Camera for Flight Recording?

shyampatel94

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Shyam Patel
I was wondering if there are any other camera's I can use to record my flights and put them on youtube? I already know about the GoPro, but any other camera's out there?
 
Contour is a pretty popular one in the motorcycle world. Think I'm going to try a midland xtc from Walmart for $80, I have friend that made some motocross videos with it and it looks alright


-VanDy
 
The GoPro Hero3 is my choice, excellent quality, easy set-up, WiFi remote control to my phone and tablet with the GoPro App for Android (you can actually check the picture framing to be sure you have the shot you want) - best birthday present from Wifey in years.

You can find some of my videos on my blog in my signature for examples.

'Gimp
 
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Wow! That Garmin looks sexy!!! How long has it been out?
 
I don't know if I would take a risk in buying one of those until there are full reviews for it... I rather buy the gopro at this point!
 
You can use pretty much any camera you want, as long as you set it to a solid mounting point.

GoPro has the advantage of being small, light, and well loved by the video community.
 
Don't forget about the sound, will you want to narrate?? Some pick up more ambient noise than others, will probably want to connect to the audio system.
 
Contour is a pretty popular one in the motorcycle world. Think I'm going to try a midland xtc from Walmart for $80, I have friend that made some motocross videos with it and it looks alright

Looks like Contour has decided to close it's doors.

Not shipping yet, costs more, doesn't have the 3rd party addon's and doesn't have the same frame rate as gopro3.

That's correct, the GoPro just has all the right things and none of the wrong. Until they come out with one the size of a pen cap and just as awesome, I'm with the GoPro team.

Don't forget about the sound, will you want to narrate?? Some pick up more ambient noise than others, will probably want to connect to the audio system.

One of the most forgotten things in all of media! +100 for this.
 
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I just use my JVC camcorder on Ram mounts...

$110.00 + mounts

1 button upload to Utube and no prop strobing!

Chris
 
Check out the HD Stealth 170...It does a nice job for me. And a couple cables will get you sound as well.

Also, the lens rotates so that if the camera needs to be mounted in an odd spot, you can still get an upright video.
 
Not shipping yet, costs more, doesn't have the 3rd party addon's and doesn't have the same frame rate as gopro3.

I have to agree with rwellner, the video specs seem closer to the gopro2 at Gopro3 prices. Only thing I see that garmen has going for it is the battery life.

Also to the original poster, if your looking for a mount for your camera I have designed one to mount to the wing strut if the plane your training in has one. Also it can be reconfigured to work on anything tubular from 1.13" to 2.75" in diameter and I have used it on a streetbike front fork, sailboat mast, hanglider tubing, ultralight tubing, wakeboard tower and any rollcage on a car or ATV. Below are a few links.

Images:
http://imgur.com/a/GZHA1#0


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS8OBevdwiA (shot on Drift 170)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1koRZCiJGc (shot on Gopro3)

I sell the mount for $125 with straps for both wing struts and tubes for alternate uses. Its made out of CNC machined aluminum and much more secure then the RAM mount version. It is also great for renters since the mount can be installed and removed in seconds and requires no tools.

Best regards,

Marc
 
I think the Drift Ghost is superior to the Gopro in most ways, not the least of which is a mic jack that comes standard and a really smart remote control.

I have been using the prior version (Drift HD) on my motorcycle for two years now, it's taken all kinds of abuse with no issues at all.

Recommended.
 
I bought the Contour when nflightcam was selling them, attaching a ND filter to reduce the prop distortion. Worked great and very easy to use. I'm sorry to hear they are closing their doors. That explains why nflightcam made the jump to GoPro.

I have a few videos done with the Contour on my youtube channel if you care to see the quality they provided. http://www.youtube.com/user/spionen007
 
I think the Drift Ghost is superior to the Gopro in most ways, not the least of which is a mic jack that comes standard and a really smart remote control.

I have been using the prior version (Drift HD) on my motorcycle for two years now, it's taken all kinds of abuse with no issues at all.

Recommended.

Looks like it has half the FPS of the gopro and lacks the ability to do self-timer photos. Two critical features for me. It's also interesting that I can't adjust FOV on the ghost except in 1080 mode. I wonder why that is?

Aside from the rotating lens (which is pretty swank, but I haven't missed much because of the gopro mounting flexibility) what do you think is better about it such that you would say it's superior "in most ways"?
 
