simsgw

When I was young and full of vigor, but less full of years and dinners, I never had a camera mounted in our sports cars. This was a reasonable choice because they weighed as much as the engine in those days. And cost more. John Frankenheimer amazed us all by managing to mount cameras on formula cars for on-board videos of our favorite, almost legendary, tracks. But unless you were Frankenheimer or Steve McQueen you had only words to show for your adventures, never pictures. I did get a few roadside shots as a courtesy from local press, but since I was a young officer in an allied nation, it would have been indiscreet to give them reason to take my picture for anything but winning. (To say the least. The local police provided crowd control during our races, but if one of us had run off course into the crowd, the fault would have been ours, not theirs. Xhania Prison in the sixties was the stuff of movies in later more easily outraged decades.)

So I've never had an in-car video of any sort, and I'm not likely to have an exciting one now that I've grown all tattered and cautious with age. But nevertheless, I am tempted to celebrate finally having a Porsche by recording a mountain run, or something like that.

I may mount one of those little Epic cameras. Two questions for you all:

1. Where do you mount them? The rear deck above the seats surely would be too far back to get a proper view out the windshield. At 2.5 ounces, the one I'm looking at tonight might even mount on the arm for the rear view mirror. What is the usual solution?

2. Resolutions are my bread and butter, since I spent some time designing displays, but I wonder if it matters whether I get a 640x480 unit or the so-called HD unit, since they surely are subject to a lot of blur-inducing vibration when mounted on a sports car. Any thoughts on this?

Is the Epic a proven choice? Or should I consider others?

Gary

Nugget

The key to avoiding vibration is to use the lightest weight camera you can possibly find. Trying to use a regular camcorder is the path to misery and frustration. I'm not familiar with the Epic cameras, but from googling it looks like a fine choice. The most popular these days are the GoPro cameras or (my favorite) the VholdR ones.

I have permanent mounts on the front and rear of my car, since I use cameras all the time at the track, but if you're looking for a temporary mount just for an afternoon of fun video you really can't beat a suction cup mount like this one. They're strong enough to hang the camera off the side of your rear fender and they'll hold up well into the triple digit speeds. More than adequate for spirited street driving.

I'd suggest a suction cup mount also because it will give you the flexibility to experiment with different mount spots as you feel creative. In a coupe you can mount on the inside of the front windshield for a broad perspective. Down low on the front bumper to exaggerate the sense of speed. Hanging upside down off the rear window (to see what the driver's doing) although you may have contrast issues with some cameras as you drive into and out of the sun. Off the side of the car to watch the suspension travel and front wheels turning. Or pointed down the back to verify once and for all that the rear spoiler deploys when you go fast enough. The options are many.

The extra resolution of HD is definitely noticeable, but it adds quite a bit to the cost. More important than the resolution, though, is that the newest crop of HD cameras can also do 60fps which I think makes a huge difference in the final quality of the video. if you're just planning to upload to vimeo or youtube that benefit is mostly lost, however. Internet sites will drop the extra frames in the interests of size and bandwidth. You'll sure see the difference playing the files locally or burning a BluRay though.

Here's some video I took last Saturday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr6EUyeA2A0

simsgw

Okay, let's get the boring stuff out of the way first. Was that originally shot in 640x480x30fps? Or is that the result of an HD video being dropped down in quality by uTube? Which camera?

Now. On to the important stuff. I assume you were in your GT3 and that was another GT3 making each pass a couple of turns before you. So what was the winged beasty in orange that lay between the two of you for quite a while? I couldn't place it. He wasn't nearly as surefooted as you two, but that's all I could say.

That was an interesting mounting position. Looked about like the eyeline you get in an open-wheel formula car. Was that camera mounted inside the intakes?

A couple of observations. First, I'd forgotten how tough it is to recognize cars from that low angle because our mental image of all makes and models is formed mostly from a standing position with an eyeline above five feet. Or at least from a normal driver's seat with the eye at nearly four feet I suppose. I kept thinking "Oh. That's a Corvette... no, wait, maybe it's a Cayman. Or a Lotus? No, it must be a..."

