360 Camera Thoughts & Early Spring Commutes

Some media from the first week of regular (twice!) commuting:

A tiger's eye view of the ride in to work.  About 4°C and a bit damp.  That afternoon was up to 12°C and I comfortably took the long way home.  Both videos use the high speed video capture option within the Fly360 (long motorcycle videos are tedious):

Photos and video screen grabs from the rides all on the 360Fly4k - great resolution but it isn't really a 360° camera like the Ricoh Theta is with a large blank area around the base.  If you mount it facing up it doesn't see the bike.  The photo on the left shows the full range of view - if it was a true 360°view you'd see where the bike was going too.  The Theta stitches two of those globes together giving you a true 360° capture.  It's also much smaller and easier to clip onto a motorbike.  Having a physical button to take photos and move between video and photo mode while on the go is also helpful.  The Fly can only be operated through your smartphone, which isn't possible while in motion (well, I guess it is, but you'll probably end up wrapped around a tree and the copper who sees you with a phone in your hand will loose his mind).

Editing is a whole other thing.  I find the 360 Director software buggy at best.  PoV in camera editing doesn't seem to pick up when you ask it to render.  I can get it to go about one third of the time.  The resolution of the Fly is excellent, and it does an ok job in low light considering that it isn't really designed for it.  The Fly is also weather proof, so you're not worrying about the odd drop of rain like I did with the Theta.

The long and the short of it is, if you're looking for resolution and clarity, the Fly's your choice, just be prepared to stick it in some strange places because it can't see everything.  If you want ease of editing in a small camera with true 360° video and photography, the Theta's where you should go.

These are all taken with it suctioned to the inside of the windshield and pointed back at me...

March Break

Snow storms and freezing temperatures, but I managed to squeeze a quick ride up and down the river on Sunday afternoon just before it was back to work time.

I am here to steal Firefox!

Snow in the gullies...

That's a quality Ontario paved road

Everything on here came off the 360Fly4k camera.  

Stills pulled off the 360Fly Director software.  

The video was just dumped onto Youtube because the Director software won't render video.  Quite frustrating... they need an update.  When you run the point of view video editor it just doesn't seem to pick up the rendering thread.

The End is Nigh

I rode in to work this morning in near zero temperatures.  It was sunny but cool.  The ride home was in the mid-single digits and sunny.  Winter gloves handled 8°C with ease, they were streteched a near zero.  Tomorrow might be my last 2 wheeled commute of the season.  I threw the 360Fly on the front for the ride, these are screen grabs of the video:

It's amazing what you can get away with thanks to grip heaters and an extendable windshield.  -5°C might be a bit more than I'm willing to put up with on the ride in to work, but if it's clear I might just steal one more before the snows fly.

There are still some autumn colours hanging on, but the trees are starting to look skeletal.

For these shots the camera was suction cupped near the bottom of the windshield and aimed forward.

GoPro Alternates: The Contour

The Contour Roam2.  If you're looking for a motorbike
friendly, less expensive alternative to the GoPro, this is it.

No doubt, GoPro rules the action camera world, but I'm always on the lookout for alternatives to the very expensive king of the hill.  I'm waiting (seemingly forever) until the 360Fly becomes available in Canada, but in the meantime, the Contour Roam2 came across my desk, so I gave it a go.

I'd previously tried the Foscam AC1080, another cheap, GoPro alternative, but it was fairly disastrous.  The camera took nice enough video, and seemed sturdy in its shell, but the incredibly cheap accessories will let you down.  In the short time I had it the fastening mechanism never held up to wind (it wasn't geared and would just flop flat) and then the entire camera was gone after the cheap plastic mount let go while riding.  Unless you can source better quality mounts, I would not recommend the Foscam for motorcycles at all.

The basic Contour Roam2 is about the same price as the Foscam (about $150 Canadian, or 1/3 the price of the cheapest GoPro), but doesn't mimic the GoPro form factor.  Instead, the Contour is a brushed aluminum tube (in a variety of colours) with a very small frontal area making it an ideal motorcycling camera.  Unlike the GoPro or other cameras that copy its format, the Contour is a slim, low profile design that doesn't produce a lot of drag or wind noise.

The two suction mount options compared - you're paying
US exchange and 1/3 more in shipping for what, at first,
looks like a cheaper GoPro option.

The Contour also comes with much more robust mounting than that terrible Foscam.  While riding in a variety of conditions including some quality Canadian roads and a downpour (the Contour is waterproof without a case), the Contour never wavered, offering steady video and secure mounting at all times.

Mounts for action cameras appear much like printer refills - it's where the real money is.  Fortunately Contour offers a wide range of accessories and mounts and, unlike GoPro, ships from a Canadian distributor so you aren't surprised by a lot of extra costs.  The pricing for the mounts is also comparable to other action cameras, so you aren't getting extra hosed on the back end.

The Contour offers a wide range of accessories including motorcycle focused low profile, helmet and goggle mounts.  I've found the 360° stick-on mount to be robust and offer a variety of angles from a single location on the fairing.  You can rotate the Contour's lens to keep videos upright regardless of how you mount it, so you don't need to muck around with a lot of video editing.

Operation of the Roam2 is as simple as it gets.  The default setting is 60 frames per second 720p video, which looks sharp on youtube and keeps up nicely with a motorcycle's motion:

To change settings in the camera you need to have it hooked up to a PC with USB and be running Contour Storyteller (a free download).  This app lets you edit and share video and change camera settings.    The camera can be set to 1080p or a variety of lower settings.  It also has a photo every so many seconds setting.  It takes standard micro-SD cards which are cheap and easy to find.  Swapping cards takes only a moment, and they're tiny, so keeping them in a micro-SD card carrier (don't leave them loose, you'll lose them, they are tiny!) in your pocket means you can easily carry as much footage as you like.  The battery has yet to run out, even on all-day rides with lots of filming.

To turn on the camera you simply push the slider on top forward and a light comes on to let you know it's filming.  This is easy to do even with gloves on and I found I could do it even while riding, so catching just the good roads is an easy and obvious process.  The camera records to mp4 which is then easily uploadable to YouTube or other video sharing sites.  It doesn't work well with Windows Movie Maker, but does with everything else.

If you want live footage and camera control, the Contour+2
does the business, and at $430, it's over $100 less than a GoPro

If you've never made riding footage before the Contour Roam is an inexpensive way to get into it.  It's a basic, tough camera with solid mounts that suit the rough nature of video on a motorbike.  It isn't chock full of options but it does the business well.

Contour also offers the Contour+2 which is a much more complex camera in a similar form factor that offers wireless connection to your smartphone, GPS and super high frame per second options, all for a hundred bucks less than the typical GoPro.  If you dig the format, it makes a compelling alternative to the standard GoPro.

We Live in the Future! Motorcycle Gadgetry

This nice bit of graphic design caught my eye.  The Tomtom GPS system is uniquely suited to motorcycling.  It's waterproof, bar mounted and offers some smart software that is motorbiking specific - like find the windiest route between here and there.

A weatherproof GPS that could be easily accessed with a gloved hand while on the bike is a prudent safety decision.  Instead of trying to look at maps on the tankbag I could be using the corner of my eye to follow a route.  I'm a fan! 

As if the Tomtom wasn't enough, I then came across the 360Fly.  I've been GoPro fixated since they first came out, and tried other action cameras, but this is something else.

The 360Fly isn't just an action camera, it's an immersive video recorder, making 360° video that you can pan through as you watch it.  There is no cropping with this camera, it's like you can turn your head within the recording!  The video becomes a complete record of what happens instead of just what the camera is pointed at.

I can't wait to try this on a motorcycle!