Who uses an on board camera for club racing? Opinions/price

[Forbes82]

Looking at these things they seem to vary wildly in price. It seems the fancy ones have all sorts of GPS tracking/datalogging on them too. I'm just after a decent quality small system that just has a single camera without any of the fancy tracking system and data logging. Just wondering if anyone here uses one and has any recomemdations?

It will be used on a 600hp slicks and wings car so needs to be a decent capture quality at those speeds, what sort of price am i looking at for a unit that does this well?

I don't want to spend horrendous money but on the other hand i also don't want to buy a system and find it useless once on the car.

Cheers.

[andy rob]

whats the car if its got 600hp & wings ???
I went to a Pv500 camera system with bullit camera & thought the quality was really poor on any decent sizes screen & had trouble with flat batterys, now bought a new sony camcorder & think the quallity is really good & have jumped the car/smashed over the kerbs & it doen't flicker
have a look@ the qual here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXURh9KVk2U

[Carnage]

I would suggest either one of the Dogcam packages - start at about £200 - or just a bullet cam into a suitable camcorder. Either will give reasonable quality.

Dogcam - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mHtCic89tU

Dogcam into camcorder - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH8LxIfNOO4 . Slightly worse quality mainly due to the camera being inside and struggling to adapt to the contrast.

[Piglet]

Don't forget for circuit racing you need to get a camera form, you can usually get one at driver's sign on or check with the organiser before hand. You then need to have the car scrutineered with the camera in situ.

[frodo_monkey]

Have a look at the thread in the trackday forum about the eBay spycam - I use one in my race car, cabletied to some ally which is bolted to an exhaust clamp which is fitted to the cage... Search for user 'frodoblade' on Youtube to see what the footage is like, not bad for £20!

[Britcar David]

If you have a look at these:
Production 2010
GT 2010
films the onboard footage was done with GoPro HD Hero Cams which are fantastic quality and about £300.

Previously we used the small cams mentioned above (ebay ones) which are fine for looking on a computer but loose a bit of impact on a large TV Brands Hatch Night 2009http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOuddQP336c

[tristancliffe]

I use a Chasecam PDR with a Dogcam HQ1 bullet camera. Although I actually had problems with the camera that day (it died, but it had done two seasons of work, and the replacement is fully reliable again), it produced this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSg3f7-K1RI

I tried a ContourHD 1080p at the start of 2010, but it isn't man enough, and kept breaking. Particularly the little plastic battery retaining strap. Also the contacts have a tendency to jump off the memory card in high-vibration environments like a single seater.

For 2011 I'm thinking of getting a VIO POV.HD from Dogcam. Really nice bit of kit, but really expensive to boot. Will have to wait until closer to the season to see if I can afford it!

I like the GoPro HD, but it's a big thing to have stuck in the airflow on a single seater, and the lens is too wide-angle for me. If they did 720p60 at about 120° field of view, and made it smaller then I'd buy one today.

[chris_w]

I've tried a couple of cameras on a 'proper' rollcage mount in my car but get too much vibration - anyone else suffered from this and how did they fix it please?

[Forbes82]

Cheers guys, ill check out all the above, as i expected there are numerous options for varying prices.

The car is a lola t332 f5000.

[Forbes82]

The Dogcams look good size, quality and price-wise. The Bullet seems to sound perfect for my application at a very good price, is there any reason why this one would not be suitable? Simple, small and idiot proof is what i'm looking for ideally.

http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk/dogcam-bullet-hd-came...

[Rude-boy]

Seriously unless you want to spend serious money - GoPro.

These have been installed in almost every type of car from RallyX to Mini Coopers and the resulting footage has not been found wanting by Sky/Eurosport/Motors and most importantly (as they have the most stringent pre transmission checks iirc) C4.

The only down side for you is that it is about the size of a fag packet, although that is it.

[RogueMotorsport]

A lot of guys in the MR2 Championship use Sanyo Xacti video cameras. They look like this:



You can pick up a VPC-CG9 for under a hundred pounds (http://www.camerabox.co.uk/product.asp?ProductID=6555) and they record in 720p to an SD card. Battery life is fine for club racing but I picked up an earlier model that had a 5v power in so I could run it off the car. I use a super clamp with stud and tripod head from http://www.fastfilms.co.uk. Here's some footage that I uploaded raw while running my race car without a roof:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZzjeHCKSGg&hd=...

I prefer to use a video camera rather than a bullet camera as you get all the nice image stabilisation, white balance, auto focus etc. Obviously there's a quality drop every time the video gets processed so the original is better quality. This next video is in car footage and has been processed once (edited for length on a PC and the re-rendered) and then processed once again by youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI8hTh5zuYk&hd=...

Here's the same video again, but with a further pass to add titles and a rear view. The rear view camera was another Sanyo Xacti and has been mirrored during editing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO4n_hcI3-Y&hd=...

