Helmet Cameras

Been thinking about one of these for ages now and looking for advice have read a previous thread on a search but have been looking at the following:
http://www.4kam.com/helmet_cam_recorder.htm

I am aware there are also Archos ones but this seems a good deal, I would buy it with the 520 line helmet cam all in price £200.

Or should i buy a second hand camcorder MiniDV with £100 and helmet camera seperate?

Anyone got any clips from there helmet cameras?

Any one got a mini DV camera they wanna sell me?

I dont know

I also have no idea if this is any good, but it looks good

Superdan, you need to stop finding gadgets and bling

How much do reckon it would be for a group buy

http://www.actioncameras.co.uk/index.html

these peeps are good.i know a couple of peeps who use them.

I recently bought this, it's an ATC 2000 action cam, 30fps, 1 hour on a 2gb sd card. I made a temporary mount, so I didn't waste money if it's rubbish. I havn't had a chance to try it yet, actualy, that's a lie, I have tried it and came across it's one big disadvantage. Because there is no camcorder involved and no screen to review what you have recorded, you have to wait until you get home and download it to your computer to see what you've got. I had an hour of the road under the bike, I had completly misjudged the position of the camera when I'm on the bike. So now I need to go out and do some trial and error tests to get the position right. I didn't pay much for it, so if it's crap, it'll be off on ebay.

Ha ha the above mentioned DVR recorder fits in your pocket which is handy I take it you would have to face the camera pointing backwards to catch the view of your mates crashing trying to catch you up due to your carbon wheels and supremely fast black SD?

Have you tried your wheels out properly yet?

I would be interested in getting the £200 DVR with helmet camera included, if anyone wants to go halfs/thirds/quarters/fifths on it that would be great, it's not like you use it every day, we could have it for a month each or so or ask to borrow it for a track day or something, or a trip abroad if it's not your month???? I could not imagine it costing more than a fiver to send in the post? interested in that Daniel? anyone else think thats a good idea?
A forum camera to share amongst those who put into the kitty.
http://www.4kam.com/shop4.htm

Dan

Nice idea in principle but the logustics may be trickier i.e. transfer to the next person and what size would you buy.

Not knocking your enthusiasm though, hope it works

What do you mean by the size? the above mentioned camera and DVR is tiny the size of an old portable tape player.

It will only work as well as the weakest link...

Just talking out loud really, like you say it sounds a good but it needs everyone to be on the same wavelength.

Sorry, I was having brain fade, misread the message

One of the blokes on our Nurburgring trip next month is taking some form of video technology with him.

When I find out more, I will let you know

Been using a helmet camera from here ( http://www.rfconcepts.co.uk/ )
with a canon MV500i although that is on its last legs so need to get a new camera. I have looked at other options DVR/Archos etc but for the money I feel the DV cam method is best (Certainly the best quality) and with the size of some camcorders around it fits nicely in the superdukes underseat area. You must make sure the camera accepts AV in to use the helmet cam.

Heres a few clips I done a while ago....

Cadwell Park Trackday

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... 8&hl=en-GB

A Sunday ride

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... 9&hl=en-GB

Obviously quality (these are taken from our DVDs) is much much better on the DVD.[url][/url]

Dr f have you tried the helmet cam yet, any fottage as I am interested if the quality is any good.

I bought a Casio and its so amazingly good for its size that 12 people I know (so far) have bought one too!

For bike use, one friend bought a clip (like a bull-dog clip with a camera mount on) from Maplins and put it (with some tape to make sure it didn't move) on one mirror. His first vidjo is on which has lowered the quality a lot: the original is DVD quality (nothing interesting happens, so don't watch it expecting excitement).

I'm just finishing my own idea: I've got some hard foam that's easy to cut and made the camera fit inside two layers (as if it were packaging) to protect the extending lens (there may be a similarly good quality camera without this issue). The sponge-encapsulated camera fits in a fake-leather bag that came with my electric shaver. That's going to fit on the strap of the ruck-sack that I always ride with.

With this camera, you don't need to carry a pvr, no cables, easy review and editing. when you stop you can use it as an ordinary camera. Its really light and filled with resin, so its strong if it gets dropped or crashed.

...and no, I have nothing whatsoever to do with Casio!

A colleague has just splashed out on one of helmet-cam and pvr combos. We're going on a 3-day trip next weekend; I'll report back on how he gets on with it. At the moment he plans to suction it to his helmet and have the bike-powered PVR in his ruck-sack.

I've surprised myself this evening by taking the handle-bar clamp off a bicycle lamp and finding that it fitted the SD bars perfectly (it came with a rubber strip that I used to make the top half the same diameter as the bottom half of the bars between the forks). Then I took the bull-dog clip off of a clip camera mount from maplins and screwed it to the Handle-bar clamp and it looks great! Now I can just mount my casio exilim on there and take video while I ride. As long as I change the battery and SD card on petrol stops, I could get the whole journey (yawn) then edit out the boring bits. That's assuming it doesn't vibrate off or shift around while I ride; I guess I'll report back again...

