At the Onboard Beachport weekend I finally had the chance to get some footage from the ‘Tail Cam’ I have been working on. I first made the mount in January and tried it out on my mountain bike. I have since made improvements to its stability and safety but there is still a long way to go until I am 100% happy. Here is a short edit of some of the footage from the Sunday( 10-18 knot day) at Lake George. Unfortunately the lens slowly fogged up so the results should be better in summer. I had to modify my stance slightly to keep the camera out of the chop.

Looks great.
How far away from your back is the camera?

Great idea and looks good

Up here in my neck of the woods the fogging was driving me nuts, in case you don't know grab yourself some anti fogging strips www.seabreeze.com.au/Shop/Scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=47

Nice work Tim
can't wait to see your next Vid

imagine the PWA slalom with everyone wearing one - awesome!

that's great. i saw this from the shore and at first i though you'd snapped your boom...but i couldn't work out how you were still riding so hard. sharkbiscuit filled me in later, and it all made sense.

the footage is awesome, your camera rig is a lot more stable than I would have guessed, and it gives a real sense of speed seeing how the board sits in the water.

in photography, recent advances into content-aware-fills means you can select and delete unwanted bits of a scene, the software fills in to match the surrounding background. after that you have to be zoomed in to even tell something's been removed. a friend in multi-media tells me they're doing similar things in video...so I readily imagine this with the boom 'erased'...keep refining Tim, you might end up with a world-first filming technique here!

ps; next vid, forward loop or tailwalk-to-catapult please...

Great footage Tim

Thanks for the feedback guys, I have been dreaming of this mount for ages! Having the mount ready to go but not being able to sail(new baby) has been a bummer. Nearly had a heart attack recently after seeing some other rear mounted footage but was soon relieved to see it was taken very close to the rider and did not get the full view of the sail and board. This was also easy for anyone to just whack together and didnt have the technical difficulties of mounting a camera 1.5m away.

lao shi - the 'Tail" is about 1.5m long.

Trousers - I had the same thoughts on filling or cloning from the surrounding frame but (my) average aditing software does not really make it easy. Adobe After Effects may do it(don't own it) but the other long winded option I have is exporting individual frames to Photoshop, touching them up and importing them back into the footage. This is great for erasing a boom mic from a few seconds of movie footage but for every frame of a long video... crazy using this method. I might try some macro tricks in photoshop to productionise the process.

Some of the other ideas I have are rotary actuators to pan both the arm and the camera and possibly tilt the camera as well while sailing. Using one of the remote lens cameras would reduce the swing weight and allow a lighter arm but may have too much reflex in the arm. A remote display and buttons would also help as I had to stop to remove the mount to start recording.

Next up is some 60fps as well as 1080 footage. I went the 4:3 AR so that I could have more of the sail and board in frame. 16:9 may work just as well but the lens angle is reduced in HD mode.

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Kimba said...

........ Nearly had a heart attack recently after seeing some other rear mounted footage but was soon relieved to see it was taken very close to the rider and did not get the full view of the sail and board.

I had been thinking of doing this myself. Even bought a micro vid cam about a year ago but for one reason or another ( mostly apathy and procrastination) had not got around to it. I really am surprised no one else has done this. It gives the best angle.

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yoyo said...

Kimba said...

........ Nearly had a heart attack recently after seeing some other rear mounted footage but was soon relieved to see it was taken very close to the rider and did not get the full view of the sail and board.

I had been thinking of doing this myself. Even bought a micro vid cam about a year ago but for one reason or another ( mostly apathy and procrastination) had not got around to it. I really am surprised no one else has done this. It gives the best angle.

Hey Yoyo you would have got some interesting footage yesterday

Bender, you must be missing Snides!

Certainly not the sort of stuff to be recorded for prosperity.....The estuary t'was a little weedy for a pointer yesterday.

great set up tim, new angles i haven't seen on camera.

you say you had to modify your stance to keep the camera out of the chop...how is it attached to your waist? (or is that patent pending? )

can you angle the boom upward more so you don't have to break at the hips? i guess that also means the camera must then angle down more which might mean the mount obscures the view a bit

The camera mount is attached with 2 self tappers in both L1 and L5....Gotta line it up just right though!

Seriously, I need to make a proper quick release belt, at the moment I am using 2 tie down straps( makes you look like the michelin man). There is a frame coming out of the top of the base plate which sits under my jacket. This serves 2 functions; it takes some of the weight of the camera away from the belt and also softens the movement of the camera over the chop.

I had to lengthen my lines(which I can finally do now with a few sets of 28-34" lines) and sail with more bent arms than normal to maintain a more vertical back. I could not pump either as you have to lean a long way back. I am going to put in a 10 degree wedge for the next session. You are really aware the camera is there when sailing but I think the angle mod will make a huge difference. I will try more gybing next session as I think this is a great angle to capture both your footwork and rig flip.

There are nylon screws fixing the pivot plate to the base plate incase I go down hard. Better the frame end up in pieces rather than my kidneys. There is also a leash connected to the camera and base plate which travels down the inside of the arm so I dont loose a $400 camera in the event of a big dismount.

An awesome video, great angle

Great stuff Kimba. In process of making one myself after seeing a similiar one for wavesailing. Think I might have to beef it up a little after seeing yours

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rooster said...

Great stuff Kimba. In process of making one myself after seeing a similiar one for wavesailing. Think I might have to beef it up a little after seeing yours

You will need an extra long one as there will be too much of you blocking the camera

Next step is to try one of these babies...



GoPro 3D

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Kimba said...

Next step is to try one of these babies...



GoPro 3D

How do you edit it??

Thanks for reminding me Graceman. Thats why its needs beefing up, bloody big pole......