Have you had those issues with telling your friends and family about how fun your off-road activities are? I've struggled with this too, but we have an option for sharing your fun. It's made for Oregon Scientific, and it's a solid state camera. SKU # 186071, our price is $119.99. It's easy to see which stores know about it, as they're sold out. Almost all of our stores got two at the start.
How does it work?
Like a standard digital camera, it saves the compact movie files on a Secure Digital card. You can find the big size (2GB, enough for an hour!) at Fry's for ~$30, or a little more at Staples/Office Depot etc. It runs on two AA size batteries, and since your storage time is not huge you'll be able to check the batteries when downloading video.
It comes with plenty of attachment parts, enough to fit most applications. If you connect to a TV to review your video, the view will be a little pixellated/fuzzy as most TV's are larger than the resolution it records. The camera records at a max size of 680x 480, which is way above what Youtube seems to play at. In other words, plenty of resolution for most uses.
Mounting to things
I tried the handlebar mount first on a XC ride, and got a lot of jittery turning left/right/left as I was climbing. The good news is that any thing you climb looks much steeper, due to the lower perspective of your handlebars. The DH stuff wasn't bad, but seemed to have some weird distortion. When I knew I'd been cookin' a corner, it sure didn't look like it. Maybe it was the lighting? I rode/recorded past dusk, and the video still looked pretty good in the lower-light situations. Better than I'd expected, in fact. Due to the microphone's proximity to the tire, I also got a constant roar. Turning off the mic would've been best here.
When mounting to a bicycle helmet, I had to experiment. It weighs 6.3oz/177 grams so the weight is definitely noticeable if it's hanging off the side of your brain bucket. I tried many other options, and finally realized that the clip did not have to face f-to-rr. The third picture shows the strap running front to back, which was a very solid mount. The camera also needs to be mounted much further back than you might figure, as pictured it may be a little too far forward. I rode around a little today, and you could hear my uh, comment as I smacked the rear rim as I rode up some stairs.
I'll try again when it's not raining. It is very well sealed, but one raindrop on the lens and the video's gonna look nutty. I'd recommend it to anyone who can keep the idea clear that it's a BASIC video-cam.
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