Looking for camera mounting ideas for my mtn bike

[guaps]

I've been trying to get some good video (GoPro camera) of a trail I ride by my house (Penasquitos Canyon in Southern CA). But the video I take always has problems. So i'm looking for tips on how to get better shots while mountain biking. My problems seem to always be either 1-too shaky, or 2-a lot of ground and not much trail ahead of me. I want a forward facing, mostly trail shot.

Here's what I've tried:
Vented Helmet Mount- Not very shaky, but the trail has a lot of trees with low branches, so every time I duck (a lot) the video is mostly of the ground and it looks terrible because I'm constantly ducking. Plus, it's only a matter of time before one of those branches rips the whole rig off my head. (hopefully not my head with it)
Handlbar Mount- very shaky, especially on the river rock sections. Is there a way to stabilize it?
Chesty Mount- On the downhill sections, these videos are about 90% pictures of my bike and the ground, almost nothing of the trail. Anyone ever modded this mount so it points forward/up more?

I saw the thread MtnBkr posted a while back. Some good ideas for mounting on the down tube there and other cool angles.

Thanks!

[Deathcricket]

Good idea for a thread! I would also like to know what setting you guys put your GoPro on. Mine is set to r5 the highest setting but this week I'm going to try r3 for max vert. My problem is the technicall stuff looks to flat. hehe.

[CarpeyBiggs]

r4 is actually the setting for the most vertical real estate. r3 is 720p60, which is 1280x720 at 60fps. r4 is 1280x960 at 30fps. r5 is 1920x1080 at 30fps, but a much more narrow fov than 720 or 960.

i typically only use r3, since i prefer being able to do some slow motion stuff, and the super-wide view is preferable to me.

[CarpeyBiggs]

i don't do much mtn biking, but i will say anytime you wear that thing on your head, you will have pretty crappy footage. but it is convenient. finding alternate ways to mount it is key, but also time consuming.

[greyhair biker]

This video was taken with the mount on the side of the headtube. I just need to pull the cables back and high to get them out of the shot.

[Sombeech]

The helmet mount is actually the least used mount I film from now. I assume you're getting too much bike from the Chesty mount because it's tilted up as far as it can go and it's still not high enough?

Try turning the clip upside down, and the camera will be able to swing up a lot higher, almost straight up in fact. Then just flip the upside down footage when you're editing.

The seat post mount is great, depending on what kind of shorts you're riding with (so they don't flap in front of the lens the whole time). Use it for rear facing footage and a little bit of forward too.

I think I may buy 3 more seat post mounts and have them constantly mounted in certain places:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...SIN=B0014F5WIA

Then if you're riding with friends, just have it on your helmet and film with helmet in hand over obstacles and such.

Oh, and I used to film in r4 960 mode until I accidentally left it on r3 720 mode, and I never looked back. r3 is so crisp and it really does get all of the vertical that I need.

A few examples:

[guaps]

Good idea for a thread! I would also like to know what setting you guys put your GoPro on. Mine is set to r5 the highest setting but this week I'm going to try r3 for max vert. My problem is the technicall stuff looks to flat. hehe.

I read (and have personal experience from skiing) that r3 is the best for "faster" sports. The extra frames per second (60 fps vs other modes with 30fps) gives you a smoother shot for things moving quickly. I tried both and I noticed a difference with some of my vids from skiing this year.

I don't know if it's as much of an advantage mtn biking, and the lower light of mtn biking may have an impact too (on a sunny day skiing, there is plenty of light). I'm assuming you need more light to process 60fps than 30fps. However, I haven't done any tests on my bike yet.

This video was taken with the mount on the side of the headtube. I just need to pull the cables back and high to get them out of the shot.

That's a great angle. It's not as shaky as the handlebar, and you don't get the jerky, side to side feeling because you don't get the constant, minor adjustments that people make to their steering. What mount did you use? My seatpost mount won't fit around my head tube. Custom mount or the roll bar mount or something else?

The helmet mount is actually the least used mount I film from now. I assume you're getting too much bike from the Chesty mount because it's tilted up as far as it can go and it's still not high enough?

Try turning the clip upside down, and the camera will be able to swing up a lot higher, almost straight up in fact. Then just flip the upside down footage when you're editing.

That's a great solution for the chest mount. I'm having exactly the problem you described.

The vid with your family has some great ideas too. It's like the pu pu platter of GoPro mounts and angles.

[greyhair biker]

"That's a great angle. It's not as shaky as the handlebar, and you don't get the jerky, side to side feeling because you don't get the constant, minor adjustments that people make to their steering. What mount did you use? My seatpost mount won't fit around my head tube. Custom mount or the roll bar mount or something else?"

