Another video clip ridding on the edge of the City

[vhfman]

I managed another short ride on Tuesday morning before the rain arrived. I am really finding the BPM hub to be extremely good with hill climbs. Due to long term health issues I have not been able to ride un-assisted for some time. But the upgrade from the old Bafang 8Fun front hub to the BPM rear hub has given me a great boost, and a new confidence to tackle the steeper climbs without completely exhausting myself.

Anyhow I put together a few minutes of video, the audio needs some improvements, and for some reason the rear camera was not as stable as it appeared to be on Sunday. But there is an interesting encounter with a mountain bike. Can you guess what the outcome will be?

Looks like another late night, as it’s a very long upload time.

Going live...

[video=youtube;91E4nIVglmI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91E4nIVglmI[/video]

Chris

 

[kitchenman]

Nice one Chris. Like the mix of media. Chasing down the MTB is ... well .. to be expected! .. next time try to ambush a fully kitted out balldie
Have you got the camera details? Your shake is interesting as I've never seen rear view shake before! ... I would try to mount it nice and tight on the rack with no padding.

 

[vhfman]

Camera mounts etc

Hi Alan, Thanks for the comments. The cameras are the HD key ring type 1280x720P; I have made up some mounts for them as shown in the pictures. I think that the problem with the rear mounted camera was that I had not tightened the strap holding it to the battery pack hard enough. I will do some more tests soon.

This picture shows a wide angle lens attached. I am going use a similar method and add some plastic in front of the camera with sound proofing as an experiment; especial on the front camera which does get a lot of wind noise as the air blows straight into the small microphone hole.

The major problem I find with these key ring cameras is there light sensing ability. Unlike more expensive cameras the auto light metering finds it difficult to adjust correctly. If the image in the camera has a large area of sky, and there is too much light in the sky, the auto aperture over compensates making the whole image appear too dark. I have had to change the gamma settings in the edit to increase the brightness otherwise the video looked like it was taken at dusk.

Snapshot of video before and after gamma correction

Mounting the front camera on the bike frame has removed some of the shaking there was when I had a camera mounted on the handle bar. The handle bar camera I used before was a much better camera, but heavier and I don’t think it can be mounted on the frame the same way easily.

I tried mounting a camera on a shoulder strap but it did not give successful results. But body mounted cameras seem to give very good results as I have seen with other people’s video clips. So I will have to look at possibly a chest mount, if I can fabricate something that is not too difficult to wear and supports the camera strongly.

Chris

 

[kitchenman]

Thanks for the details Chris. Will be interesting to see the results of your wide angle testing. As you probably know I am using CARDVR torch style cams. Would your wide angle lens fit do you think? Where did you get it?