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The Bridges of the Sudbury River - CRW March 2011 Or, third time's the charm ... on the road to mastering the Contour GPS camera Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 of 2 here) click here for slide show click any of the images of the helmet cam to enlarge |
I'm an avid, almost Kalowvian documenter of cycling and other adventures.
I love the pictures that my Panasonic Lumix DMC ZS5 takes.
It's compact body holds a lens with an impressive 12x optical zoom, and its 12.1 megapixels serve up a great looking image.
It's not easy to use while riding, however (too much risk of dropping it and/or crashing out yourself and/or other riders),
and stopping usually means getting yourself dropped.
Toward the end of 2010, I did some research into helmet cameras and narrowed the field down to two: the
GoPro Helmet Hero
and the
Contour GPS.
I opted for the latter in part for its "form factor" (as dorky as the Contour looks mounted to a helmet [left], the GoPro looks even dorkier).
[The April 2011 issue of Wired (19.04, not yet online as of 3/26/2011) reviews "point of view" cameras,
rating the Contour first of four with 8 out of 10 points to the GoPro's 6.]
The Contour has multiple video modes plus its still mode, all configurable via software.
The still mode, for instance, allows shots to be taken every 3, 5, 10, 20, 30, or 60 seconds).
Once disconnected from the computer, you can toggle between any two modes (high and low res video, for instance, or video and still)
via a "1-2" toggle switch behind the camera's battery/memory card door [right].
While it may be possible, I don't recommend flipping the toggle switch while riding.
The camera powers on via a button on the outside of the door.
To start a video or sequence of still shots, slide the record switch [to the left of the battery symbol, with the raised dots]
forward [in this image, that would be to the left]; to stop, slide the switch back.
Both power and record on/off are easily done even while wearing ski gloves.
Mounting the camera on a ski helmet is easy [right].
The Contour comes with a mounting plate that attaches to the goggle strap between the strap and the side of the helmet.
The camera slides onto the mounting plate and is secured by a small safety strap.
The camera's off-center weight isn't noticeable.
Mounting on a bicycle helmet is a bit tricker.
I tried side-mounting, but unlike the heavier ski helmet more tightly fitted to my head, the camera's weight was uncomfortably noticeable.
I opted for the dorkier top-mount pictured above--while the weight was noticeable, it was comfortable enough with the strap cinched down.
Still, I needed to jury rig some velcro strapping to hold the mounting plate to the center of the helmet [left].
The particular geometry of my helmet makes for a flat surface, but many helmets have a center ridge that would make leveling the camera more of a challenge.
To accommodate different geometries, the camera lens rotates up to 90 degrees--as the slideshow photos show, I didn't quite get the leveling right.
How I captured those photos necessitates a bit of digression. Back in February, I'd taken the camera out for its maiden voyage during a day of skiing at Stratton. While I was more interested in getting comfortable with the camera's features, I was certainly hoping to capture some useful video. Mainly, though, I got comfortable with the understanding that if you forget to press the "on" button at the beginning of the day, it doesn't really matter how many times you slide the record switch. The good news was that it was mostly a test run that taught me a lesson I won't forget. Fast forward to last week and a solo ride in New Orleans. Before setting out, I powered on the camera and heard the telltale chime I hadn't heard while skiing. And with each turning on/off of the record mode, I heard the associted single or double chime marking those actions. Back at the hotel, I connected the camera and uploaded the photos. All black. Lesson number two--remove the lens cap. The "Bridges" ride, then, marked a big step forward, as the accompanying not-all-black photos show. As captured, they range from 500KB to 1MB each (I'm not sure why the broad span of sizes--all are 2592 x 1944 pixels). For the slide show here, I used a utility called HiJaak (copyright 1998 from IMSI) to scale them down to 1296 x 972. Despite their being 1/4 the number of pixels, something about HiJaak shrinks the file size down even more--they end up being in the 60KB-140KB range. Overall, I'm pleased with the image quality. The pictures have a bit more fisheye than I'd ideally like, but they're certainly serviceable in getting done the job I set out to do--documenting rides ... while riding. |