Camera advice

[brickkicker]

I am looking to mount a camera in a closed car, I dont have a normal hand held video camera so im looking for a system and not just a mounting. Does anyone have these bullet cameras and what sort of results do you get from them. Also were can you get them from and what sort of prices are they.
Cheers
Brickkicker

[Tim Falce]

I use a bullet cam connected to my camcorder which I mount in the passenger side of the car. Results are good but the whole system is cumbersome and a pain to use.
There are some pretty good solid state systems about although they can work out expensive.
We have used a very small camera that does stills or video and gives excellent results for the price and it uses an SD card to record images.

[The STIG]

Answer - about £200 for a single camera solid state system. Available from : http://dogcamsport.co.uk/mini-dvr1-m...ra-package.htm

I have a 420 line bullet camera which is used with a cam-corder, and it's pretty good... but not the best. check out the bottom two videos on this page for an ideaThe more lines you get the better the picture becomes. The £200 kit from Dogcam is very good value for money and with it being solid state, will give a good picture quality no matter how rough the ride gets.

I would suggest ignoring the "all in one" kits like the ones from Oregon Scientfic. The quality of picture can be quite limited, and they're fairly bulky. I prefer the ease of rigging a small bullet camera anywhere on a car for those interesting angles.

Oh and another reason to do buy from Dogcam? The guys who run it are both extremely friendly and will answer any questions you have. look on their site or PM me for their e-mail address.

Hope that helps you!

[tristancliffe]

I can heartily recommend Dogcam too. Mark, one of the guys who runs it, is very friendly, very fair and will do his best to give you a good price on most things if he can (i.e. he'll try and price match if margins allow). However, even if you pay a bit more, you'll more than make up for it with the service he provides.

I'd recommend a Chasecam PDR100 with a 550 line HQ1 bullet camera. Not the cheapest combination, but it gives very good results overall. Hard drive recorders are okay in softer cars, but the jarring of a race car is generally too much. You can mix and match a system that matches your needs and prices.

And no, I don't work for him, and am in no way affiliated with him/them other than being a very satisfied customer.

[Al Weyman]

I tell you don't laugh but one of the lads in Pre-93's films with his mobile phone and for posting on YouTube gets pretty good results as well, he made up a bit of a heath robinson mount and just switches on when he goes to race. One thing I can definitely advise against because it wont work ( I know to my cost) dont use a DVD Camcorder as it will shut down the moment you open up the throttle (vibration). I use a secondhand DV machine now and don't get bad results and the whole lot was pretty cheap. I use a camera mount that bolts to the roll cage which cost me more than the camera! (about 50 quid in all)

[bdwoody]

i use a dv palmcorder and have had no problems so far apart from not knowing how to put the film on my pc and having lots of mini dv cassettes hanging around.

[Al Weyman]

That the easy bit, use a windows program which should already be on your machine Windows Movie Maker. From there you can download onto the PC, edit and then save to a format you can post on You tube if you want to.

[PTRACER]

As above, and in case it's not obvious, you should have been provided a USB or Firewire cable that you can use to connect the camcorder to your PC. If not, take the camera down to your local computer shop (go for the small guy rather than PC World, we need support during these tough times ) and they'll give you the cable you need.

Originally Posted by bdwoody

i use a dv palmcorder and have had no problems so far apart from not knowing how to put the film on my pc and having lots of mini dv cassettes hanging around.

[GORDON STREETER]

http://tentenths.com/forum/showthrea...ght=CAMCORDERS
We went all througt this so have a look !

[adamwilkinson]

I run one of these http://www.qv500.com/onboard/ with the DVR solid state recorder. The system runs off the car battery whilst the DVR has its own battery. Results are pretty good apart from when the sun is low. look on youtube for SRGTC from Oct '08 to see the results.

[andrewc]

The chasecam system works well. Copes with the vibrations from a F3 car.

DVD and hard drive systems suffer terribly from vibrations - works perfectly when stationary and at low speeds but scrambles when you speed up!

[Al Weyman]

Interesting you say hard drive systems suffer as well, so another one to avoid, logical really I guess. Solid state has to be the way to go and there are some cheap ones of those coming on the market.

[Chris Y]

These guys do some good, cheap, bullet cameras: http://www.rfconcepts.co.uk/cameras.htm

[Al Weyman]

They look good, I will have a look later.

What my original plan was and I may do it this year after looking at some of my YouTube stuff (ChevyBigAl) it occurs to me that a lot of the action is usually behind you, look at the one at Croft on my page for example you would think I was going around on my own but all the race I was continually harrassed by several cars even bumped on one occassion and nearly spun out so my plan was, two bullet cams one forward one back with a switch on the gear knob (kid every one its for Nitros) and select the cam where the action is happening. All the gear for this is available and I can feed the bullet cams into my CamCorder.