[Shaun_E]

I have a Caterham which I sprint and hillclimb. I previously used a bullet cam into a camcorder but the camcorder has given up so I have been looking for a replacement. I went to the AutoSport show last week to compare solutions and came home with the £200 DogCam sport MiniDV III with bullet cam.
My choice was made bearing the following stuff in mind.
The GoPro is pretty good but I decided against it for the following reasons:
1. There is no screen on it for set-up so you are not 100% sure where it is pointed although the very wide angle lens mitigates against this
2. It is a very wide angle lens which gives a "fish-eye" effect and also means that cars/track features just in front of you appear to be miles away. I don't like that although other people are OK with it.
3. There is no remote for it so you have to switch it on before you strap yourself in and therefore you get loads of footage of you sitting on the grid/start line (unless you have someone else to start it or it is within reach)
4. Nearly all HD cameras (including GoPro) use a rolling shutter (they effectively record every other line and then fill in the gaps) which means you can get vibration induced "wobblevision". Not every one gets it but it seems to vary from car to car and mounting to mounting.

I have a DL1 datalogger so looked at RaceTechnology's video recorder set-up but it is very expensive (>£1k) and still only 4:3 DVD quality. Would have been a good solution to link video and data but the video is a big box and I already have the DL1 mounted in the car.
I looked at the RaceLogic VideoBox Lite which is an all in one datalogger/video recorder with 2 bullet cams but it doesn't have a remote. Also it is still only 4:3 and DVD quality and is over £1k.
I also looked at RaceKeeper which is the similar although it also has remote but still £1200

Eventually I went back to look at the DogCam sport MiniDVR III plus bullet cam. This is only 4:3 and DVD quality but at £200 I can accept that (same as my old set-up). DVD quality is fine on a TV and very good on a PC screen/YouTube. It matches the video quality of the £1k+ solutions above but for a fraction of the price. As a direct replacement for a bullet cam+camcorder it is ideal and good value. It is also tiny so will be easy to mount with a bit of dual lock. It comes with a remote.
I was tempted to wait for the VIO POV.HD but it is a lot more money. They claim they have a software function that virtually eliminates wobblevision.

[cytefx]

I have been using a mini camera (£20 one from ebay) but it was not held on properly, so upgraded to a toshiba s10 (I think) was about £100 from tescos, now as I am becoming a race technology reseller (hopefully) a DL1 and there video software will be used this comming year so I can post process the images, and this should be widescreen.

[dunc_sx]

I've been using one of the dogcam miniDV's and to be honest if I were to buy again I'd probably choose one of the Go_Pro offerings. I don't like the amount of wires etc you have to sort out (camera, recording unit, microphone, camera battery pack) so it takes up loads of room and I've had some shocking footage from it recently in the wet and also in the sunlight.

Also the microphone provided was extremely poor, to the point I sent it back for them to check it and it came back as OK after testing.

It does record well it shock conditions though, by that I mean bumps etc.

Dunc.

[skeggysteve]

Forbes82 said:

The car is a lola t332 f5000.

YHM
Edit: send me an email as you don't accept them.

This footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpw_OszQ5kA

Is from a sub £20 camera from ebay, well about £8 for the camera and £10 for the memory card.

The raw footage is better quality than the YT clip - we've watched it on a TV and while it's not HD quality it's stil watchable.

Edited by skeggysteve on Thursday 20th January 21:44

[carl_w]

skeggysteve said:

YHM
Edit: send me an email as you don't accept them.

This footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpw_OszQ5kA

Is from a sub £20 camera from ebay, well about £8 for the camera and £10 for the memory card.

The raw footage is better quality than the YT clip - we've watched it on a TV and while it's not HD quality it's stil watchable.

Edited by skeggysteve on Thursday 20th January 21:44

Would love a link to the seller please! I've been using a Panasonic TM10 jammed between the headrest and the seat; whilst it's HD the seat back does move around a fair bit with the vibration and the view is a bit too much dashboard and not enough scenery. Can't really justify another expensive camera, but a £20 eBay job would be great.

[skeggysteve]

carl_w said:

Would love a link to the seller please!

Carl, I can't find a link, sorry.
But if you search/look back on this forum you'll find plenty of links to the cheap cams.

[Al Weyman]

I use a Sony Handycam DCR-SX30E I bought from Argos's ebay blow out site, it cost just £105 was over £200 originally and is a great bit of kit with no vibration problems as its a solid drive not like my Sony DVD camera that will not work because of the vibration. It also comes with nice uploading software. Here is an example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnATNfY6zpI

The beauty of one of these against one of those little peep hole cameras apart from the obvious picture quality and wide screen HD format is you can also use it as a standard quality video camcorder and still camera.

Edited by Al Weyman on Thursday 20th January 23:14