video of Ross at Sandown

[Ross Nicol]

Thanks to Bill Haralambakis here is some video

[Malcolm]

Ross, was video link attached?

[Ross Nicol]

http://www.abbeysound.com.au/sandown.wmv

That link should work

[Russ Noble]

Interesting footage Ross.

It's about time a hi-tech lad like you fitted a car cam. No rush, just have it in by 10th June!

Cheers

[Ross Nicol]

Bought a JVC DV camera today Russ. Of course in true Russ Noble style I shopped at Cash Converters and got a fairly new unit for half price.
I've got 4 weeks to fit the camera, brake light pressure switch, new CV boot etc etc.The best lurk I've got on the go though is the free garage the College mob let me use.Saved $180 at Sandown and will save even more at Phillip Island.The only thing about having the camera in the car is the editing I'll have to do to get rid of the graunching of gears.
Ross

[Russ Noble]

Originally Posted by ross nicol

The only thing about having the camera in the car is the editing I'll have to do to get rid of the graunching of gears.
Ross

Ross, leave the gearchanges in there. You'll be able to post them on the "ZF failure" thread

Cheers

[roaldin]

Hi Ross,

I hope I'm not teaching egg sucking but - Make sure that if the camera has a switchable auto-off setting that it's off.

Unfortunately that's experience talking...

Unfortunately many cameras have auto-off and it's not switchable. If it's a problem for you, the Panasonic GS25 has a menu option to disable it.

Tim.

[Ross Nicol]

Hi Tim
Is this an auto off function after there has been no vision activity for a while? The manual does mention an auto off so I'll take another look,thanks that may have caught me out.
Ross

[Sandy]

Ross -

I can't wait to see some of the in car camera. I love that only a hand full of cars didn't have gigantic rear wings, and the driving looks pretty competitive.

Don't know which JVC camera you got, but I had one that died after some beating as an in car cam. One thing that I did find was that on the JVC that I had the eye piece had to be in the slide-out position or it would shut off.

Don't worry about the blown shifts, you have if right, a little editing and will be sweet!

Excellent stuff!

Sandy
P.S. Ignore Russ and his negative ZF comments the ZF thread is long enough

[Malcolm]

When we have mounted cameras in car for competition in the UK, we have had to have pretty sturdy mounting systems ie bolt on, not suction and also it makes sense to put a safety strap around the camera so that if it does bust free it is limited in its trajectory. If you want to consider variant angles for fixing, check out teh views at the GTD car club site video section to get an idea of what works best. I guess in car footage for any replica should be fairly similar in problems to overcome so GTD to RF should be helpful.

The only other tip I have is to consider using a screw on wide angle lens. It reduces camera shake and also catches more action. In the centre of my car I can cover the whole width of the windscreen with a £30 additional lens.

[Howard Jones]

Could some of you guys who have experience with in car cameras give us the low down on mounts, brand of cameras , lens, types of necessary options, etc. Pictures of mounts would be helpful. I am in the early stages of doing this and I don't want to spend money on a camera until I have some advice to work with.

Thanks in advance

[roaldin]

The auto-off happens when the camera is on but has not been recording for a while.
I leave my camera on and use a small remote to switch record on and off. It's far easier to do this than to try and reach around to switch it on and off and it's not always possible to get someone else to do it. Leaving it recording uses up a whole lot of tape unnecessarily.

I spent a bit of time looking at various cameras a while ago and I ended up with the Panasonic I mentioned for a few reasons:-
It's cheap,
it's relatively light,
it's easy to get a big battery onto (a 12 volt supply is a better solution though),
it's side loading (this was an advantage to me because my camera uses the cameras mounting bolt hole as part of it's mounting and it's a lot easier to get a tape in and out if you don't have to keep unscrewing the camera).

This camera seems to be resistant to head dropout due to vibration, so far anyway.

Other choices:-
I would never use a hard-disk camera in a car (for what seem to me to be obvious reasons).
When compared to the High Def' camera I own and others I looked at, DV is the better choice for in-car use. (this would take a bit more explanation and I'm trying to keep this post as short as possible)
Lipstick cameras definitely have their uses.

