If you duct tape a camera to the front of a skateboard, and have a hotshot (Hey, Chad) make a run through a serpentine, it’ll be a cool video, yeah?
Sounded perfectly reasonable to me.
Anyhow, the camera bobbles around and points down more than you’d like, and what you get is what your shoe sees while you skate.
That’s the trouble with a lot of skate videos. They don’t communicate the absolute FUN of what you’re doing. Most of them show you action shots of guys doing aerial moves that are amazing and all, but they don’t give you the feeling of BEING there. Neither does putting the camera on the front of the board, but it’s fun to try!
My father got a helmet cam for when he’s bike riding last year. Either he still hasn’t gotten around to trying it out, or he can’t figure how to transfer the video to his PC. The things are relatively cheap – Chad could try skating with one of those…
Chad may have one. We were videoing (there’s a weird sounding word) with my iPhone, a sort of holder thingy I ordered from Frameographer, and a gorilla tripod I ‘borrowed’ from my wife. The ‘pod didn’t hold the phone by itself, so we anchored the whole thing with duct tape.
I really should buy a goPro, shouldn’t I?
I was going to make a joke about being able to afford one on your salary, then I went to their website to make sure I knew what I was talking about first. The sample videos look pro-level, and the Hero3 looked pretty upscale, so I backed off the joke and started wondering if you were that commented to boarding to justify a serious chunk of change on an action camera like that. Then I looked at the prices, and for the quality of the pictures, $200 to $400 isn’t that bad a price. I was also thinking that instead of a board-mount that something at knee height would work better for your above video, then I saw that they have a chest harness for $40 that would be just as interesting and with less jitter of the camera. For the kinds of outdoor activities you do, a goPro might not only be a bargain, but also writable as a business expense.
Bah. “Commented” -> “committed”.
You could probably do better with some shock absorbers for the camera and some anti-shake software for the video.
I have seen a couple of bicycle commuters in my area with helmet cams. I have been looking for their videos on Youtube and wonder how it would be to see good and bad riding experiences. Maybe like those Russian Mafia videos you see from the dash cams? I can count on at least one scary ride every month or so for myself, would anyone out there want to watch something like that?