In-car cameras are in the news at the moment. Personally, I have been experimenting with them since 2009. My favoured device at the time was not designed as an in-car camera, but it worked perfectly for what I wanted to do back then. My biggest gripe with the purpose-designed cameras in the intervening period has been that the field of vision is too wide and everything is distorted. I wanted HD-quality, but that’s no good if everything looks like it’s wrapped around a fishbowl.
Things have come a long way in five years, though. At the moment I have my eyes on the Hero Go Pro. It is a professional-quality HD camera. Here’s a sample of the kind of footage it captures:The only drawback is the lack of GPS logging. Maybe that will come on a future model.
Anyway, this isn’t a run-of-the-mill dashcam. It’s intended for people who get out and about – much like the Contour unit I was using previously. It isn’t cheap, and one of the accessories – which is also not cheap – is a suction cup mount which allows you to mount the camera on boats, cars, and so on. Most of the reviews for the mount are positive, but one of them isn’t. Look at this:
A first trial of my brand new GoPro hero 3 cam ended in a huge disappointment. I used the suction cup as specified in the description. During a flight it was mounted on the wingtip of a single engined aircraft which is a flat and smooth surface. I cleaned and dried the spot where I mounted the suction cup carefully before placing it, just to make sure that the suction cup was fastened correctly as recommended. After a 20 minutes flight with a speed of 110 Mph I looked on my IPhone to set the camera in the photo mode instead of the video mode. I was very enthusiast of what I saw at the display of my IPhone. Suddenly the contact with the camera was lost and I looked at the wing and saw that I lost my camera………unfortunately above the water. 🙁 I wonder if GoPro has a solution for this as the suction cup does not meet the specification as mentioned and I was not able to see one single picture or video of my new cam.
I couldn’t stop laughing when I read it. This character had spent several hundred quid on a professional quality video camera and suction mount, and then gone and stuck it on the end of the wing of an aeroplane! Over water!
It’s a bit like buying a Ferrari and then driving it on a stock car track. Or a white silk shirt, then creosoting the fence while you’re wearing it.