Car Mounts

[longcipher]

A friend will be doing a long-distance bike ride for charity and wants to document a bunch of it so I can edit it later. I'd like to rig a small cam to the back of the minivan that he'll be following on his ride. Ideally, I'd like to throw a Blackmagic Pocket back there, but if not that, something like it, like a Sony NEX. Any advice on a good stable rig for a small camera body?

 

[morgan_moore]

A car is not a stabilised device. So a 'hard' mount onto a lead vehicle may only lead to occasionally usable footage - for example on a very smooth road.

A hard mount must be hard as vibration in the mount makes things a lot worse.

Next issue is actually mounting the camera to the hard mount. Here the Pocket inside a cage gets a big lead - mounting an NEX is a challenge as the body of the camera is so so flimsy - I had to make a custom cage to get my NEX mounted 'hard' http://www.sammorganmoore.com/backlot/nex5n-car-mount

Ok - so you have your camera mounted now you have issues with battery life, monitoring and memory card full (not to mention focus and exposure)

Here you need IMO to have a think.. am I shooting - or is this a kit to be used by a punter.. ie switched on by the lead driver - in the second situation you will need auto everything and long batt/record times.

I guess the NEX and BMPCC are not for the punter operated option.

You should go with a go pro or a more expensive bullet cam, some of which have external HDs and power.

Now if you are operating it is easier because you can focus expose and baby the batt/memory

But if you are operating you may want to consider some form of 'soft/stable' mount - the simplest being sitting in the trunk and using a small steadicam, or getting one of the plethora of not yet available 'movi' type systems..

S