on the viewpoint at Holmbury Hill of a Sunday afternoon it now seems more people are using helmetcams than not. When did this happen and why? And more importantly, why did my helmetcam accidentally work when I was in the bushes but then mysteriously corrupt during my trip to Chamonix last week? aghhh

perhaps you should ask yourself the question if you have one on your helmet 😉

Never understood why anyone would want to watch their own helmet cam video…

it's fun, why not?

I have a cam, I'd quite like to watch my line afterwards and see how I can improve, also good for filming people in front. Although saying that, I haven't got any decent footage yet (not had it long) and can't fathom out how to mount it properly…

It's all good.
The problem with helmet cams is they make the terrain look way tamer than it is. I think it's better to get the camera lower… A bit like this:
Fork eye view of the sprint Avalanche course.

off-road ok,

but those commuters that vid their commute and post them up showing all the bad car driving blah blah blah and how perfect their cycling is are something else..

and also wish people would mount them so the is something static in the shot.. so if on fork leg lower, get a bit of fork and front wheel is in shot, if on helmet bit of helmet is in shot – makes the vids much easier to what with a static reference in part of the picture frame.

I can't watch H-cam videos, unless there's a point of reference (as Rootes1 suggests) it makes me feel seasick

I tried helmet cams but they view isn't the most interesting and doesn't usually give a great impression of speed. I've moved onto using a chest mounted camera now, which I think is a lot better.

I've got other mounting kits so might give fork mount a try at some point.

The brother in law carrys his camera to catch all our off's. As we are rubbish this a common and quite often funny occurance.

epicsteve's video looks quite good actually, it does make it look a lot faster like that.

I love them especially the quality of video from the Go Pro units, I'd get one in a flash (if I had a spare £300) – so I could show my mum what daft-ness I get up to @ age 38 (mentally 12.5) and to enthuse ppl into MTB-ing.

I'm using one of the Go-Pro's but it's the cheaper, non HD one. I've got one of the Oregon ones as well, but the Go-Pro is way, way better. Not only is the quality much improved but the very wide angle gives a more useful view.

Someone mentioned not liking commuting videos – how about my one: video from my commute

I've only got a cheap Action camera.

I agree helmet views can look pretty dull – no sense of speed and flattens all the obstacles but cheaper cameras like mine suffer from really bad vibration if the are mounted anywhere else

This is about the best I ever managed with my Oregon. I never did get any particularily good results from it as a helmet cam.

Loads of surfers sticking them on their boards too – mostly poor standard longboarders wanting to show their mates how crraaaaaazy they are.

I don't get it myself. Unless you're very good indeed and can justify making a vid, why video yourself?

Someone mentioned not liking commuting videos – how about my one: video from my commute

It's a nice commute – but imvho the chest mounting shows too much crossbar/downward and not enough handlebar/forward so you can't see the terrain/path. Sorry.

Why not, The average STW'er is proabbaly riding arround on £1000+ of bike, if £27.50 of helmetcam makes them even happier why not?

Mountainbiking is fundamentaly pointless, so why does videoing yourself have to have a point?

It's a nice commute – but imvho the chest mounting shows too much crossbar/downward and not enough handlebar/forward so you can't see the terrain/path. Sorry.

I agree with that, although I like the perspective on principal, more interesting than helmet mounted.

Rear facing can be good too, a friend had one on his seatpost, so it was looking at the guy behind, means you get a better view of them and it looks a lot faster.

It wouldn't detract from my enjoyment if every other cyclist on the planet was using them, so I don't care, just not something I'm that fussed about! I'd be quite interested to see what my riding looks like, but not sufficiently interested to buy one!

the chest mounting shows too much crossbar/downward and not enough handlebar/forward so you can't see the terrain/path

That's because people point the camera down too much.
If your point it upwards more you can see plenty of the trail/person in front.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Lb2aEeBSs

99% of footage is dull as dishwater. Having said that, Singlespeedstu got some good stuff from Verbier recently.

its as sad and pointless as people watching live music and videoing it on their phone.
people seem to think that life is better if it is captured in a digital image that you can forgot you ever had, a bit like a memory.

im beginning to think the aborigines (sp?) had the right idea about losing your soul……….

epicsteve, thats pretty decent footage. Where and how did you mount the camera.

