Morning All,

Just looking for some advice/help on helmet cameras and thought you lot would have some recommendations as my Digital camera/photo knowledge is very low and I know there is a few on here with them.

I am looking for a camera to film a bit of mountain biking and take away on snowboard holidays with me. Also like it if I could use it just as a handheld when walking around etc as going on Honeymoon this year and would like a camera for that.

Do you have any recommendations for ones to look at, not got a huge budge but might look at up to £300, would this get me anything decent? But really the cheaper the better as also got to get a snowboard helmet if I get one too…

Thanks for the help.

Reg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls2-M4La5tw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feALGYW5U5k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl89xi6YQ3o

all filmes on HDmax extreme helmet cam from dogcamsports.

and a review:

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/hdmax-extreme-helmet-camera-test-and-review

EDIT – should add really, after taking it out to film that snowbaording stuff and it coping with many crashes, heavy snow, freezing rain etc etc… i’m still really happy with the camera. its worth noting though that i’ve persuaded a friend to buy a go-pro purely for the chest mount footage as i want to mix in more POV footage into the riding videos and the chestmount gives the best shot for this in my humble opinion 🙂

Go Pro is usually regarded as the best by most.

I got one and am very happy. Whole thing is dead small and light. Chest mount is my favourite mount too. Perfect for mtb and snowboarding, and for the honeymoon I expect 😉

Get the HD if you can, otherwise the basic is still pretty dam good.
see http://www.roughrideguide.co.uk/mtb-gadgets.html

They also do a new display mount that enables you to see what you’re recording too.

talk to dog cam sport
helpful bunch, very knowledgeable. let me try a couple out and return the one i didn’t want…

At the other end of the scale I’ve just bought one of these

http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=777_1&products_id=110352

I don’t know how they do it for the price. It is a solid build and picture quality is fine for messing about. At £20 it is almost disposable and is tiny really. Comes with 8Gb SD card as well and car mount. I’ve not done much filming yet but so far am dead impressed.

Gopro have the best overall package… Not neccesarily the best camera but all the top end cameras are good quality, Gopro has by far the best mounts though. The ease of getting replacement parts is great too, sure £20 for 2 case lenses is steep but it’s nice to have after you ride into a tree.

The older model HD is what I have but knowing what I do now I’d definately buy the cheaper 960 now, it has most of the functionality and it’s way cheaper. Seems a shoe-in really.

I’ve got a Go Pro wide angle and its great, good quality filming, 5mp camera all boxed up in a neat little waterproof housing and more mounts than you can shake a stick at. very good.

Thanks for all the help with this guys, both camera’s look very good, and I have narrowed it down to the Go Pro 960 HD and the HD Max Extreme.

Just a quick question can you take still shots with both cameras? I prefer the look of the HD Max and its size and shape as I am a snowboarder and think riding footage would be best from the head as the Go pro seems to favour the chest mount and with this it all would be a bit sideways!!!

The Gopro takes stills but they’re a bit odd, you still get the fisheye effect and the image though decent resolution tends to be a bit low on detail… Hang on, here’s one:

Not brilliant really. Not awful either, sort of decent-mobile-phonish quality.

Gopro works absolutely fine on the head btw and can be mounted easily in various locations- on top, on the side, etc. It looks slightly odd because of the shape but it’s still pretty compact.

That is not an awful pic, I take it the Go pro can record sound as well??

It can, though you tend not to get very much of use, I think to be fair most cameras are like this.

The chest mount does one very nice thing though, which is pick up heartbeats. Don’t judge this video on its image quality btw, this is from a HD but I totally trashed the quality while messing around with powerdirector, couldn’t get on with the software at all… Skip to 30 seconds or so

Just a quick question for Northwind and Philconsequence, would I be able to wear the cam mounted to just my goggle strap, without a helmet as do not often ride with a helmet on the snow?

Thanks

I doubt that’d work with the Gopro, though it does come with an “unvented helmet” strap that can be used as a head strap. It doesn’t look that good though… Not sure it’s the best option for that really. Though tbh it doesn’t seem to work all that well with anything, from what I gather, I’ve never tried it obviously but apparently the goggle mounts tend to need to be brutally tight or you get a lot of wobble.

I don’t think the gopro helmet cam stills are that bad

Nah, certainly not bad, just not brilliant either. The fisheye effect can be kind of cool though

I’m split on this one. I’ve got a contourhd 720 and its damn good. the only bad thing is the fit of my helmets to my head which is all that causes jiggle on the videos. The fit of the camera to the goggle and vented helmet mounts is nice and tight. Easy to turn on and off, easy to swap batteries and memory cards, nice and flush to your helmet and not sticking out a mile.

But. I’m thinking about getting a go-pro pretty much just for the chest mount. I like the time lapse photo thing. I wouldn’t use it to take proper photos though. I don’t like the way it sticks out a mile on a helmet.

And as such – I’m thinking of selling my contourhd (720p version) with goggle mount, vented helmet mount, flat surface mount, two 2gb microsd cards and some spare batteries, £130.

sample vids (although youtube doesn’t give clearest quality)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cczsApgTDUY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TywNh-iLbkQ

goggle mount works great on the HDmax 🙂

it does take stills but its not something i’ve been inspired to ever use, doesnt have the timelapse thing though which if it did would be awesome so that’s something the go-pro threw into the mix that make it difficult to chose between the two when i was buying!

Resurrected this as I’m thinking about getting a cam. Still torn between the GoPro HD or the new Contour GPS.
Both do 720p @ 60fps and time lapse – which would be my preferred options
The GoPro has a good chest mount which seems to be the best mounting option for MTB although helmet is not too bad.
The Contour mounts to the helmet well (don’t look like a complete @@@@ ) but the only chest option is something like this at HeadCamGuy …. hmmm odd but the only workable Contour chest harness solution.
The Contour is also getting a phone app so you can line up the picture while the camera is in place – this I think is a really good feature. GoPro have released an LCD backpack but that doesn’t help with line up when using the helmet or chest mounts. So for the moment procrastination wins.

Go Pro for me. had both to try and tested in the car at the same time both on full resolution
and the go pro had the better sharper footage .

both clips can be seen on youtube. search for. amticoman

I have a Contour GPS, i’d definitely recommend it. I havent tried any others so cant compare, but the Contour does everything you want, and does it well.

My ContourGPS has just arrived. I had five minutes spare so I tried mounting the handlebar xl mount to my seatpost.
It didn’t go well as my leg kept hitting the camera.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ3Ysy4NS5I&hd=1[/video]

Has anyone else tried mounting the Contour to the seatpost, or that sort of view?