Vid tips for standard (non GP) cameras

Anybody got any good suggestions for mounts for non GP cameras such as Lumix/Pentax/Olympus etc?

I have a Lumix TS2 and am stoked with the camrig mount so far but a bit of variety of angle would be nice.

Helmet mount is maybe a bit iffy and awkward?

I'm shooting video so line mounts don't seem like a flash idea due to wobbles. Am toying with the idea of strapping the camera accross my vest. Not sure if bar n lines will get in the way and 'hold the camera's focus'?

So watcha using out there?

GF - my mate nicko has a kiting vest and integrated harness which has a neat little breast mount strappy thing - they are available.

... chest mount is ok but since its not wide angle lens the vid is a bit directional and it ends up being hard to get decent footage or worse it gets to be all the same and a bit boring, repeating. Thats why the gopro is so good, being wide angle, but thats not answering your question I know.


Another problem is when you mount a camera on a board it is very easy to knock it off especially if you go through white water or you spear in after a failed jump etc etc. Which ever way, make you mounts really hard core because its easy to break stuff when your doing mach 9, water is like rock compared to the camera!! Mind you, chest mounts are fairly safe, but board mounts can be hard on the camera.

One experiment I did was to hold the camera in my hand and have a good teather or lanyard that is long enough to reach the end of your extended arm and when not in use, stuff the camera down the front of your shirt. You can get some short but gold footage some times.

Anyway, the one bit of advise I recommend is make your mounts really strong when it comes to board mounts!!

cheers,

Robbie

For sure Robbie! Wouldn't like to chance the Lumix on any board mounts.

Yep bingles I too have a gaffa fetish, combined with some industrial velcro should do the trick.

I read somewere (?) a while back that someone bastardised a cheap camera case and cut out a view hole to create a cradle.

I could of course use the Camrig and attach that to my vest, but extracting it from the kite velcro setup would be a bit fiddly (mainly getting it back into a correct aligned posi afterwards).

Just had a squiz at the Lumix on wide (28mm equiv) and I guess Robbie's right, it wouldn't be wide enough to take in a hell of a lot of peripheral wave/board/flotsam action.

Virtual dub and deshaker will take out shakey rotations of around +-5 degrees.
For bigger angles you will need to do this manually in Vegas. Use a Pan/Crop Effect (right click on the video track and choose Video Event Pan/Crop...)
Rotate so horizon is level with the big F.
Add a keyframe every time the camera starts to or finishes rotating, ie at the start or end of transition. Rotate your frame at these keyframes. Vegas will smoothly transition between for you.
The more keyframes you add, the more control you have over the rotation. Best way to figure it out is just by playing with a clip, it is reasonably intuitive.

Yep, Vegas will rotate the frame as you specify. It is pretty quick to do cos most of the kite turns are consistent - you will generally turn the kite from one side of the window to the other in a smooth motion.

I haven't come across any other program that will do this fully automatically - remember it is a very computationally intensive task, you are asking the computer to compare frame by frame the change in nearly 1 million pixels (or 33,000 blocks of 30 pixels) for 720p to try to estimate how much the camera has rotated.

Deshaker will do this for you for small pans or rotations. It can be useful up to about 15 degrees. But it is not intuitive to use and very time consuming on the CPU. Vegas is by far your best bet for a quick viewing of shaky footage.

I am currently working through a bunch of footage and will write a post on how I have done it once I have something useful to demonstrate. Hopefully will be in the near future!