got the shots all lined up, its the technology at an affordable price is the problem, need some makes amd models of proven products and systems that work well, and give a good end result.
i have a decent video editing program, serif movie plus 5 ,that is very good, any more info graetly received.
thanks
Paul
Paul,
I've only recently gone down the moving image route (lots of reasons I won't go into now).
I've had pretty mixed results with different mountings.
I had a variety of Ram arms and mounts for my stills camera and have tried them in different places on the bike. Both mounting the camcorder and a bullet-cam.
Some were prone to general road bumps etc. and some engine related.
I quickly gave-up on the idea of mounting the camcorder. Even a relatively small one seems to put too much strain on the mounts. It's the old unsprung weight problem I think.
Experimenting revealed that there are a lot more shocks transmitted through the handle-bars than my hands revealed.
Same with the engine bars only this was restricted to a fairly narrow rev-range, it just so happens that the rev-range where the vibes are worse (for the camera picture) are smack in the middle of the everyday usage.
The same applied to bullet-cams in those locations but not as bad, still bad enough to make the video un-watchable in sections. I didn't fancy having to edit out a portion of every capture.
I tried mounting a bullet cam on the side of the instrument binnacle.
This was prone to road shocks.
The best results were with a Dogcam rubber suction mount on the side of the tank.
Two problems with this, one is that I will use tank panniers a lot of the time, so the available place to stick the camera disappears. The second problem is that aligning the camera is a bit hit and miss. The Dogcam suction mounts are only adjustable in one plane; either up and down or side to side depending on where you mount the suction cup.
(It works fine for a helmet cam because you can easily adjust the angle)
After much messing about, I've found a position that works fine for the bike mounted bullet cam (on my bike. That seems to be an issue too. Bikes are going to be different).
I've used a stainless P-clip and mounted the camera on one of the Touratech Micro DE guards. This seems to be damped enough yet rigid enough. It's also fairly secure. It needs an allen key to remove it so it's safe enough to leave attached for short periods.
I got my bullet cams from these people....
http://www.bikecameras.com/products.php
You will need to see if your camcorder is compatible with their products.
The bullet cams do require a separate power source. I use AA rechargeable batteries and recharge them from the bike.
I've turned over the base layer of my tank-bag to the camcorder + stills camera, power pack for the bullet cams and recharger.
From the same people (above) I got a LANC controller to remotely power the camera system on/off and a switch to select which bullet cam is in use.
The bullet cams and the camera selector switch are water-proof. Another advantage over mounting a camcorder externally.