Word of advice here if planning similar, you need to get a camera that can take AV in and out and due to some silly common market thing there are not so many of those about or if there is there is extra tax as they are concidered a video recorder or some shote, go figure.

Another thing I have a 2nd hand JVC GD series, now its a great low light camera but its not without problems from the factory. The first one was the Lens Cap on error which was subject to a factory recall so I got this fixed for free. Now I have a Condensation please wait error which apparently is also a regular JVC and Panasonic problem and dispite leaving it on a rad and hairdrying it, it will not operate. I have found a thing on the net to bypass the sensor which I will try but if it does not work then its a big shame as its a nice unit and it has the AV in and out sockets.

[andrewc]

We tried out a cheaper hard drive system that was advertised on motorsport camera system websites and even with careful mounting on several layers of different rubbers and foam in an attempt to try and damp out as much vibration as possible, it just didn't work on this F3 car. These cars have the engines rigidly mounted without any rubber mounts so its probably a harsher environment than a saloon.

I would either use DV tape on a camcorder which has an AV in socket for a bullet camera, or a solid state system. These either work on MPEG 2 or MPEG 4 compression, the former is a higher quality and is approaching DVD quality. MPEG4 compresses images more so you can end up with a slight fuzziness about the picture.

[PTRACER]

If I ever got round to it, I would definitely go solid state drive. A DV cam will still not like the vibrations very much through its mechanical parts.

[Al Weyman]

Funny on one of my cars when I hit about 6k it starts going fuzzy briefly, on the other car its OK although that car has a much superior welded in cage.

[JamesH]

Originally Posted by PTRACER

As above, and in case it's not obvious, you should have been provided a USB or Firewire cable that you can use to connect the camcorder to your PC. If not, take the camera down to your local computer shop (go for the small guy rather than PC World, we need support during these tough times ) and they'll give you the cable you need.

Go for the small guy, because generally the staff in PC World wouldn't know one end of a USB cable from the other.

And just to comment on the camera phone thing - in about 18 months time you will be able to have a 720p HD video done from your camera phone for a pretty low price.....don't knock these camera phones- the current generation are a bit dire, but next generation plus one will be almost DSLR quality.

[Finn]

I got a gopro motorsports hero camera for chirstmas. I've not had chance to use it properly yet so can't comment on on race quality although there seems to be quite a few decent videos on youtube etc

http://www.goprocamera.com/

www.dogcamsport.co.uk/go-pro-hero-helmet-cameras.html[/url]

[graeme]

I used to use a minDV camcorder with an RF bullet cam, with worked well, but was a utter faff - make sure camcorcer battery is charged, put batteries in for bullet cam, fit camcorder into boot, switch everything on - if it rained heavily, the whole lot would often cut out.

In the last year, I've gone for an Oregon ATC-2000 - £60 new off eBay. Quality is "okay" but its so simple to use - pop a couple of batteries in occassionally and strap it to the rollcage.

[Al Weyman]

Got any YouTube from the Oregon, I have seen them advertised.

[graeme]

Originally Posted by Al Weyman

Got any YouTube from the Oregon, I have seen them advertised.

I have - but YouTube is blocked at work... I think this might link to it (should been from a green/yelloe Caterham with a black headlamp in shot) - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qae4dGo0bJQ (it does lose quality uploading it to YouTube).

[PTRACER]

Originally Posted by graeme

I have - but YouTube is blocked at work... I think this might link to it (should been from a green/yelloe Caterham with a black headlamp in shot) - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qae4dGo0bJQ (it does lose quality uploading it to YouTube).

The video quality isn't bad at all, although there's no sound and it seems to run at only 15-20 frames per second...

[graeme]

My old ATC-100 had sound, then the ATC-200 (which is much better) didn't when I watched it on my PC (but was fine directly linked to a TV). But it does have sound now! - must have been an update to my RealPlayer software... I guess if I re-uploaded it to YouTube, it'd have sound now. If anyone wants, I can burn a CD or DVD of footage and send it out.

[Al Weyman]

Agree about the frames per second it seems a tad stilted but still very watchable. Here is another tip you may be interested in talking of burning on to dvd. I just bought an LG hard drive DVD home video unit £195 from Richer SOunds and I am totally blown away by it. Not only can it play any known CD and DVD format and has a built in 160 hour hard drive but it also has a facility to plug your camcorder directly in and either save to Hard Drive or DVD and its so very easy to use all being activated by on screen menus, gets the Big Al seal of approval if you are looking for kit to archive your DV tapes and no PC knowledge or infact no PC required and this thing is quick especially if you want to bang out a few for mates, just save to Hard Drive then high speed dub to DVD!