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I need to
explain a little bit about our "bike cam." There are people who
see me as being a little like the character of
"Doc Brown" from the movie trilogy "Back to the
Future" (most notably my kids). I am
someone who comes up with all kind of ideas and
inventions, some great and some... well never
mind. Instead of buying a DeLorean I
bought this really cool bike! Anyway... I
rigged up a camera mount on the handlebars of
our bike so I can take pictures while we are
riding. With this setup, I can take
pictures of either the scenery out front... or
of us! |
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The camera that I use is
a Nikon Cool Pix 4500. Photography is one
of my hobbies and I wanted to find a way to take
pictures of some of the great sights we see
while riding our bike. The problem was, my
primary camera is a Canon digital SLR which
is far to heavy (and expensive) to mount on
bicycle handlebars! This camera is nice
and light. The other feature that makes it
the perfect choice for my "bike cam" is that the
portion of the camera housing the lens rotates
(see picture to the left). With the camera
mounted on the bike I can take pictures of
what is in front of us or rotate the lens 180
degrees (toward the back) and take pictures of us with scenery in
the background. |
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The only
"off the shelf" camera mounts I could find did
not allow me the freedom to adjust the direction
the camera was pointing while riding the bike.
Specifically the ability to pan from side to
side. There are often sights I want to
capture that are not directly in front of us.
I decided I really needed the functions of a
tripod. The two components I used were:
a handlebar stem, and a tripod.
I had originally
planned on just using a tripod head, but it was
actually cheaper to buy the whole tripod and cut
it apart. The Sunpak 2001UT worked well
and was only about $20. It was a little
strange to buy a new item and immediately attack
it with a hack saw and grinder! I took off
the legs, then started grinding down the
plastic. I removed all the material that
was used to attach the legs. In the
picture to the right, look at the locking ring
(between the leg portion and head) and compare
it with the pictures below to see what
modifications were done. I then took the
modified tripod and inserted it into the
handlebar stem. I had to pry it open a bit
to make it fit. I then made two other
changes. I shortened the center tube since
I really didn't need the height, and I removed the
long handle on the back. Its function was
to twist to loosen and tighten, allowing the head
to tip up and down which is not necessary in my
application, so I replaced it with a bolt (plus
it was also in the way). The finished
product actually works very well. You just
have to make sure it doesn't block your view of
the road! |
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I didn't start out with anything quite so
elaborate. Actually, at first I wasn't
sure the bike cam idea was going to work at all.
I though the vibrations would be so bad that at
least half of the pictures would be blurry.
What I discovered was that the shutter speed was
high enough so that only about 10% of the images
are unusable. The picture to the left was
my original handlebars with my trial camera
mount. It was a clamp on mount that I
found at a local photography store. I
clamped it on the handlebars and then used
electrical tape and "zip ties" to secure it
further. It did it's job, it proved that
my idea would work! |
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