Rather than spank money on a Go-Pro to record my feeble efforts, it occurred to me that I’ve got a couple of old smart phones knocking about the house now doing nothing, obviously with cameras integrated…

So I was thinking: charged up with a fresh memory card, without a sim and with one of those stick on wide angle lenses fitted I’m wondering if one of them might make a passable Chest / Helmet cam for recording a bit of trail riding…

Obviously I’m not after Full HD / 60fps glory, just a basic, cheap means of recording some riding…

Anyone attempted such a thing?

I tried it breifly. Its definitelty doable, but I’m not much of a bodger. I tried my old Galaxy s2 in a timbuk2 mp3 pouch on a HR strap, worked to a point but I wouldn’t have trusted out on the trail.

I was looking the other day at smartphone tripod adaptors, a 7dayshop chest mount (or gopro one and adapter) and a decent case, but when you add it all up you’re knocking on £60-70 when you can get a chinese cam off ebay for £50, seems a bit pointless. There’s bar mounts cheap enough on ebay, but handle bar footage normally looks crap, decent last resort I suppose.

Cheers prawny,

But I’m thinking far older / cheaper than an S2 (my current phone is an S2 though) I’ve got an old (but quite robust) Nokia that’ll do 640 x 480 @ 30fps apparently, should be just about “adequate” in clearish daylight conditions.

I’d use one of those stick on fisheye/Wide angle/Macro jobbies for ~£6-10 from fleabay to adjust the narrow view angle view angle, “Mounting & weather proofing” would be achieved with gaffa tape, zip ties, and maybe some araldite, most likely positioned somewhere on to my rucksack straps…

The phone can be treated as a pretty much sacrificial item it has minimal value, I’ve got a few options for phones as there’s a bag of mine / my missus phones from the last decade or so sat in a cupboard,

But I’m talking proper “Lo-Fi” here… budget would be £15 max or else these’s little point in the idea…

I tie-strapped my wifes old nokia n73 to the front of my helmet once and the footage was pretty decent,alot better than the original camera i got for Xmas

ProductX iPhone 4 case
http://youtu.be/FJ9D5BPduyU
Yours for £15 posted

Not got an iphone so thanks but no thanks…

You could mash something like this together for about £15, helmet would be trickier with a phone I think

Like I said Gaffa tape, Zip ties and Araldite…

With those three ingredients pretty much anything is possible. Handlear mounts are never much cop, Helmet mounting might be a goer but I think I’ll aim to come up with some sort of chest mounting method first…

I do have an old “Action cam” now I’m wondering if a stick-on wide angle lens could improve that as well, I had stopped bothering with that camera due to it’s a stupidly narrow view you could never get it pointed in a useful direction, it was like watching choppy footage of Ground/Sky/tree flashing past a letterbox, most of the better footage I’ve seen seems to be shot with a nice wide viewing angle so that the frame takes in far more …

I ordered a lens at lunch time, only £7, can’t go far wrong really can you.

Cheers all…

You guys should check out http://www.velocityclip.com They have mounts for both chest cameras and bike handlebar mounts. The best parts is their product is universal for ANY smartphone and can accommodate ANY protective case, and its cheap $39.95 w/ free shipping.
I love mine!
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35gyobJPzdQ[/video]

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