the chip works fine in the chip reader on my Mac. I hope this helps people decide. I hunted for years with the old fashioned Sony Nightshots with tape recorder which destroyed the audio with the tape motor, but the video was superb. Now they are digital and are what I recommend for Ghost Hunters.