I used a lock-block to mount the Oregon on my handlebars when descending Pennels Vennel at GT and the results were shocking the vibration meant the picture was all over the place

Almost none of this is worth recording unless your dementia is getting worse and you struggle to remember that you ride a mountain bike by the middle of the week.

If it's a useful tool for making something which might sensibly be called "art" or even "entertainment" then fine. But it's one camera angle, and to make any fim of riding interesting requires several angles and (I suspect) a lot of takes.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't ride around filming yourself stuttering through a wood in France if that's what you want to do. But I'm not going to sit through more than about 20seconds of it. 🙂

Because once in a blue moon you'll capture yourself doing something stupid (like this) 😳
http://vimeo.com/3744060

Dibbs – 😆

Can't quite work out what made you crash though?!

SOOBalias – Member
its as sad and pointless as people watching live music and videoing it on their phone

+1
It's technology gone mad i tell ye.

Last concert I was at, half the folks were watching it through their 2.5" phone screens.

Dibbs, thats quality.

Dibbs – made me lol (schadenfreude). Hope it wasn't too thorny!

I find most helmet cam stuff boring to watch. Each to their own.

A mate did mount one off a stick from his helmet so the static point was his head whilst the bike and trail whizzed by. Was more entertaining but I think the main reason I remember it is his crash into a tree at the end and the subsequent footage of him staggering about, probably mildly concussed and given the camera set up looked v.weird indeed.

Good job he laughs about it too.

Chest cam definitely seems to be the best view – helmet cams don't really give much impression of riding the bike.

The other problem is that the quality/frame rate/sensitivity is too poor on most of the cameras people are using. If the trail is a blocky pixelated mess you don't get any real idea of what the trail was like. Likewise the commuting videos – if these people are trying to record bad driving it would help if you could actually read any of the number plates (which you can't on any of the vid's I've seen).

I like watching the high quality chestcam stuff, particularly when the background scenery is nice.

It's an easy way of documenting trails. Can't imagine anyone would be interested in my riding though.

its as sad and pointless as people watching live music and videoing it on their phone.

Or talking about bikes on an internet forum?

Some bloke walking up Ben Nevis t'other week had a helmet cam on. Hope his family/friends survived that viewing

It's a nice commute – but imvho the chest mounting shows too much crossbar/downward and not enough handlebar/forward so you can't see the terrain/path. Sorry.

It was the first time I'd used the chest mount and I hadn't angled it up far enough.

epicsteve, thats pretty decent footage. Where and how did you mount the camera.

The Oregon was mounted to the seat-tube just above the front mech. It got in the way of pedalling slightly, so I only had it in place on the downhill bits. It used one of the mounts held in place with cable ties.

the best helmet cam footage is of a very fast rider, following an equally fast rider.

99.9% of helmet cams vids don't even come close…

O don;t see a big issue if people want to replay their rides in the comfort of their own homes, what does get me is the amount of sh*te footage people post on You Tube etc.

Looking for footage of my locals trails pulls up an seemingly endless array of edited footage with titles, music and so on but with some of the most unispiring doddery riding you'll see. I agree that helment cam footage does flatten trails and lose some of the scale of a trail but really, some of the riding is just toss.

It all seems to go hand in hand with the 6" all mountain, trail centre riding, body armour wearing cock-fest that is the public face of Mountain Biking (TM) we see today.

the 6" all mountain, trail centre riding, body armour wearing cock-fest that is the public face of Mountain Biking (TM) we see today

😀

A very long time ago, there was this chap on alt.mountainbike who was a real character. He had been left a shitload of money and land by his father and so lived out in this massive woodland estate in Kentucky or somewhere. I think his father actually ran a papermill or something and all the land was for growing trees on.

Anyway, he *really* wanted to have a helmetcam but all he had was a normal handheld video camera so he built this huge chest mounted rig out of an old chair or something and strapped it on. It was easily as big as his torso, was made out of teak or mahogany and had this whopping great video camera whirring away in the middle of it all.

Off he set and predictably fell off on his first ride. At was at this stage that riding along with 15 pounds of timber strapped to his midrift turned out to be a very poor idea. He fell onto his chest (this was all neatly videotaped for us all to watch) and some of the wood splintered and stabbed him while other bits didn't and snapped his ribs in half.

It has to be one of the funniest videos I've ever seen in my life not least because he posted the entire video including strapping the thing on, riding along very slowly, falling off, lying on the floor for about ten minutes groaning in agony and then slowly limping home with blood and vomit spread across the lens.