in-car camera mounting

[EuropaTC]

Hi folks,

I'm sure this is going to seem obvious to some of you guys but I'm still going to ask....     To the folks who have used these action cameras, Go Pro and similar things, to record in their car, how are you mounting them ?

Helen bought one for me this Christmas and I've just gotten round to trying it in the car.  I bought a load of fixings and used the suction cup one to hold the camera on the rear screen, which does work even if a bit too far back. This gives a good view of the dash/instruments and a reasonable view of the road ahead, but there's no engine noise because the plastic enclosure is waterproof and the camera mike picks up nothing. (another "doh" moment    )

So - I've seen the footage some of you guys make, how do you mount the camera and get the mike to record sound ?

Brian

Edit to add - I've just put the footage in Premier and I do have sound, just not so good.  There's more vibration than I'd like although the camera keeps focus, but the question still stands, how are you guys fixing your cameras to get the smooth films I've seen ?

[Grumblebuns]

Brian, after a couple of close calls on the street from incompetents holding drivers licenses, I seriously thinking of installing a purpose built dash cam on my cars to protect myself legally.

Is your camera designed as a dash cam, or an action type camera such as a Go Pro where you have to supply the camera mount? The purpose built dash cams are cheap enough that you want to consider getting one of those.   

[EuropaTC]

Hi Joji,

It's not a purpose built dashcam although it says it can be used as one, I wanted something I could use on my bike as well. This is a Go-Pro copy, a Dazzne P2 which has had decent reviews over here and does seem to live up to the hype. There are several reports, this is the one I saw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDsuMd26wUI

I bought a pack of various mounts for the camera, it would appear all the copies use the same GoPro style mounts. I would guess for what you're interested in you would be able to clip it to a sunvisor.   I want to mount further back in the car so you can see the road plus instruments, like some of the track guys do. 

This is a still from the footage, mounted between the seats so you can get an idea of the view - they are all very wide angle lenses.  I'm hoping that mounting a bit lower gives better exposures but I've not tried it yet.

Brian

[blasterdad]

That looks REALLY COOL!
I like the wide angle, but you might want to check the camera settings...
It appears to be 180 degrees off. Everything is backwards & you're on the wrong side of the road! 

[EuropaTC]

It appears to be 180 degrees off. Everything is backwards & you're on the wrong side of the road! 

 

I wondered why everyone was waving and shouting at me.......   

I think it said the lens angle was 130deg. in the review, which is far wider than any camera lens I've ever owned.  You do get problems with "converging verticals" like you see on fisheye lenses, but it's not so obvious until you get close to a building or something similar, when you can see the top bending inwards.  Outdoors footage like this is fine and everything is pin sharp, if you look it's got the instruments and road pretty well.  They really are impressive in terms of quality and compared with our normal video camera which is probably 3yrs old now I'd say it's actually better at capturing fast action movie.