Tuesday 11 June 2013

Bike video

I'd bought a cheap 'sports camera' a few years ago, a Medion Life S4 7000, I think it was about £40 from Lidl. I'd shot some reasonable quality video at a couple of bike events, but I'd been meaning to try 'on bike' filming. I quickly worked out that mounting the camera on the bike wouldn't work (Skorpions vibrate too much) and helmet mounted cameras tend to have too much movement. Stuart had experimented with mounting the camera on his body, so this seemed to be the best way to go.
He had mounted the camera in the middle of his chest, but that wouldn't work on the Skorpion as the screen would get in the way. I bought a harness designed for Police and security officers to hold their radios next to their shoulder.

Misty is trying to 'help'!

It has adjustable straps that go over your shoulder and fasten around your chest, and an elasticated pocket for a radio.


I cut the pocket off then stiffened the harness by glueing and screwing an alloy plate to the back. I then screwed a bracket I'd made from Ram Mounts to hold the camera and adjust its angle.











I fastened the harness around my chest and adjusted the straps to as tight as possible to mimimise movement of the camera in use.

You won't believe how hard it is to photograph your own chest!

I sat on the bike and adjusted the angle of the camera to what looked about right then went for a run.

It was a dull, overcast evening and it had been raining for most of the day (hence the wet roads), but I wanted to get out and try the camera. Hopefully it'll look better when it's sunnier. (The original video looked better, I think YouTube compresses it a bit - try setting 'quality' to 480p.) The microphone on the camera gets overwhelmed by wind noise, I might try sticking a bit of foam over it or I'll just remove the sound from the video.
Not bad for a first attempt, and I'll try some more videoing when we get better weather. If anyone's interested, this is just round the corner from my house, one of the advantages of living in a small village - you're never far from countryside.



4 comments:

  1. After the last post I was looking at the video camera and realised that it had been set to 'WVGA' rather than 'HD', so maybe that's why it didn't look very good.

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  2. It's a pretty decent video really, considering the cost of the camera and the weather aspect. Mounting it on your body was a good move, helmet cameras suffer from a lot of movement especially over a series of bumps. Thanks for sharing

    Colm

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    Replies
    1. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, it's not bad for a first attempt. I'm going to the Alps in a few weeks, so should have some more videos to post.

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  3. Nice neighborhood. Wind noise seems to be a factor with all those cameras. Other than that, pretty cool.

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