Bike Video Camera Going Serious Now ...

Mornings are still my favorite time, riding in to work, quiet, fairly peaceful and serene. Here's Portland on Thursday morning and, as I would later discover, with the sun serendipitously reflecting off "Big Pink" onto the Willamette River. The downside? Actually having to go inside a hermetically sealed, atmospherically isolated office building (read: no opening windows for fresh air ventilation). <bleh>

My experimentation with mounting my point-and-shoot camera on the bike's fork has been interesting. They are so handy for typical point-and-shoot (duh) picture-taking but only if you are holding them in your hands. When I shoot while riding, and holding the camera, I can feel the auto-focus point, pause for just a bit, then take the picture. I found I can't as easily tell when I am at the auto focus point which means the camera is not well focused to take my 4-shot set.

Case in point, the above is one of 4, all of them not quite in a level of happy focus. Taking video with that camera was  bit better, though because of its mass, it tends to create a bit shaky videos. Here's a sample I threw together as a test of mounting my camera.

Fork Mount Test at Vimeo

It's not all bad, I did get a few good shots in there - reminds me of my 35mm film days, take a lot to get a few good images.



Here the camera is mounted on the right side fork. Same as when I hand-held my moving wheel shots.

Here is a shot from a different day, but with the camera mounted on the left hand fork. I like these better since here we ride on the right, this just lets the wheel be the framing device rather than parked cars and curbs.

All this while and for some time now, I have been researching the various portable video cameras, also called POVs (point of view) and helmet cams. The one I really liked was also the most expensive - bummer. Well somehow I came across a discount gear site and found one at 40-some percent off - too good to be true? Turns out it was an open box unit and was missing a couple of cables, but those are cheap, so I done bought it. What is it? A V.I.O. POV HD.

I test rode it mounted to the bike on Friday. Will do some helmet mount tests. The one thing I find with a bike mounted camera is I can only shoot in the direction the bike is going. Will see how I like a helmet mount which would give me move shooting directions. I'll do up a test set - ha, when I get some time.

It's been fun to have a creative project, it's been quite a while since I had photography goals beyond taking pictures of my son. Okay, I have been taking commuting pictures, but this latest activity has me pushing beyond the "stop the bike, look at scene, take the picture, get back on the bike" scenario.

Well, that's the highlights, hope you all are out enjoying some great riding and other adventures!