I have posted in non related aswell but thought some of you regulars might be able to help.

I want to buy a bullet camera for Trackdays, what should i look for?

Is it as easy as plugging it straight into the camcorder ?

Are the microphones going to be that effective outside the car due to wind noise ?

How is best to mount them ?

Thankx

Hiya Matt Happy New Year.

I've been thinking about these too, it would be great to get some low slung behind the front wheel action.

Let me know if you find anything.

M :cool:

Happy New Year Mark and the French one,

I have a new Camcorder so looking forward to getting some different views, like Roof Cam, and how about a speaker on the boot lid[:D], will it cope ????.
See the other post in Non-Scooby related i have just ordered one.

I will be wired up for the Ring trip [:D]

You could use a small colour cctv camera, they cost about 35 quid and are 12v, linked to a car vhs with a mic stuck to the rear bumper for the exhaust note. Total cost, probally less than 250 all in, and available from most electrical whole salers, I shall make enquiries.

Ceri

I just bought one £130 inc VAT from these boys.

http://www.rfconcepts.co.uk/helmet_cameras.htm

Will report the results once connected.

Thankx anyway

Ben Lovejoy's gotta be your man when it comes to bullet cams - check out his web page

http://www.benlovejoy.com/gadgets/bulletcam.html

EMD.

Alternatively this might be interesting at £50 got to be worth a go wireless cam (http://www.x10.com/home/offer.cgi?!LND9,../yahoosky1m.htm?|yahoosky)

Steve

EMD - are you Euan?

Steve,

Wireless Camera looks good but it is NTSC (American) NOT PAL (European).

I've just bought the RF Concepts camera.

Cheers,

Ian.

Guys, I can look into getting proper Broadcast Rally kit as a freebie if anyone is still looking - Elmo lipstick cams in 625 line PAL. Will be composite out, so you'll need a composite in to record it, ohh yes! Anyone going to Bedford track day?

Diesel,

625 line PAL basically means a TV picture (wot used to be 405 lines when i wuz a kid!). It isn't really a measure of quality.

What you really need to look at is the HORIZONTAL resolution, and the above mentioned bullet-cam does 380 lines (versus around 530 for a decent mini-DV cam-corder and 250 for bog-standard VHS).

Lenses and stuff are also a major factor, but i don't know nuffink ;)

mb

Boomie!

Mate! Grandmother and suck eggs, and all that, but I was talking about TV standards, not H resolution with that 625 as opposed to 525 line thing (the difference wrongly refered to by many as PAL and NTSC)! There's a difference between scan lines and colour encoding formats. Now that i've bored everyone... They did have to start defining resolution in lines too didn't they - why not stick to stating it in Mhz?

I'm gonna bring a Betacam SP with a J8 Canon lens next time I'm coming to an event (Bedford trackday prob) and you can count the lines on that mate!

D

:)

Dont really understand all the lines etc, but used it yesterday on the front valance at Donnington and the quality is fantastic.

Will be putting a lap up soon.

What was the recorder you used Mr R?

Matt,

Told you "Front Splitter Cam" was a good place to set it up :D :D

Cheers

Ian

Cheers Ian, i have some excellent footage when i was tailgating an E36 into Redgate, lift off, shiiiiiittt flame shoots over the camera, great picture or when i was lapping with a stripped out championship winning race 106, for 10 laps, some very up close moments.

I have only tried on the wing mirror and front splitter, i am going to attach it to the rear spoiler and roof next time i go, or may be on the lower sill so i can see the wheel turning.

The best £125 i have spent.

Nice :D

Let us know when you get some footage up.

Cheers

Ian

Type R

Ahh the old Panasonic DS38... What the hell is that???! Rusty on my old model numbers for Panasonic you know ;) Is it a battery powered 'composite in' VHS jobbie? Sorry to grill you, but none of these bullet cams i've seen have DV out to plug into my camcorder to use as a recorder only - maybe you know more! Thought of getting a power inverter (12 to 240v) and strapping my home VHS in even...

Cheers.

Diesel,

whilst trying to avoid the odd egg (thrown by a Grandmother!), i would have thought that DV as an output from a (raw CCD) camera would take quite a bit of processing. Is it true that it is M-JPEG, which means that each frame has to be individually compressed?

My Sony TRV30 camcorder has (i believe) analogue input as well as DV-in, so i might give that a try - if only to convert stuff from 8mm to digital!

I'll probably resort to using my 8mm Video Walkman for car use though - i managed to get a car power supply for half price the other week :)

mb

mb

B

No longer is it eggs being sucked it is my thumb! LOL!

DV off the back of a CCD? Wouldn't happen would it - as u say its compressed (at a sampling ratio of 4:1:1 luma to chroma ). I'm looking like a trainspotter now so i'll shut up!

:)

The site below sell Dv bullet waterproof camera's.

http://www.helmetcamera.com/

They cost $200 for waterproof camera or $300 for kit. There are also alot of firwire cameras available to run off a laptop if you do a search. I don't think they are as usefull due to incorrect lense and needing lots of hard drive space (but could be a possibility).

Also:

http://www.theboarder.co.uk/features/howtos/boardcam.html

is interesting

[Edited by Sieze - 2/13/2002 2:12:57 PM]

Diesel,

using the Discrete Cosine Transform of course ;)

mb

Sieze,

howz about a firewire camera into an Apple iPod?

Humm?? Sounds interesting!!!

mb

Panasonic DS38 with RF concepts bullet cam

[Edited by Type R - 2/11/2002 9:56:04 PM]

The Panasonic is a digital model, you can check it out on the Panasonic website. It has an AV In.

You can still do it with a VHS aswell, I just don't want anything else clutter around. You can get the power adapters from Maplins.


[Edited by Type R - 2/12/2002 3:04:10 PM]