Bike Forums - Choosing a helmet camera for the commute

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- - Choosing a helmet camera for the commute (https://www.bikeforums.net/commuting/997743-choosing-helmet-camera-commute.html)

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ItsJustMe (Post 17736690)

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.

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by asmac (Post 17739306)

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.

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.

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.

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.