walrus1

I have a contour and can say it's great. They seem to be much more stable these days and I'm seeing more of them all the time.

ItsJustMe

Funny, I just sold my M10 on eBay for $69. It's a good cam but not IMO for cycling. The battery doesn't last long enough and it's a bit of a pain in the rump to turn on (press one button, wait a few seconds for it to boot up and for the display to come on, then press another to start it recording, and it's hard to see in daylight if it's running or not.

Since pretty much any camera will do acceptable 1080p footage, IMO the qualifications for a good cycling cam are as follows:

- Replaceable battery
- Longest possible run time on battery (I switched to Garmin VIRB at 3.5 hours)
- SINGLE SWITCH to turn on and start recording, and to stop and shut off.

My helmet cam is an SVC200 which is now sold as a Coleman something. It may get replaced with a Garmin VIRB because of the battery life issue (the SVC200 is about 100 minutes on a charge) but other than that it meets qualifications.

The only downside to the VIRB is that it's a little weird shaped for mounting on a helmet.

The Contour cameras are pretty good but with no display it's hard to work with them, you have to plug them in occasionally to format cards/etc. Also battery life is shorter and I don't think they have removeable batteries.

The Drift Ghost is pretty good but fails on the controls side and the battery life isn't quite what the VIRB is (and is 50% more money).

snow_echo_NY

oh i should come back here and report. i got the cycliq fly6 (it's a light/camera combo) and holy geez it's captured a lot going on behind me. drivers trying to run me over and drivers parked in the cycling lane and the car's moving lane. it's total pandemonium.

i'm really excited about it.

we're on the waitlist for the front camera, the fly12. it's great in that it blends itself into the light so passersby don't even know it's filming.

i personally wouldn't mount the gopro to your helmet as at least for me, my head moves a lot to check for traffic. it wouldn't be steady filming. i think if you can mount the handlebars that would be ideal. but i don't know and don't have experience.

Hypno Toad

Actually, that's one of the benefits of helmet mounting, it shows where you are looking. If something is happening and it's not directly in front of you, the helmet cam will catch it and the bar-mount camera won't. I have a Hero 2 helmet mounted, here is an example (I've posted this in other discussions on the subject of helmet cams):
But helmet mount adds weight to the helmet (and it is noticeable) and it will make your helmet less effective if you have a wreck.

That said, I'm ready to upgrade to a bar-mount camera. My biggest challenge, the next camera needs to be easy to change mounting of different bikes. I use 6 bikes and I would like to have a quick mount that allows me to quickly move it from road bike to a mtb to a city bike.

Hypno Toad

Never mind, I haven't looked recently (or hard enough). I make this post and do a search and BOOM!

ItsJustMe

Actually head mounting is a lot more stable than bar mounting, at least on the roads I ride on.

There's so much vibration on the bar or frame that as long as I'm moving, everything is very blurry. It only becomes sharp when I stop moving. On the helmet I look around some but it's not nearly as bad as on the bike.

I've found that the stiffer the mount, the better. If there's much give at all in the mount, the camera footage looks like it was shot from a paint shaker; you can't see a damned thing and it's hard to even tell what's going on.

asmac

Agreed... battery life is inadequate. I got a second battery but don't really want to stop to change it. Also, settings revert to defaults when you change batteries and that can be a nuisance. All-in-all it seems to be as good a toy as a gopro and the price is right.

ItsJustMe

It's as good as a GoPro for my purposes, but that's not good enough. I'm moving to the VIRB, it's showing up tomorrow but it looks decent from the specs, just a little odd shaped.

SouthFLpix

I have a Contour Roam. It's battery is not user replaceable, but it lasts me about 4 hours. The high end models can be adjusted with a smartphone, but I have one of the basic ones. It's not great in low light.

ItsJustMe

Yeah, I had a Contour Roam. I can't remember if it had loop recording, I thought not and I had to plug it in to a PC every 2 or 3 days to erase the card.

BTW y'all learn from my mistake; even if you have loop recording, format the card occasionally, like maybe once a week. I had a cam that had loop recording and it appeared to work but at one point I hadn't looked at the card for weeks and it turned out that the card had gotten corrupted or something and it hadn't actually recorded anything for about 3 weeks.

asmac

The VIRB looks amazing though I'm happy not to spend the money. As you suggest, it's all about determining your own requirements and meeting them.