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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 20D 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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In the pictures below you can see how we mount the
camera on the bike. From the upper accessory bar,
there is a handlebar stem extending toward the front of
the bike (lower right picture below). That stem
holds part of a "customized" tripod. For a
description of the weird handlebar set up, check
Our Accessories page. |
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| 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 above it to see what
modifications were done. After I figured
out the actual mounting, I then made two other
changes. I shortened the center tube since
I really didn't need the height, and it hung
down too
low and got in the way of my knee. I did
keep the option of raising the head about 3
inches. I also had to keep
the camera low enough to not block my view of
traffic! The last change was to remove the
long handle on the back. Its function was
to twist to loosen and tighten to allow 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). |
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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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