There should be a camera that records constantly in a loop using up the whole SD card so that if anything happens you've got the last hour or so and can stop and keep the bit you want... one facing forward, one back and one to each side, then we can see what really happened when it all goes pear-shaped.

Reporting back after the trip:

The camera and PVR are great quality. My colleague shot just over six hours of video at DVD resolution. The quality is excellent, as you'd expect, the only defects being some subtle banding (which may coincide with passing pylons or something) and the usual issues of passing from dark forest or tunnel into bright sunlight which is better than any other camera we've tried, but still has a noticeable blind moment looking out from the darkness. You can view a video (33.6MB) (2MB preview ).
Note how his head stops fast vibration but introduces a nodding movement which gets irritating when watching long scenes.
He's not pleased with how having a helmet camera made the very steep slopes look less steep (I think its good, though!) and is convinced that next time he'll mount the camera on the bike... which is what I've done, to record my every-day commute in case someone u-turns into me and then blames be (as seen happening to a female biker on youtube).

I've mounted my casio exilim on my handle-bars (photos below) using a clamp from a push-bike light and a camera screw from the cheapest camera mount I could find in (which had a bull-dog-clip thing on it which I removed). Bugs and stones don't seem to make it over the faring.
I drape the camera's strap over the brake reservoir in case the clamp loosens. The vibrations from the bike under heavy acceleration mean that the image gets blurry, so I'm thinking of putting the camera in a pouch on my chest which would stop bike vibrations and nodding/shoulder-check motions (but may be hard to make look ahead at the right angle).
You can view a video (33.5MB) (2MB preview ) showing how it is just about usable to get number-plates of dangerous drivers (fortunately the only strange event so far has been being overtaken by a car in a 30mph zone immediately before a queue for a roundabout) and later clips show the vibration at overtaking speed.
The sound is just wind-noise, so there is no value in recording it... until you crash and someone says something that may be important in court.

We tried him filming me riding in front, but there is a fair bit of difference in riding style between a fully laden Honda CBF1000 and an unladen SD! I'd wait for him, then turn into a dot in the distance after each corner I wondered if a rear-facing camera would film me better, but the scenery going backwards would be strange to look at!

I suspect that there is no perfect solution unless you have multiple cameras, one fixed, one chest-mounted, one helmet-mounted, and one rear-facing!

It's a long story, but basicly, because there is no screen on which to review what you've recorded, you have to wait until you get home and download it. The problem is setting up the cammera at the correct angle, I set it up to what I thought was OK, but when I reviewed it, all I got was the tarmac whizzing past at 150mph! I must be tilting my head down quite a lot against the windblast. It just needs some time and effort to set it up, and what with the weather cutting down on my riding time, I've been making the most of the good stuff to do some riding. So in a nutshell, I havn't had time/been arsed to sort it as yet, sorry.

I was experimenting with the AC2000 camera on this ride out, I'd only had it 2 days. Tried various locations on the bike but unfortunately not the filler cap mounting I describe above.

Here it's mounted badly on the bars just inboard of the left grip. I had to pad out the clamp with cardboard, and I don't think it was as tight as it could have been.

If we get any decent weather in the next few days I'll post a clip using the tank mount for you.


I can't find a hosting site that doesn't knock back the quality.

I mounted my videocamera on the tank some days ago and the result were perfect !....until i hit the throttle and went over 5-6000 rpm... krrrkkk....prschhh...krrrrkkkk...the result went from perfect to SHIT in 1/10 sec !

My neighbour... The one on the green Kawasaki in the wheeliemovie... made it his own way. He took his videocamera and 5 meters of gaffatape and put the camera on the side of the helmet... The result were absolutely perfect....but he made the same mistake as the Doctor.... He filmed the tarmac för 55 minutes.. .
Thats why he follows me in the movie....We thought it would be nice with some movie from that angle too... Specially the wheelieing on the highway back home ! ... I went side by side with a BMW 325 for 1-2 km's...He was giving the thumbs up all the way , til we came up to 2 more cars...He slowed down and i passed all of them !


With some time and energy i think the best way is to put the cam on the helmet or am i wrong ? It's harder to get it to point were you want , but if you manage that , the result would be better ...or ?... You get rid of all anoying vibrations......

I'm VERY interested to see the result from the tankmounted ATC-2000 ..... Hope for good wheather for you !

Mounting any camera on the helmet will give good results, all the vibration from the bike is damped out by the body. Bigthumpas video wasn't bad to say it was mounted on the bike, the wavey picture made me feel a bit sea-sick after a while though, looked like some footage from the end of a Scooby-doo cartoon!.....Bahh!...if it wasn't for those pesky kids!!.....

I did hear an explanation for the waviness somewhere. It was along the lines of the frame rate of the camera being close to the frequency (and multiples) of the vibration so that the camera has moved a fraction by the time the next frame is captured. Kinda makes sense, so at 30 fps you'd expect to see the worst effect around 1800 rpm, 3600 rpm, 5400 rpm, etc. There's probably a harmonics effect too at fractions of those revs but my A-level Physics was too long ago to get into that!