The mounting measures mentioned are worth serious consideration. There are many different solutions some of which are difficult in a GT.
I think you'll find that there are reg's on how to mount them (here in Aus') anyway. I'll leave this for now as I have to leave soon.

As well as a better view, wide angle lenses may also make the speed look more realistic. A normal lens tends to slow things down a bit IMO.
This may be because of the lack of peripheral reference, not sure.

Try to get as much driver in the shot as you can, you'd be amazed how much it helps in later "diagnosis". It's also a basic form of data logging if you can see the gauges.

Last thoughts-
Anti-shake works! (The mechanical anti-shake systems worry me a little in this scenario and the digital systems work well enough in my setups anyway. I have never put a mechanical anti-shake camera in a car)
Zoom-sound can be a pain.
Noise-filtering can be great and can have side effects, it should be experimented with.

I'm sure there are people here who are much better at this stuff than I am so I'll shut up now.

Tim.

[Duncan Potter]

On my open race car I use a "bullet" camera mounted to the roll bar. I feed the signal into a recording device with analog inputs. In the past, I've used Canon or Sony Mini DV camcorders.

This weekend I will be trying out a DVR that records directly to memory stick. This is a pretty slick looking little device. I will post my results.

A good supplier for remote cameras/DVRs etc is

Security Camera, Video Surveillance System, CCTV Camera Security System, Wireless Video Security

[Sandy]

For video stuff I can't highly recommend the Chasecam PDR and cameras. They are a bit more pricey the a camcorder, but I think worth every penny if you want a reliable device, also have some neat add on extras like GForce and PIP processor. Also get a good bullet cam, some of the security ones are so-so. For mounts if you have a roll bar one of the better ones and not too expensive is from I/O Port racing. It is good for camcorders, but might be a bit overkill for lipstick cams.

Check here for PDR, Cameras and Accessories too -
Bullet Cam Helmet cameras, mobile and wearable bullet cam, helmet cams, and solid state MPEG2 MPEG4 DVR PVR digital recorders by DataToys - affordable High Resolution Video Bullet Cam Systems

For the ChaseCam which has mounts, cameras, PDR's, etc
ChaseCam, Your Source for Video at Speed

Mounts and other stuff
Auto Racing Safety Equipment, Bell, Pyrotect & Kirkey Driving & Racing Helmets, Suits, Books Gloves Shoes & Seats - I/O Port Racing

Sandy

[LoveGT40]

Very nice video, thanks for sharing.

Incredible to see the 40 fighting with ferrari, porsche and maserati of 30yrs later.

Ross, your car was definitely the nicer.

[BruceA]

Whats in the White Porsche that you were hassling with? And was that a Ferrari 360 that whistled by you at the end of the front straight? He was flying!

[Ross Nicol]

White Porsche is a GT3. Ferrari 360 driver is very erratic he was re-passing me 2 laps after I took him off the start.That was race 1 on Sat arvo and I was driving poorly with 1min 21sec fastest lap.Race 2 on Sunday morning the Ferrari got back past me again and I finished right behind him, my lap times 1min 18.9sec much better.Last race the Ferrari did much better in the 17sec bracket like I said he's up and down.
Ross

[Bill Hara]

To be fair to Ross, that Ferrari uses brand new tyres for qualifying and then raced with those new tyres. He does the same at every race meet.
Ross' tyres are a little more used than that. On a track like Sandown, the Ferrari guy reckons he gains 2 seconds with new tyres....

[Russ Noble]

Hmmmm....... Nice to have money! These Ferrari types need to be encouraged! From where else are we going to get cheap, almost new, slightly heat-cycled tyres for our budget racing? Bet he's not on the same sizes as us though! Pity. Cheers,

[Duncan Potter]

YouTube - Spec Racer Practice at Mosport

link to video made with roll bar mounted bullet cam and solid state miniature DVR. The data acquisition overlay was not set up properly hence the erroneous rpm, etc.

If anyone would like further info, I'll be happy to supply.