Second, I do remember my first view of a new P-car from that angle some years ago. Can't remember which one, but I was having a test day at Willow in a Formula Ford I was planning to rent. Those are open days. You pay your fee and bring your own rescue equipment if you plan to need any. You may be side by side (briefly) with an Indy hopeful or trying to get around a street car being tested by Road & Track or a new owner.

A few laps into one of my runs, a Porsche with an elaborate wing pulled out of the pits just as I was midway on the front straight. That was quite enough margin, but naturally (in a formula car) I caught him on the Carousel, a very protracted, nearly perfectly circular curve with a short straight at the exit that leads into an uphill where you drop just below eighty mph at the apex, and then accelerate up the hill, making it awkwardly near the first-gear redline the way that car was set up that day. I was experimenting with leaving it in second through that complex. Trailing an unknown driver in a roadable car I saw no point in pushing, so I followed this guy uphill, over the top in the right-hander where you throttle steer with a FF, down to the off-camber left-hander of five and then over the jump at six where I passed him.

Wow. See how much more work that is? And how unsatisfactory to describe that in words.... Shoulda had a video.[sigh] Where was I?

Oh, yes. I have no idea which Porsche model it was, but I remember being impressed that he could hold the road so well fresh out of the pits with cold tires. You never know when you're being held up how fast you both are going. It always seems slow naturally, but I had the sense he was going to put in a seriously fast time for a road car. My other impression was "Damn, he's fast for something the size of a motorhome."

That sounds like a joke, and it almost was one, but it was an honest impression. When your eyeline is as low as that camera you mounted, any road car looks terribly tall, doesn't it? Moreover, it was an impression that stuck. Twenty years later we bought this 997.2S for me, and it was my subconscious impression that it was much larger than Cindy's NSX we'd just given up. Even after the numbers told me I was wrong, it has taken me a few months here to 'feel' the car as being light and nimble.

Final thought from your video. If I do a DE day, I will have to rein in my thinking: "This is not a race, this is not a race." Even on a test day, you presume the others on track have a competition license and are... well, I don't mean "big boys." That sounds denigrating to DE drivers. I simply mean we all share common expectations. I don't expect to stay ahead of a BMW M3 in an Acura Sedan I'm testing, and very few Porsche drivers with competition experience would expect to stay ahead of a formula car. When I passed that Porsche after getting light at turn six, I just lifted one hand as I went by. I didn't wait for his signal and I'm sure he never bothered to give one. We just pass where two people of similar experience know a pass is reasonable. A DE day is entirely different, and I know it is. It is supposed to be an educational experience. So you know the converse. You know you do not all share the same experience, and I don't suppose they bother putting the novice X on the drivers without a competition license. I know all that, but my instincts just don't realize it yet. So I kept expecting you to pass that guy who was clearly at his limit while your GT3 was essentially loafing along. But of course, he didn't share that view so he never offered a wave-by.

Watching your video, I spent three corners at least thinking, "okay, I'll close on him coming out this corner and when we brake for the next, he will cede the corner to me." Ah well. Very gripping plot in that video. Really caught me up...

Thanks for the entertainment.

machina

I mount mine on my helmet.

Seems to be more interesting to see where I am looking than just a fixed mount.

Nugget

I run a pair of VholdR CountourHD cameras. VholdR make three of them -- an SD cam, an HD cam, and the newer 1080p HD cam. I prefer the VholdR cameras to the also-popular GoPro cameras; The VholdR ones seem to hold up better to abuse and the controls are simpler and easier to operate (you can turn them on and off while still wearing driving gloves, for example). I shoot all my track video at 1200x720 @ 60 frames per second. The cameras will do 1920x1080 @ 30 fps, but I like the higher frame rate more than I like the higher resolution.

