Helmet cameras at night time

wyadvd

jamie I have to say even during the day i can read very few of the number plates although you might say the quality is pretty good for a camera that cost 2.99 plus a tenner delivery.

Jamey

Yeah, the price is very good, but I'm buying this because I want a decent recording for evidence purposes should anything bad happen, so i want something that would actually stand up pretty well in court, if it came to it.

I've downloaded sample vids from ContourHDs and they're all pretty impressive when it comes to details, clarity and smoothness, even at night time.

Thanks though, i appreciate you posting it.

wyadvd

Well yes , I have the same reasons for recording my commute. If you cant easily get number plates (and by my reckonning you need pretty good quality to do that in terms of resolution and frame rate , and lack of colour bleed), then theres little point in recording anything, unless you want to put "smile you are on you tube" on your arse in scotchlite

check out this review particularly the last section if you are thinking of the contour:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLK1sOuD9Gc

Jamey

Cheers, I've spent the last few days reading everything online about the ContourHD, plus downloading umpteen raw (straight-from-the-camera) files to play with both at home and at work on my edit suites. I reckon it's the one for me.

Being able to shoot HD at 60 frames per second (even at night) is excellent both at full speed and for slow-mo'ing the footage afterwards, like this...

(Slo-mo example on Youtube):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7_nH5ORBQQ

When a camera is helmet-mounted you get lots of little shaky / jerky movements and a high frame rate is quite important to keep everything looking fluid IMO.

gaz545

Jamey wrote:

I'm going to bite the bullet and get a ContourHD 1080p then use it in 720p60 as the extra frame rate is more important with a helmet cam IMO.

You won't regreat that, i've used mine a few times in 60fps mode (not hd for me) and it's great!

Jamey

Cheers Gaz, your video stream was a good source of night-time footage for my research.

99% of people posting ContourHD vids on YouTube have daytime stuff so I appreciate you having low light videos up there.

Scoured around looking for raw vids for a while before I found this page - http://www.tomguilmette.com/wp/my-blog/archives/2500 - where he has some straight-from-the-device files to download at the bottom.

had a few issues getting the HD stuff to play smoothly on my PC but installing the CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) sorted it out and now they run pretty smooth, certainly well enough for me to review them.

Editing I can do at work as video editing is part of my job.

Jamey

ContourHD 1080p ordered... Got it for £280 which isn't too shabby. Now to order a vented helmet mount.

Edit: D'oh, same place had helmet mount for a good price so I called them up and added it onto the order. Dunno why I didn't check that in the first place.

wyadvd

where did you get it incidentally?

Jamey

Fawkes Cycles

wyadvd

from your research, jamie, do you feel the old contour hd( around a hundred quid cheaper) is up to the job (considering you are planning to go 720 for the higher framerate)

Jamey

Gaz545 is best placed to answer that as he uses one but I'd say definitely, yes.

They both perform equally well, the only real difference is maximum resolution and frame rate but everything else is the same.

gaz545

Mine isn't even the 'old' contourHD. it was released at the same time as the 1080p version.
imo the 720p at 60fps is going to be awesome and you will get so much detail..

wyadvd

jamey......

Google cobra optics for compact ir torches

Jamey

Did you mean to post this in the other thread?

Just had a look but there was a reply to my post on the ContourHD forums from somebody else that was interesting... They said they they tried using an infrared lamp with their ContourHD in pitch darkness to see what the result was and it was still black... So maybe the ContourHD isn't actually picking up infrared light after all, but it just doesn't like LED light either for some reason.

Weird.

gaz545

Hmmm let me do a test tonight, i think it may just be the conditions in which your riding in and the angle at which the light vs camera means that not much of the light is reflected back into the lens...

Jamey

Cheers Gaz, that'd be appreciated... Are you able to do a comparison between LED and traditional-bulb torches / lights, at all? It need only be a small video shot outside your front door or something. Nothing fancy.

Maybe try each light in turn, first off-axis (similar to having on handlebars while camera is on helmet) and then a second one where it's touching the camera so it's as close to being on-axis as possible.

Not that I'm trying to monopolise your Friday night with exciting light-testing videos, or anything

wyadvd

oh yeah wrong thread! oops

gaz545

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0HzFCrWd7U
An old video of my lights, but shows what i thought. When it's shining on an object roughly 3m away it shows up pretty well. although the centre spot is bright and blinds out any detail. Both the hope and the cateye actually shine more light in a bigger radius, but this does show how badly it picks up the light. i'll try and fit some more time in and do a better test with my muvi as well.

I don't have any filament based torches to hand but it would be interesting to see a test of it. The only problem i see is filament based lights are generally not as powerful, but you also won't get the bright centre spot which blinds out the detail that you get with LED based ones.

Jamey

Just to round this thread off, I now have my ContourHD.

Used it this morning for the first time, filmed a van cutting in, emailed the company and got a respose/result... All on day one.

Vid & email response here:
http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtop ... 8#16035918

Woohoo.