I released the hounds on the GoPro HD camera purchase this past week. It came in the mail on Wednesday. There were a few REI gift cards burning a hole in my pocket and the unit was reduced during their anniversary sale. All told I’m out $35, so no complaints there. The package I bought came with a head strap mount, kinda like what you’d wear with a camping headlamp, a few curved adhesive mounts for helmets and a helmet strap mount. The universal system of mounts and straps seems really powerful. If you can think of something to capture, chances are they’ve got a way to make it easy.

We took a ride over the mountains yesterday on our way to Sebago for the long weekend and I wanted to grab a video of the trip. So I ghetto strapped it to the roof rack with the included helmet strap and hoped for the best. It was on there very securely actually.

Yesterday was a pristine day, with gorgeous cloudscapes. My plan was to take the part where we actually crossed the mountains and speed it up about 1000% to make watching the 45 minute crossing tolerable but when we arrived at the lake I discovered that the camera was off. When I offloaded the video it was a little less than 1/4 the size of the memory card itself and the camera still had at least 50% battery life yet. So I only captured the first 30 minutes of the trip, before things really get interesting. Mission not accomplished. I’m not really sure why it crapped out but I’ve sent an email to the company to hopefully get some answers. Either way, I’ll try again on the way home but this time I’ll fire up the camera for the primest 30 minutes of the voyage.

One thing I noticed about the footage that it was able to capture is that the image got foggy when I began our first real ascent. I’m assuming it was condensation as the temperature dropped rather than road grime. I’ll have to think of a way to prevent that from happening. The camera was in the fully waterproof housing though, maybe if I put the permeable back on the case it will equalize with the ambient temp and humidity and stay clear. The unit had a healthy smattering of bug remains on it by the time we got here but it cleaned off easily. I was hoping that the relatively small target would escape unscathed, but no such luck.

Since the buy-in price was so low I’ve gone ahead and purchased the handlebar mount, the suction cup mount and some anti-fog strips. The strips may or may not come in handy, but I figured they couldn’t hurt. Another thing I discovered about the semi-failed experiment is that the view from the roof is rather undramatic in terms of conveying any sense of speed. The perceived speed even at 60 was more like 25 or 30. So mounting that thing via suction cup at the bumper or hood height would be a vast improvement.

Honestly, I don’t have much of a need for this thing but I couldn’t really beat the price for a neat new toy! I’ll addend this thing with whatever I come up with on our return trip. Hopefully.

ADDENDUM #1

I played with the camera a bit over the weekend. Strapped it to my head and went for a kayak and when I got back I saw that the interior of the housing was a little misty. Conveniently it was only misty directly in front of the lens. Life is like that. You’ll be watching a movie and it’ll get to that pivotal point and suddenly that’s where the disc is scratched. Or I’ll be listening to something on that radio and the point at which I find myself most engaged is when the signal gets lost. My favorite is watching something while Amy’s out or about and getting to a point where there’s a period of graphic violence and thinking to myself, ‘Amy would not appreciate this at all…. oh hai Amy!’

Naturally I happened to have the waterproof back on the case for the kayak ride but decided that I would absolutely use the open back for the return trip over the mountains and see how that managed the moisture build-up. Those anti-fog strips I ordered are seeming more and more like a worthwhile piece of kit.

So I pulled over and snapped the camera on as we approached the pass and all was well. After about 30 minutes I reached my hand up through the moonroof and executed a preemptive off/on maneuver before the camera decided take matters into it’s own hands like last time. That’s the skip in the footage – I didn’t bother trying to make the transition more seamless. Other than a bug smear @ 4:15, it went pretty well.

Turns out the resulting footage isn’t terribly compelling though. 🙂 My original thoughts about speeding things up to 1000% proved basically unwatchable. It compressed the 30 minute voyage into a nice hors d’oeuvre of the trip but things went by too fast to appreciate. I landed on 400%, which seems like it gives good readability but 10 minutes is a long time to stare at my car eating up the pavement. A good bit of trimming the fat might help, not that I spent any time with that! Still, here it is;

Things that seemed boring to me on the road are the most interesting in the video, to me anyway. I was really bummed when we got stuck behind those bikes, but it’s kinda fun to watch them bob and weave around in front of the car in the video. Even with the wide angle on the camera it was still tough to really get a sense of the scenery. Taking in most of the view necessitates a neck, which the camera – being an inanimate plastic object – does not have.

Yeah, so nice little diversion, that. We were rocking out to Phish in the car so I thought they’d be a fitting soundtrack.

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