--I mounted a regular(curved) mount and put the 2pc hingy mounty thingy on the side(don't know the official name) - camera actually is setting on it's side. the 2pc thingy will pivot in two places and you can set the side to side as well as the up and down view. Nice!

[MtnBkr]

There is a setting inside the GoPro to capture video upside down. Upd shows in the lcd if I remember right; I've been using that mode for the chesty. Not sure if there is an advantage to setting the GoPro vs turning the video over in editing, however.

[Deathcricket]

Then just flip the upside down footage when you're editing.

I think also there is a setting on the camera that is "UPd" or something like that. So it lets the camera know it is mounted upside down and it flips it for you. Haven't messed with it yet though.

Sorry on my last post post. I meant to say most width not height. I had heard Justin say he used it and his videos always turn out so good. I've been using the helm mount exclusively and besides the depth of field problem, I'm pretty happy with the footage. Takes a bit to get the angle right. But as weird as it sounds, the tiny camera has been giving me a neck ache from keeping it on there so long. So I bought a chest mount for that reason alone. Hopefully now I can stop waking up with a sore neck the next day after a long ride.


Edit: LOL MtnBkr beat me too it by an hour. I opened these threads in tabs and then got distracted by actual work and came back too late :P

[guaps]

--I mounted a regular(curved) mount and put the 2pc hingy mounty thingy on the side(don't know the official name) - camera actually is setting on it's side. the 2pc thingy will pivot in two places and you can set the side to side as well as the up and down view. Nice!

Got it - one 2pc hingy mounty thingy and the curved mount. Seriously though, I know exactly what your talking about with the 2pc hingy thingy - perfect description. The mount though - are you talking about the curved sticky 3M mount?

[greyhair biker]

yeop - curved 3M sticky mounty thingy

[Deathcricket]

Alright so here is my first attempt on R3 mode. I'm actually pretty happy with the depth of field though, compared to R4. Couple of interesting things, you can hear my heart beating since the camera is so close to my chest. especially on uphills sections, lol. I need to remember to crank my dial down so the camera doesn't shift as you can clearly see happens after the first jump. Pretty much the whole downhill section is unusable since all you can see is the handlebars... Oh and I almost popped my tire, that would have really sucked. So here is the fail vid if you want to watch it. It's a good lesson on what not to do.



And for comparison here is R4 (default) setting mounted on a helm. As you can see, depth of field is horrid



And just for fun here is me pedaling my fat ass up a hill with furious heart beat in background. It still doesn't look that steep on playback, at 2:10 you can actually see my bike sliding down the hill backwards due to steepness, but whatevs. :P

[Sombeech]

Alright so here is my first attempt on R3 mode.

What trail is that?

[Deathcricket]

Sidewinder, its between Barrel Roll and Rim Rock

[guaps]

Couple of interesting things, you can hear my heart beating since the camera is so close to my chest. especially on uphills sections, lol.

I noticed the same thing on some ski vids i took this winter. When I got to the bottom of the run, my heart was very clearly audible - especially when I played the video on my home theater system with the nice sub. My wife laughed at how out of shape it made me sound. I blamed it on living at 600ft then going to 6,000ft to ski.

Nice comparison. It's nice to see the two settings side by side like that.

[CarpeyBiggs]

I'm actually pretty happy with the depth of field though, compared to R5.

very cool stuff. thanks for posting the different views. i think you mean "field of view" though, not depth of field. i'm working on a zipline setup right now, i'll post when/if it works well.

[Deathcricket]

OMG CarpeyBiggs "the master" is looking at my amateur crap, I'm soooo embarrassed. It was hard enough knowing beech was looking at my stuff.

Probably not the right technical term yeah. What I mean is the fisheye type lens seems to distort how steep the hill or rock actually is, so everything seems to flatten out quite a bit and it doesn't look that impressive to me. So the main things I am going to try on thurs is one, Be sure the clamp is on damn tight this time. And two, adjust the chest harness so it's higher on my body. It was mounted around my solar plexis area and I'll try for upper chest. Then hopefully my arms won't looks so freakishly long.

It does seem like it's still a little to shaky though, but I'll work on that after I've fixed the other problems I guess. That and me yelling Wooo!! every time both my tires leave the ground. Playback it gets annoying.

[CarpeyBiggs]

after checking 'em out again, i'm pretty sure that is r4 in the second video, not r5. r4 is a 4:3 aspect ratio (almost square). r3 and r5 are 16x9 ratios. unless you changed the aspect in editing... or i misread the post.

[CarpeyBiggs]

hahaha. i love checking out that gopro footage and seeing what mounts and stuff people are using. the options are limited, so while i don't ride a bike very often, it's cool to see what people are coming up with... i wonder if i could rig something up off my chest that would look good for being on rappel, at least seeing the device and ropes and what not. might be a nice quick cutaway.