best vid camera for footage on rides??

lionheart29

ok loving the riding at the mo, so wanna look at some footage of my riding what are the best cameras to buy? price? and placing?

went to gisburn today first time awesome

Pudseyp

The Go Pro Hero 3 is avialable on ebay for £75, the GO Pro Wide around £125 and the HD version is just over 200 notes...expensive but it is true HD quality. Go Pro are probably the best

Anonymous

The GoPro HD seems to produce some pretty damned good footage. True HD is a load of bollorks though - don't get me started on that again
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRr

hoochylala

Thread on this the other week - do a search or go through the last couple of pages. It would appear that Go Pro HD units are the best/most popular.

Garry73

|I would also consider the ContourHD comes in either 720p or full 1080p. I got one of these over the GoPro as it has a flatter profile.

peter413

The GoPro may not be the best camera, it is damn good though, but it definatly has the best mounts.

How many other cameras can you mount on your chest, frame, bars, helmet, shoulder (with a mod), fork, seatstays, basically wherever the hell you want

Anonymous

Garry73 wrote:

|I would also consider the ContourHD comes in either 720p or full 1080p. I got one of these over the GoPro as it has a flatter profile.

Ah, Contour HD, that's the one I was trying to remember. Yes, I've seen footage from one of those, and damn they're pretty good!

I'm still swaying more towards the silly-expensive DogCam sets though :?

peter413

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I'm still swaying more towards the silly-expensive DogCam sets though :?

I've heard the mounts can get really shakey and ruin the image when it gets rough with those

Anonymous

I can make my own mounts though. The image quality is just mind blowing on them.

popstar

Well, if you really want the ... most probably the bestest HD Video, then you must go for Canon EOS 7D full stop. For any other imitation HD camera (compared to canon)* , GoPro HD is better than Contour HD ... especially in changing light conditions +microphone on Contour is utterly useless, the wind noise will make you deaf, and if you thought of hearing suspension, trail noise or the stream running by - just forget about it. The mount option positions is the bestest on GoPro too, the only part GoPro looses towards Contour is the look of actual camera itself, god GoPro looks like donkey on your head...thinking of inspector Gadget?

Anonymous

EOS7D has some incredibly serious flaws when it comes to HD video though.
Amazing for stills, but video on DSLR is still a gimmick right now.

popstar

Yeehaa , you must tell the cure* in your opinion to HD footage, myself after lurking on Vimeo and other forums like ... I am convinced, only £100k pro equipment can equal or sometimes better 7D. But conceeding the goal to myself, I agree these set ups prove a bit unpractical on the bike.
I suspect Yeehaa being fussy as always preffers to see MTB eye candy* but to make really a nice vid you must have a team working for you to do that, and if so, those portable cams wouldn't be used.

OP ... go for GoPro, it's the better one.

Anonymous

what's with all the *s?

The problem with the 7D is that it can only shoot in short bursts of about 10 minutes or so, then it needs to be switched off because it's overheating.
On top of that, the shutter is not designed for video work, so if you pan across quickly, or film something that's moving across the field, you get distortion.

In my genuine opinion, for the £1200 or so the camera body ALONE would cost, you would be better off getting a fairly decent handycam of some sort. Maybe the next generation of video capable DSLRs will sort this, who knows.
(I can't see them taking off professionally either, with no, or very limited support for sync, timecode and so on.)

Actually, as far as high end consumer camcorders go, I'm intrigued to see Sony's new effort, which is meant to be released in the autumn.
It uses an APS-C sized sensor, a CCD design to eliminate rolling shutter issues, and will accept sony E mount lenses, and ALL Minolta/Sony alpha mount SLR lenses via an adapter ring which is already available.
This immediately gives you access to some very nice Zeiss glass for it.

It's basically a DSLR that's been properly re-engineered for video.

But anyway, I wouldn't strap either of those to a bike, or my head. So I would get an prefer an acquisition grade bullet cam.

Anonymous

Oh, and just to clarify, YES, I think video on a DSLR is looking to have a very bright future, and YES, I agree the image quality is breathtaking.
There are just a few niggles that need to be worked out in the future.
I just wouldn't buy a 7D purely for video... yet.

Whether the best way around these problems are a few upgrades to a stills SLR, or to go down Sony's route of building an actual video camera with DSLR technology is something that will be interesting to watch.

Sony definitely have the know-how on making great video cameras, their almost complete dominance of broadcast equipment in Europe demonstrates that.
Or, whether Canon's considerable expertise in SLRs and their novel approach is going to ultimately get better results, we as consumers are seemingly getting a win-win scenario, no matter which system comes out on top.

But I also think this kinda demonstrates a point I made some time ago, that once you see what is truly high "definition" with genuine non interpolated resolutions, it's hard to stomach the nonsense being badged as "HD".

As far as bullet cams though, there will always be a compromise in performance due to their size, and the GoPro HD, and the Contour HD are both reasonable performers.

popstar

Sound advice 8) . Bugger, I ordered EOS 7D for me wife as a present, think it will do fine if I steal it to complement GoPro sometime. Those video-photo toys are so expensive!

Northwind

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I'm still swaying more towards the silly-expensive DogCam sets though :?

Are you going with seperates? I used to have a seperate system with a solid-state recorder that for its time was brilliant, for motorbike use, but it was just impractical for mountain biking. You'd tolerate it if you were a film maker but not if you're a rider making films.

Oh, it should be fairly straightforward to adapt the Gopro mounting system to other cameras but the shape will still be relevant too, a long camera is going to stick out more obviously. Chest mount does bother me a bit in that I really don't want to go over the bars with it on, but even less so with a longer camera!

NDawn

I was thinking about getting something like a Kodak Zi8 or some type of Flip style camera and making a chest strap myself.

Anonymous

Northwind, yeah I'm still after seperates. I figure I can always stick the recording unit in my camelback, shouldn't be a problem.