I need helmet camera recommendations.(thinking, not sarcasm)

I have been looking at GoPro and Contour. I would still like to hear from others, what they have and/or, what they would recommend.

I have been looking into this and from what I can tell its pretty hard to beat a go pro. I'm sure others can help you more, but that's what I hope to get soon.

I bought the GoPro HD. Absolutely love it!

There seems to have been a price drop on the ContourHD to $150. POV camera for biking? has some good information.

Amazon's new deal is buy a ContourHD for $138 and get an one extra accessory for free (bike mount, water proof case, extra battery, etc.): https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.htm...cId=1000707831

Really really hard to beat that deal if you want a HD helmet camera.

I am thinking the same thing. Because Contour does not have a chest harness in their accessories and, the same quality camera from Contour, costs almost twice, what it costs to buy a camera of the same quality from GoPro.

how long is batt life on the ContourHD?

can it survive a fall or two?

I know for a fact that the GoPro camera can survive a flying fall from a bike at 70kmph. The case was scratched, the camera was fine. No idea about the Countour, sorry.

I have a GoProHD and I absolutely love it, except for the somewhat ( imho ) difficult programming. The video is very crisp, and battery time (once again imho ) is quite good. Having never owned a Contour, I can't speak from experience, but I have heard from friends that they are good as well. Probably couldn't go wrong with either one.

I still think this is the perfect camera for biking:
https://www.jonescam.tv/

Great size, good video and best of all, doesn't stick out like a GoPro.

I love my Contour. The first one was defective and often wouldn't turn off or on, but the replacement works great. I use the 848 x 480 60 fps Fast WVGA mode with the bitrate at the highest quality setting. The quality is better than any camera I own, even my Kodak Playsport at 720p 60 fps HD.

If you're thinking of getting a Contour, better act quickly and get the ContourHD 1080p from Amazon for $137.99. This model is no longer offered on Contour's website. The replacement for the ContourHD is the ContourROAM, which has a non-user replaceable battery and no 60 fps setting. In fact, none of the current Contour cameras offer the memory and battery-saving 848 x 480 60 fps Fast WVGA setting that my ContourHD has.

Yes, the ContourROAM is "waterproof to one meter", but I really don't like the disturbing trend of non-replaceable built-in batteries. The current model of Kodak Playsport, the Zx5, is the same way. I had to go on eBay to get another Zx3, which has removable batteries.

You can compare Contour's current models here.

Mountain bike Action did a comparison recently. They said the Contour was ok, and the GoPro is the standard by which all other cameras are measured against. The GoPro costs more, but as they say you get what you pay for.

The GoPro costs twice as much, right?

I find that funny, as the audio on the GoPro sucks! It is too compressed, resulting in that horrible aliasing noise like you hear on an old cheap sampling keyboard from the '80s, or a very low bitrate .mp3 or .wav file. The Contour has nice clean audio. It's a bit low, but at least it isn't overly compressed.

I don't think they commented on the audio, just the video. I'll see if I can find the test comparison and take another look.

I just checked out the Jones cam. My only beef is the wind noise on the motorcycle racer video. The GoPro housing eliminates the wind noise.

The tiny size is nice. The GoPro is heavy. I still like my GP alot.

I have two contourhd 1080p cameras and I'm happy with them. The wind noise isn't hard to handle on the Contour. The wind is audible from the front LED or the bottom located microphone. A piece of clear or white tape across both takes care of noise and you can still see the LED. Or just replicate the GP by using the waterproof housing. It's overkill though.

I actually like the wind noise in my videos and since I use a front and back camera I have two audios to choose from. Even if noise is an issue just run it through an audio editor (I use adobe audition) and noise go bye-bye. Audition also has a voice enhancement filter that works amazingly well. I recorded someone speaking from about 20' away (and he wasn't even talking toward me) and it was barely audible. After running it through the filter the voice was tinny but I could actually overdrive the speakers.

