Bike Cam Tests
Have you ever biked down the street during the autumn months, feeling immersed in the beautiful colours of the overarching trees. You look up and your eyes bathe in the warm pallet of the passing leafs, which contrast the cool blue sky. If you have, you will understand why I wanted to capture this feeling on camera.
But as I have discussed in previous posts, experiencing nature in real life is very different than filming it and translating that feeling to the viewer.
I needed a bike cam, an improv one, that I can put on my higher quality beater bike and roll through the streets capturing the serenity of the passing trees in the city landscape.
I went down to my local video rental store ProVision, who have always been great and very responsive to my impulsive experimental urges. I was just looking for advice on the gear I might need.
But, Steven one of the owners of ProVision, was intrigued by the idea of finding the best way to mount the camera on my bike. So he offered to help me during the weekend, do some practical tests with me, and take pictures for future reference.
Sorry folks Geek Out Alert
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. We spent more then 3 hrs. rigging the camera on different spots of the bike and testing to see how much shake we got.
The camera mounted on the back of the bike. This option made it hard for me to sit. Not so ideal, because it takes away from your comfort and stability and stresses you out about trashing your expensive camera.
Mounting the camera on the back rack. The rack is not very stable and the footage was quite shaky.
This one, probably worked the best. Though the contraption got in the way of the handle bars a bit, and steering was tricky. The shake was minimal and the image was pretty good.
This was another version that worked well. It had an arm to support the camara. I ended up using this rig and pushing the bike instead of riding it for some of the shots. It gave me almost a dolly cart stability.