Wednesday 23 November 2011

Using a Drift camera on a Quad bike




I was worried about the bulbous lens on the Drift when I put it on a Quad bike for some action video as they raced through the woods at the Lockwell Adventure Centre in the UK's Sherwood Forest area in Nottinghamshire.
We had a GoPro up front, Flymounted on to the bumper bar and the Drift watched the following drivers, and the weather had been very wet so we knew the mud would be a problem.
Amazingly, and you can see from the shots here, the camera was covered in mud and gunge but the lens stayed clear and we got some great footage.
With a careful hosing down the drift came up looking nothing like new and it still has an ex-army feel to it! Great, I don't like cameras which shout 'precious'. Two things help this camera - it's got a screen so you can accurately frame (as long as the sun's not shining into it) and second you can swivel the lens to accommodate crazy mounting angles. Video can look great if you use odd angles but not all the time - you need a level setting because that's how we see.
Anyway, for all the crap we've thrown at it, the Drift continues to give us what we want - clean high quality video and stills.

Friday 4 November 2011

Mountain bike and GoPro 90º








We haven't been mountain biking recently but one or two people have asked about shooting with the GoPro Hero, wondering if we could make a 90º adaptor so it can fit on upright tubes.
There's no need - GoPros come with a set of useful adjustable brackets and - using the Flymount GoPro adaptor and half of a GoPro bracket we can easily get a lot of useful adjustment.

Take the double jointed mount from the grab bag and take half off. It's modular so instead of 3 pieces it comes down to 2.
With the shorter mounting distance the camera is held tighter to the Flymount and the bike - wherever you decide to mount it.
That reduces the shake considerably and gives a very nice range of movement.
Neat too!

We are trialling a new GoPro adaptor specifically for high vibration environments where the camera needs to be at 90º to the Flymount. It's being machined out of stainless and is a really neat and compact piece of kit.