The article in the SCCA magazine got me thinking... and I wonder if any of ya'll have any experience with a reasonably priced in car camera?

I think part of the problem is mounting it in a reasonable place and where it's not bouncing all over the place (image stabilization?).

I've got a DV cam and there is a thread in the X forums about using the center tether mount for mounting a camera, but I use the center tether for my son's carseat (I obviously take it out for the track, but the camera mount includes removing the center tether and using it's hole).

 

Chase cam.

 

I'm very happy with the quality of my Hoyttech bullet cam. I use it with a Sony miniDV camera.

You can look for some vids using it in the blog in my signature. Look in June/July 2007 & 2008.

John

 

Buschur has a camera mount for the center tether which I use. Work reasonably well and is fairly inexpensive.

 

Hero Cam - about $180 and mounts right to the windshield.

 

The Hero Cam is the one that intrigued me because of it's price ;-)

 

This would be the most optimal choice with the most options. It's not cheap as you need an external recording device or whatever.

If you want to use a regular video camera, you can get a chasecam (or perhaps the Buschur mount mentioned earlier) to mount in the center of the rear deck. I ran this for a year on the track and it worked well.
Since it's in the back, you either get the seats in the shot some, or you have to zoom in a bit which distorts the speed a bit. The lighting will be a bit off interior/exterior as well for those perfectionists. It's a tradeoff to be sure.

I've got my video camera mounted to my rollbar. Looking ahead, I want a chasecam up in the front bumper to really show the speed on the track.

 

again about buschur cam, really nice mounting location and works great. Priced very well to, but just like mentioned above there are negatives to it too

 

Check out vholdr.com I have one and it's awsome.

 

I have a chase cam and would highly recommend it, but they're not all that cheap. The hero cam is cheap, but my buddies that use it have a 50% sucess rate with it...that meaning that 1/2 the time the camera shuts off, or they run out of batteries. FWIW, I'm usually at a 90% success rate with my Chase Cam, sometimes it just shuts off, I think its b/c I use the cigarette plug for powering mine, and use the car for rallying, so the car is constantly being bumped around.

Dave

 

The Chase Cam is FANTASTIC. Keep in mind that SPEED uses them for their in-car footage. We use them in the Koni cars and they put out some fantastic footage. They are small and flexible enough on their long mounting arms that you can aim them at very interesting angles with plenty of frontal view left.

Ignore the video itself but you can see how much of the interior is visible on camera:

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

 

guys the chase cam looks awesome, but unless works is going to sponsor me, I don't think I can justify $900!

 

Works great if you already have a dig cam or vid cam. I've been using mine for a few events now. However, if you have a harness bar like I do and a video cam you can go to Circuit City and they have something similar to the ChaseCam that mounts to the harness bar for only 15 bucks

 

I thought the chase cam used an external hard drive. If you already had a digi cam or vid cam, could you just hook it up to the harness bar directly?

 

getting my chase cam package tomorrow... viper days track event coming up.. yum