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Which GoPro model would you guys recommend? Black or silver edition?
 
I bought the Contour when nflightcam was selling them, attaching a ND filter to reduce the prop distortion. Worked great and very easy to use. I'm sorry to hear they are closing their doors. That explains why nflightcam made the jump to GoPro.

I have a few videos done with the Contour on my youtube channel if you care to see the quality they provided. http://www.youtube.com/user/spionen007


Yeah same here, nice camera.

Sorry to hear that. I use mine on practically every flight, just used it today, flying over the Connecticut river into Hartford. :)
 
Looks like it has half the FPS of the gopro and lacks the ability to do self-timer photos. Two critical features for me. It's also interesting that I can't adjust FOV on the ghost except in 1080 mode. I wonder why that is?

Aside from the rotating lens (which is pretty swank, but I haven't missed much because of the gopro mounting flexibility) what do you think is better about it such that you would say it's superior "in most ways"?

The Drifts all have standard camera mounts, so they have all the 'mounting flexibility' that it's possible to have. They are much more streamlined, and are weather resistant right out of the box.

The Drift's two way remote control makes a self timer unnecessary, but the Ghost does have self-timer still capability.

GoPro nickels and dimes you to death, with Drift you don't pay extra for housings and displays, and mounts.

The Ghost's tagging feature is really nice, I don't think GoPro has anything like it.

There's nothing wrong with the GoPro, but the Drift is superior in many ways.
 
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Sad, I didn't hear Contour was going out of business... I have a nFlightcam as well and love it. Great quality, decent software, very small and lightweight (I have a mount for my headset that works great - barely know it's up there). I can only get about 1.5 hours at 1080p though with it - so the Garmin looks very attractive.

Good stuff...
 
Sad, I didn't hear Contour was going out of business... I have a nFlightcam as well and love it. Great quality, decent software, very small and lightweight (I have a mount for my headset that works great - barely know it's up there). I can only get about 1.5 hours at 1080p though with it - so the Garmin looks very attractive.

Good stuff...

I have a 12 volt USB adapter for ship's power or my portable battery (which I used yesterday), when there's no power outlet. You have to start recording or connect via bluetooth, before connecting external power, or it won't work. Why, I have no idea:dunno:.

I placed one of the Contour mounts on my headset but haven't tried it yet. I wasn't too crazy about how it felt with the camera attached. Not sure if I'd like the shifting view either.

My biggest problem is getting a vibration free video, consistantly. Depending on the throttle power settings, sometimes the vibration is terrible.
 
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The Drifts all have standard camera mounts, so they have all the 'mounting flexibility' that it's possible to have. They are much more streamlined, and are weather resistant right out of the box.

They are more streamlined if pointed into the wind. They are less streamlined pointed sideways.

I guess we disagree on standard camera mounts being a benefit. I suppose I could go buy a bunch of RAM stuff to get the orientations I want, but the gopro stuff is smaller and purpose built for these things.

The Drift's two way remote control makes a self timer unnecessary, but the Ghost does have self-timer still capability.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. I'm talking about the self timer in the gopro that allows it to take a photo every .5, 1, 2 or 5 seconds. It's a brilliant feature for doing timelapse photography.

You know that gopro has a two way remote also, right? With the keychain remote (the one I prefer) I have access to all the features of the gopro. If you want to use the IOS app then you get all that, plus can stream the video from the gopro and see what it's seeing like with the drift app.

GoPro nickels and dimes you to death, with Drift you don't pay extra for housings and displays, and mounts.

The housing comes with the gopro, so no nickels there unless you break it. In which case you probably would have to buy a new drift instead of just buying a new housing. As noted above, the mounts for drift aren't free either, you just buy them from someone other than drift. In my experience the RAM mounts are actually more expensive than the gopro mounts for comparable use cases.

You do have a point about the display. That's a significant cost to add one to the gopro3, but the flip-side is that if your using the IOS app to aim and control the cameras then you don't need the screen and, without it, the gopro is much smaller and half the weight. None of that really matters if your hooking it to a plane or a motorcycle helmet, but if your strapping them to a quadcopter or something then the gopro being half the weight and being more square makes a difference.

The Ghost's tagging feature is really nice, I don't think GoPro has anything like it.

Gopro does have this. They call it "looping" instead of tagging.

There's nothing wrong with the GoPro, but the Drift is superior in many ways.

