Camera Bracket Mount Test Clips

The video shows test trials using various camera mounts and different road conditions to find best ways to shoot rolling footage.  The camera mounted on the bike's top tube works best for front-facing scenery bike rolling shots and on the rear rack for rear-facing rolling shots.  In both cases, the camera is mounted upside down but the scenes are easily rotated right-side-up in editing.  The helmet mount provides some interesting angles but it less stable than the top tube mount method.

A Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS19 camera is mounted to the front of the headtube on the Trek 520 using a Pedco UltraCamp.  The helmet mount uses a Joby GorillaPod attached with zip ties to a Giro helmet.  For additional information, visit the Head Gear and Electronics Equipment pages on this site..

Visual clarity over rougher roads is degraded due to to jitter cause by bumps on the road, directly proportional to the roughness of the road and the bike's speed. No stabilization was applied during editing in the video below.  The final editing of the documentary will employ stabilization software for rolling bike footage to improve those scenes.  Another possible option is to make the ride slower while shooting rolling shots and speed up the scene in editing.

Stabilization Tests

Stabilization tests using Sony Vegas Stabilizer and NewBlue Stabilizer were used in the test clip below.  Neither was able to significantly reduce the fast jitter or vibration from the camera mounted on the bicycle.  The jitter is caused by road bumps and the effect is made worse by faster speeds and/or bumpier roads.