I'm a bit late to this. Been in Vegas for a week attending the National
Assoc. of Broadcasters convention. Interestingly Panasonic showed their new
small Hi Def camera that records to both MiniDV or P2 (solid state) cards.
This type of media is great for high vibration environments like a stiffly
sprung race car or high-g situations where tape just can't cope. It also
offers immediate (parallel) access to anything recorded on it unlike tape
which requires shuttling (serial access) the tape forwards or backwards to
get to a particular clip.
Camera itself is $6K, a great price for true Hi Def, trust me, but P2 cards
run around $1K/gig, and you get about 4 min. of record time/gig. The camera
has 2 slots and 8 gig cards are currently the largest available with 32 gig
cards soon to be available and prices expected to fall rapidly as production
and demand ramp up.
In today's real world, make sure you should turn off (yes, OFF) any image
stabilization on your camera when shooting in-car and use wide angle lens
settings. Image stabilization is designed to cope with the (relatively) slow
movement that comes with hand holding a camera, not the much higher
frequency "jitters" that occur when a camera's hard mounted in a car. In
this situation image stabilization usually just trashes the picture. Using
wider angle lens settings also minimizes shakiness.
Other general quick tips applicable to both video and still shooting - If
you do need to hand hold your camera turn yourself into a tripod by standing
with your feet spread slightly apart, pull your arms into your sides, breath
slowly and evenly and (for video) use the viewfinder rather than the LCD
screen to frame your shoot. Try shooting both this way and holding the
camera away using the pop out LCD and you'll see what I mean. Oh yeah, you
want the image stabilization turned on in this situation.
When you can use a tripod. If you don't want to lug a tripod around all day
get a monopod, preferably one with a snap in camera plate. That let's you
clip the mono pod on your belt when it's not needed but have it quickly
available for those long shoots.
FWIW,
Ron
> Andy
> I've got one. They are considered one of the best camera mounts. My car
> rides so rough that the tape heads skip in the camera and the video is poor.
> My MiniDV camera is better than my HI8 but both have problems with the rough
> ride. In a smoother riding car the video should be much better.
>
>> Alvin
>>
>> Han anyone used this camera mount? Comments
>>
>> I tried mounting my camera to my harness bar with a tripod and
>> zip-tied..it worked but it was a little too jittery!
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