Hover Camera Offers Opportunity For Soaring Selfies

Selfie-lovers, rejoice: a new camera is flying onto the scene to satisfy your aerial photography needs. Instead of an obvious selfie stick, gadget-hungry shutter bugs should soon be able to purchase an aerial contraption to capture their images.

In general, our society has become a largely visual one. Photo sharing apps like Instagram and Snapchat have continued to grow in popularity by leaps and bounds. Yahoo! estimates that more than 880 billion photos were taken in 2014 alone. Now, Zero Zero Robotics’ Hover Camera Passport will provide one more method for photo-taking.

Controlled by a user’s smartphone, the Hover Camera Passport is able to fly at up to 17 miles per hour and travel 16 feet up into the air. It also has a range of up to 66 feet. It comes with two batteries that will allow for 10 minutes of flight time — not enough for extended use, but more than adequate to take a short video or a series of quick selfies.

The device isn’t the most sophisticated camera drone (although the company avoids using that terminology). The Hover Camera Passport has some trouble following users up and down stairs and it’s confused by glass windows and mirrors. Although it features face detection technology, the gadget experiences some issues in figuring out which face to focus on when there are several in the frame.

But despite these little hitches, many consumers will like the price, especially when compared to the competition. GoPro’s soon-to-be-released Karma drone starts at $799, and DJI’s Mavic Pro will cost you nearly $1,000. The Hover Camera Passport, on the other hand, is $599. Although comparable technology may be a bit more sophisticated, the Hover Camera Passport — which folds up into the size of a paperback book — will still impress customers. In addition, the level of technology will only increase due to the other competition on the market.

The Hover Camera Passport is only the first in a full line of flying cameras that Zero Zero Robotics intends to produce. Given its solid design and user-friendly operational system, tech gurus should keep their eyes peeled for future developments.