I know this may seem like an odd spot to post questions about digital video camcorders but, since a camera in a road race car gets a bit of abuse I was wondering if any of you had any recommendations. What do you run? Do have you tried that didnt get along well with the abuse? Battery life, yada yada yada. I need a camera for next season and there are so many options I dont know where to start. Thanks for any help you can give.

jeff

 

Try these:

http://forums.rennlist.com/rennforum...ghlight=camera

http://forums.rennlist.com/rennforum...ghlight=camera

Cheers,

Deetz

 

Thanks for the links Deetz.

jeff

 

Take a look at this one:

http://www.chasecam.com/

Jim H.

 

also been thinking about buying a cam to beat around for cheap...thanx guys

 

the two things you need for good in car video is being able to manually set the exposure (because the outside will be overexposed under many conditions if you let the camera set it) and being able to put a wide angle accessory lens on the camera ((full wide on a typical camcorder is not wide enough). A remote is nice as well for easy start and stop when it's mounted.

 

Double "Amen" on this.

Manual focus is nice, too. Without it, the camera might decide to focus on a bug splat on the windshield.


My Sony has a "steady-cam" feature that elimates some vibration. An unintended, but very kewl, side effect is that the image moves around relative to the car in response to g-loading. So, for instance, when I'm hard on the brakes the camera image moves in such a way as to make you feel like you're in the backseat being thrown forward into your belt.

Mine is mounted on a bolt run through the center child seat mount on the rear deck. Parts were something like $3.57. Its a bolt, a few nuts (a couple to hold the bolt in and one to screw up against the camcorder body), some washers, and those rubber toilet tank washers for vibration absorption.


QUESTION:
Anyone know where to get a remote camera lens thingy that will go into my camcorder's video input? I was at a Texas World Speedway HPDE one time and a guy had one mounted to the front airdam of his S2000. The footage was bad@ss. I've looked and looked and looked without success.

 

Berserker,

Note my link above, they have the "thingy" that you describe.

And it makes for great video.

Jim H.

 

My Sony has been good so far. Honestly though it has only been used for about 2hrs of autox footage this season. The lots here in the NE are pretty bumpy and it has worked well. Image stabilization is great and the manual focus is good too. I would say both are a necessity. Anyhow, model # is DCRPC109. I think it is an outgoing model so you may be able to get one for cheap. MiniDV format (my local CostCo has 8 TDK tapes for $20). BestBuy has a $40 Cokin x.5 wide angle lens for it too. The only other accessory you may want is the bigger battery. HTH.

 

I second the chasecam set-up. Nice rock steady picture from the wide angle lens. No exposure problems since the pencil cam is mounted to the roof w/suction cups. I just put the dig video camera in the glovebox w/a piece of packing foam around it to keep it from moving around.

 

Try this I hope you don't mind heavy and expensive. But they can record straight to DVD

http://www.kustomsignals.com/product...pagename=video

 

You rock!

 

you suck... I just ordered that mustek DVR. Video will be kind of small, but for vids that you can download, it will do.

 

Chirs, did you try this out? How did it work for you? I am looking into a system now and there are so many choices I can't decide!

I saw one somewhere that was a whole system, used the bullet cameras, came in a case, and had a little screen so you could see to position the camera and to review the video. It recorded to some sort of flash memory or a hard drive. For the life of me I can't figure out where I saw it . . .

EVOlutionary