YouTube will retain the 720p setting (you should see the option to watch in HD) but they drop the fps down when they re-encode. They also further compress the video, so the quality on YouTube is markedly worse than the quality of the local video. Here's a direct link to a 1 minute clip at the full resolution and frame rate produced by the camera if you want to see the native quality: lawnmower.mov (720p60, 303MB, 1 minute long).

The front cameras is, as you guessed, attached to the inside of my car's front intake. It's a simple place to mount the camera, but there are some downsides -- the low mounting position exaggerates the sense of speed, can obscure traffic, and makes elevation changes seem flatter than they really are.

The orange weird thing in between me and the other GT3 was a Lotus 2-eleven and you're right, he owed me a pass for several laps. Such is the way of HPDE events. Here's a photo of the three cars taken from trackside:



You can see the orange RS has a camera mounted off his windshield on the exterior of the car. Those suction cup mounts sure look awkward and ungainly, but they stick like spiderman even at track speeds.

You're spot on with your observations about some of the more interesting aspects of DE driver consistency. Sometimes it can even compound on itself when the lead driver is slow to accept that the pass should happen they end up driving their mirrors and become less predictable. It makes it riskier for the following driver to close the gap tightly and communicate the desire to pass. As bad as it might be for me sometimes it's way worse for equiraptor in her Miata. She really has to put the fear into a stubborn driver to get a point-by. No Corvette guy ever wants to let a girl in a Miata past them.

Still, everyone's just out there for grins and bragging rights, so you just can't let yourself get wound too tightly over it. Unlike in a race there's always a next lap in DEs.

I enjoyed reading your thoughts and recollections, thanks.

brendo

gary - nugget obviously has a great response here. he's the consummate geek - in the very best way, spoken from geek --> geek.

i used a different solution.

flip video camera - very lightweight, inexpensive and totally portable. it fits in your pocket and is cake to use. HD version available.

http://www.theflip.com/en-us/


similar mount, but i got a hollywood grade unit, because i wanted to be especially careful at DEs. looking at the one posted on amazon, they may very well be the same thing, but mine is metal. i don't know that it's any better.

http://www.filmtools.com/filmtools-i...era-mount.html

here's the first time i used it to tape - at pacific raceways in seattle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxFdt8-fvBI

Bruce R

I concur with what Nugget said.
My $0.02 worth, I use a GoPro in HD but as has been said when uploading to YouTube all that HiDef is lost.
First clip is mounted on the rear windshield in low light conditions;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRFgV_FUGWA
Next is mounted on the rear spoiler;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDZCdX1ufIs

niner niner seven

great videos guys, nothing like true porsche sound!

CBnAT

I also have a flip and a suction mount. Now, if I would just get it out and use it.

Mike1982

Bruce, I like your videos very much. Between all the different cameras I have seen and read about, I think that is the one I am going to go with. When you mounted it on the inside on the rear glass, was it high up, in the middle, down low? Just wondering if it blocked your view much out the back.

Bruce R

I mounted the GoPro right up high on the rear glass offset a few inches to the passenger side and pointed slightly to the drivers side, to capture the steering wheel and view out front. GoPro in it's case is about an inch by two inches and then you have the cup mount attached too, so really the view out back remains great.
PS I used iMovie to edit my movies - makes it real easy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb0pc-7VPu0
Here is another clip mounted inside the cabin, notice that GoPro deals with the contrast inside to outside quite well.

Mike1982

Plus I like it because the vibrations don't seem bad at all mounted right there, plus they fact you have your tach, gear, steering wheel and good view out the front.

Nugget

This is really quite remarkable and is one of the big differences between a cheap camera and a less-cheap camera. The inexpensive cameras tend to do a very poor job at this. You turn into the sun and the outside view just gets completely washed out and becomes useless.

simsgw

I appreciate what you and Bruce and Nugget have been saying. Good information, and I'll talk about what I decided when I can. Had a bit of a medical interval here. Sorry to suddenly disappear like that.

Back soon,

Gary

todd.

Nice video Nugget!!!