When I saw this camera in Windsurfing Magazine I ordered it right away. On-the-water video for under $200? It sounded like fun. I somehow missed the words “not compatible with Apple Macintosh computers” but that’s okay because they somehow missed that it works just fine with Macs.
The Oregon Scientific Waterproof Action Helmet Cam, also known as the ATC 2000 or ATC 2K ($120) will shoot an hour of high-quality video and piss-poor audio, recording to a memory card (purchase seperately for $70.) It comes with a bunch of rubber and velcro straps, and a “handlebar” mount. I immediately set up the helmet headband and attached the thing to my Gath helmet, but the camera bounced every time I took a step, as the round helmet surface acted as a fulcrum against the flat back of the strap mount. I’ll be tinkering to develop a more stable helmet mount as soon as my chores are done (perhaps 2009, maybe sooner.)
So I popped the handlebar mount on a boom and went out to play. The big lesson: The camera must be aimed taking account for the rig being raked back for planing. In the video clip below you can see both top mount and a mount about half way down the side (see photo). I found aiming about two feet below the mast (in this case, what I estimated to be the position of the harness hook) provided the best forward view.
If you try this yourself, remember that every time you adjust the camera mount angle you need to also make sure that the camera is still level. A note on sound…on top of the poor general audio quality, once the camera is mounted to the boom, all you get is harsh impact sounds. Best not to listen.
What’s weird to watch is jibing…in the video my head just goes around the mast, and then we’re looking forward at an empty harness line.
Coming soon (wind permitting) a mast tip mount experiment.
Leave a Reply