Some of the others could have done with some way of controlling the speed of the camera’s slide down the rope, and some way of panning the camera. Can’t think how those could be done easily though.
One question though – how did you avoid the camera smashing into bits when it went into the trees at the bottom of each slide?
The one I’ve seen the slide speed can be controlled by using a strap tied round the rope which drags on the rope to slow it down – I think he uses a leather strap with some kind of adjustable tensioner on it , so that he can tighten it to get the right speed. It looks really smooth even on very slow technical riding.
For avoiding it smashing he uses foam with a hole in (pipe lagging maybe, or handlebar grips, can’t remember), which the rig bashes into.
Panning the camera would be brilliant, but I can’t see any simple way of doing it – I’d be sticking a servo on and some kind of control hardware – either a radio control receiver, or just a simple microprocessor (arduino or something else cheap and simple to work with) pre-programmed to do the pan that you want. That would be neat actually – if you were bunging a microprocessor on there anyway, you could also rig up a servo to a braking strap, for varied speed throughout the shot.
One thought on panning – if you rigged up a radio controlled pan-tilt & speed control, you could stick on a second wireless camera to the same mount – we have some at work, they’re tiny and dirt cheap (I think they were £30 on ebay or something ridiculous, and size wise, they are much much smaller than the 9v battery that powers them, about 1cm x 1cm x 2cm) – that would allow the operator to have an idea of what they were pointing the camera at.
This guy has built a radio controlled pan-tilt for a go-pro, which looks disgusting, but appears to work and uses pretty standard parts that model airplane places will have (RC receiver, servos) – http://www.rcflighttest.com/home/2010/11/quick-and-simple-pantilt-mount-for-gopro-hero-hd/
Alternatively, with an HD camera and a very wide angle lens, you could probably point it half way between the two shots you want and then fake the pan in software without losing too much quality, which might be easier!