So you keep asserting. :)

Sounds like drift is more streamlined as long as you want to point it forward, has a rotating lens and has a built in screen.

The gopro is smaller and lighter, has a replaceable housing instead of having to send the camera in for a repair, much better video capability (twice as fast FPS and adjustable FOV in all modes), far better aftermarket support, self timer capability.

In both cases you have to buy mounts from somewhere.
 
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My biggest problem is getting a vibration free video, consistently. Depending on the throttle power settings, sometimes the vibration is terrible.

As I'm sure you know, that's not a problem with the Contour, airplanes are just really tough environments for action cams (and most other cams).

The only thing I can suggest is to make sure you are attaching to as stable a mount point as possible. For example, there is a big difference between attaching to the center of a crummy, thin airplane window compared with attaching near where that window attaches to the plane. There is a big difference between attaching to a random spot on the top of the panel compared to attaching to the roll bar.

I've also found that using a higher frame rate seems to help some kinds of vibration issues, so try going the max you can. For me, I happily trade 1080 for 720 in order to gain frame rate. I won't go to WVGA, but that's a non-issue on gopro3 as you can do 120FPS at 720P.
 
Gotta disagree with you on that one. There are tons of vibration artifacts in that video. Large vibrations that change the orientation of the camera slightly and really bad "jello" effect.

LOL, dude - you're in a GA airplane not a 777. Unless you spend serious dough for some kind of gyro mount or something this is about as good as you're going to get. Why on earth do you need better than that anyway?
 
I'll give another recommendation for the Drift HD170. I think it takes great videos and is cheaper than the GoPro.
 
...one of the things that I like so much about the nFlightcam is that you can rotate the lens 180 degrees and a Contour iPad app that allows you to connect via bluetooth to see what the camera sees real time. So, you can mount it, open the app to see how to adjust the lens angle and then turn off BT and fire it up.

With Drift I see you can do that but I'm not sure with the GoPro I don't see the ability to do that. This comes in handy when you mount on your head or anywhere else where you can't get a straight angle.
 
LOL, dude - you're in a GA airplane not a 777. Unless you spend serious dough for some kind of gyro mount or something this is about as good as you're going to get. Why on earth do you need better than that anyway?

Nah, man. If you don't care, that's fine. But don't claim that the video you posted doesn't have vibration nor that you need a bunch of expensive gear to do better.

This is the kind of quality you can get with stock GoPros and adhesive mounts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO0FmzRW96o

That's the standard that some of us enjoy trying to live up to. I mean, yeah, it's just a hobby, but why wouldn't I want to do the best job I can with the gear I can afford...
 
I'll give another recommendation for the Drift HD170. I think it takes great videos and is cheaper than the GoPro.

That drift has features comparable to the gopro3 white edition. They are priced identically, but the gopro has wifi.

If you want a nearly disposable camera, the drift720 is now less than $70 on amazon (http://www.amazon.com/HD-720-Professional-Action-Camera/dp/B007XTRM16). It's 720 at 30FPS, which is pretty weak sauce compared to the current offerings from drift and gopro, but 720 is good enough for 99% of what people normally do *and* it's cheap enough that you can put it in harms way and not really care if every once in a while one of them gets crunched under a tree or an airplane (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xzzWKPtp9I&t=1m30s)
 
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With Drift I see you can do that but I'm not sure with the GoPro I don't see the ability to do that. This comes in handy when you mount on your head or anywhere else where you can't get a straight angle.

Yeah, with gopro you can't rotate the lens. Their approach is to have a very flexible mounting system and rotate the entire camera. The problem with this approach is that it adds more vibration, but you don't care about that so you should be able to get what you want.
 
Well you can rotate the way the camera shoots video 180 degrees, so mounting it upside down is certainly an option as well. I am trying to remember but I do not think you can rotate it 90 degrees. Might be able to do that with an editing program.

But yeah, odd angles you have to use their articulating mounts. I've found if you're creative with the adhesive feet and the little extensions, you can get it positioned how you want with still a pretty solid mounting.
 
So I went out and bought the GoPro Black Edition! I can hopefully start shooting videos soon! Anyone have any tips on what kind of resolution I should use? How many fps? Anything that can improve my videos?
 
Gad. This is like the RV strings....if you're not whole-heardedly behind any RV gospel you're a pariah! Just sub the word GoPro in there......
 
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