What's the best helmet cam?

[the booyar]

Any one know of a reasonably good helmet camera to be used for track days?
Any websites or shops would be a great help.
Also if you have a helmet cam whats it like? Sound distort with speed etc??
Cheers!!

[sil3nt]

I think there really are only 2 decent cameras available.
http://www.goprocamera.com/ and
http://www.tachyoninc.com/main.html
Biggles08 can do a pretty good deal on the tachyon and im sure others can vouch for the gopro being pretty damn good!

[mossy1200]

I got the go pro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbsbMpV4wKk

[{.bLanK}G_o_D]

I have an Oregon scientific camera.
Pretty reasonable camera. sound is average under normal circumstances. On the minimotos the mic is hopeless.
Check out the videos in my signature, all the onboard and helmet footage is done with this camera.

[slofox]

If you want an ATC2K, I'll sell mine for $100.

[Headbanger]

I'd be seriously weary of any company using Youtube footage to demonstrate their cameras capabilities. The only footage worth viewing is whatever quality/format the camera spits out by default.

The Oregon Scientific would have to be of unacceptable quality to most people, surely.

[grusomhat]

I'd be seriously weary of any company using Youtube footage to demonstrate their cameras capabilities. The only footage worth viewing is whatever quality/format the camera spits out by default.

The Oregon Scientific would have to be of unacceptable quality to most people, surely.

I beg to differ. If the video looks good on youtube then the original footage is sure to be even better.

I was looking at cameras recently and found two that I would want to buy. Neither are cheap but they offer pretty awesome quality footage.

contourHd
http://www.vorb.org.nz/introducing-t...er-t96396.html

and the POV.1.5
http://www.vio-pov.com/products/pov_...rect_message=T

For my money I would go with the Countour.

[Nibblet]

http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk

They got some awesome gear. Pretty quick delivery too. We run their dual recorder in our race car. The cameras a near indestructable too.

[Headbanger]

I beg to differ. If the video looks good on youtube then the original footage is sure to be even better.

Heh?

Of course the footage is better in its original format, Once it is re-encoded then there is no way of making a worthwhile comparison on the capabilities of the cameras.

Judging a camera on youtube footage is pointless,worthless, and a waste of time.

[imdying]

I'd only shoot with a helmet cam to put action stuff on youtube, so if it can be upped to youtube at an acceptable quality, that's all that matters to me.

Any regular filming I'll use a regular camera.

In other words:
- durability
- price
- battery life
- image quality
- sound quality

In that order, for me.

[Headbanger]

I can see your point, personally, I have about 30 hours of helmet camera footage, about 6 hours of which is worth viewing more then once, and about 20 minutes footage in total loaded onto Youtube.

Most of mine was done with a helmet lens feeding into a DV camera, Since then I have replaced the DV camera with a hardware encoder, But pretty much gave up when I viewed the quality of the resulting footage.

[imdying]

So long as the footage survives when you flip off the bike and fly through the air, that's what truly matters

[Road Guardian]

The Oregon Scientific would have to be of unacceptable quality to most people, surely.

Yip, agree with you there, I find the picture is overall dark, and the camera takes a long time to adjust to changes in light, and when it does, it flicks through the different aperture levels, and is very noticeable. Would not recommend if you where after good looking footage.

[slofox]

I have given up on using the camera. Bike vids are the most boring thing on earth...unless you are falling off a lot....

[cheesemethod]

Heh?

Of course the footage is better in its original format, Once it is re-encoded then there is no way of making a worthwhile comparison on the capabilities of the cameras.

Judging a camera on youtube footage is pointless,worthless, and a waste of time.

Well if you intend to use it for putting videos on Youtube, that actually seems like the best idea to me.

I think what people actually mean here is that every time you compress a piece of video, it looses quality. You compress it again, it looses even more. Now all little cameras like this must compress the image as it is being recorded, else you'd fill a memory card up pretty bloody quick. For example, DV tape video cameras at 720x576 25p take about 13gb an hour, so storing that quality of footage on a tiny little device with a tiny memory card would require some very expensive hardware.

So these little cameras compress the image a fair bit. It's the only way to keep the size down and the power consumption low. Then of course when you put this on youtube, they compress the image again. So if the image looks like crap on youtube, it means that there was a lot of compression in the first place so the output of the camera pre youtube compression won't be impressive. But if it's very watchable on youtube it means that the compression within the camera isn't so lossy so the original product will look much better.