I picked up a "Tony Hawk's Helmet Cam" about a year ago with the idea that it was cheap enough to risk breaking it in a cave or dropping it in a pool of water. It has survived a handful of caving trips, including a thorough beating against the sides of Robber Baron cave.
Here's one for $25: http://www.compuplus.com/i-Digital-Blue-Tony-Hawk-Helmetcam-1011956~.html?sid=6d9v35b715u3v12 For dropping a wide pit lit by daylight like Devil's Sinkhole, it does a reasonable job: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_8H2ewVOd4 In a cave at a range of 2-3 feet with the 2nd brightest setting selected on a Princeton Apex, it does a reasonable job: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G83DLfvW8Y The video quality is about what you'd expect for a camera in its price range: 320x240, 15fps, heavy compression artifacting, and poor low-light response. For your average stumbling through a cave, the results are mixed from poor to unwatchable, usually because they are too dark, but sometimes because of a weakness inherent in any helmet cam: it's attached to you helmet, which is in turn attached to your head. Our sneaky little brains play a very neat trick on us where in shifting our focus from one point to another, we perceive a smooth and seamless transition. Watching *videos* of the same transition, from almost the same perspective, our brains don't know how to perform this smoothing, and the result is violent and almost nauseating. A helmet-cam operator needs a great deal of focus and discipline to overcome the natural instinct to turn his head at a normal speed for a human, and this is a talent I do not have! Overall, it's a fun toy that can shoot some crappy video that's great for your local grotto's recruitment purposes, if nothing else. ~Alan Blevins On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 1:10 PM, Matt Turner <kat...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Yeah we've had a few people bring these on our beginner trips and normally > all you really get is a low quality video of hands and dirt. They only > capture well where your head lamp is pointed and only then if it's decently > bright. Truthfully though as with most things it probably just takes some > tweaking to get the results you want out of it. > > Matt Turner > > "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought > without accepting it." - Aristotle > > "Empty pockets never held anyone back.Only empty heads and empty hearts can > do that."- Norman Vincent Peale > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: "Minton, Mark" <mmin...@nmhu.edu> > To: nmca...@caver.net; txcaver <texascavers@texascavers.com> > Cc: "jcbr...@alum.rit.edu" <jcbr...@alum.rit.edu>; yd > <ydr...@rosettastone.com> > Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2008 9:06:59 AM > Subject: [Texascavers] Helmet Cam > > Now you can get a good deal on a waterproof helmet camera to record > all of your caving and other exploits. Mountain Gear has one on sale for > only $100. > <http://www.mountaingear.com/pages/product/Search_Results_Endeca_New.asp?N=0&Nu=p_rollup&Ntk=s_search&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial&Ns=p_name%7C0&Nty=1&Ntt=Oregon+Scientific> > It doesn't say how well they do in low-light though. > > Mark Minton > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit our website: http://texascavers.com To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