Here's the video. All shots were taken with two contourhds. Videos are 60fps at the source but YouTube drops it down to 24fps. Cheers

If you're shopping and happen to come across them, stay away from Tachyon. The biggest feature for me on this cam was that it is fully waterproof (you can dive with it) and not just water resistant.

I paid $140 for the 720 HD version. It took about 6 months to arrive due to manufacturing setbacks. I'm guessing the "#37 Chinese Fire Hydrant, Baby Formula, and Camcorder Factory" wasn't up to snuff in the quality department, causing delay after delay. But I held out hope and exercised extreme patience.

Finally I get my cam. Uh, wait. It's defective?! Awesome. Sent it back. A week and a half later, I get the replacement. It's defective as well! Another two weeks later and I FINALLY have a working cam, but I'm left kicking myself since the ContourHD dropped in price from when I first ordered the Tachyon cam. Not to mention, I paid about $14 in shipping to send it back twice. There was no offer to refund me any money for my trouble, although they did promise to send batteries to offset my shipping costs.

I never received the batteries.

for helmet mount, i'd be inclined to recommend the Contour.

for low light, i'd recommend the Gopro.

the Contour is more of a "no brainer" in use, but the Gopro can be "set and forget" to use a one-button record mode.

both do great video in daylight. depending on the resolution you'll get 127° or 170° FoV with the Gopro and 110° or 135° FoV with the Contour. at night, the Contour is pretty much useless, the Gopro is not as bad.

audio tends to be total crap on the Gopro, perhaps because they always seem to be inside a waterproof case. audio on the Contour can be alright, but when you get moving and turn the camera sideways it can turn into a blast of wind-noise.

i run HEROs on the bike and a Contour on the helmet. if the HEROs weren't so damn chunky and ugly i probably wouldn't have a Contour. i'm not one to care about looks... but a helmet-mounted Gopro is too much, even for me.

+1. You can improve the audio on the GoPro by purchasing the skeleton housing. Keep in mind, the camera is NOT waterproof with this housing.

Even with the skeleton back, the audio is still overly compressed. The Contour has nice clean audio. Both cameras use the same bitrate and sampling rate (128 kbps 48kHz), so the GoPro must use an inferior audio codec.

The Contour is like a cell phone camera at night. The only things that show up are lights. This is due to a tiny lens. I use a regular digital camera at night. Much better!

I've not found the GoPro to be particularly good in low light. (For the record, I own both the GoProHD and Contour GPS.) I haven't tried the Contour at night, but there are some options that can be tweaked that might make it better. The GoPro has no such options -- it's all automatic.

Yes, and once in this mode it's a ***** to get it out of this mode if you don't remember everything in the documentation.

Note that the wider FoVs have lots of "fisheye" distortion, especially on the GoPro (since it's wider). You can replace the lens and get rid of most of it, but then it won't fit in it's waterproof enclosure.

All that said, I like my GoPro a lot more than the Contour.

both use AAC, so it could be the mics, compression, or other settings. most people don't buy these things for audio, but if that's a factor then the Contour comes out ahead.

i never said the Gopro was good in low light, just that it's not as bad as the Contour

IIRC they're both f2.8.

if you can find a way to tweak the Contour to get close to the low-light performance of the Gopro, let me know. even then, i'd need to carry two cards... one with daylight settings and one with night settings.

I believe the settings are stored in the camera once you adjust them in Contour Storyteller. I have tested that theory by formatting the card in a card reader with SDFormatter 3.1 (the latest version), then inserting the card in the camera and making a recording. After hooking up the camera to the computer and checking the settings in Storyteller, they are the same as they were before the card format. The settings in the recorded file are the same as they were in Storyteller before the format. Also, I haven't found any configuration files on the card that would indicate settings stored on the card.

@freighttraininguphill - i can only talk about the 1300/HD/1080 model but i think the other models are the same... in the root directory of the card is a file "FW_RTC.txt" which has the settings. windows/mac may hide the file (???) but on linux that's how to edit the settings (and set the time).

the camera may store the settings internally and write them onto a blank card, but if two cards have two different settings stored in that file, then you can swap cards to get different settings, eg day and night.

how to label micro-SD cards...?