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Does anyone have any advice / tips on what would make a good on-dash camera to record flights? I'd like something small that can be mounted and unmounted easily (since I rent). Also are there any FAA regulatory issues I need to worry about in regards to video equipment in the cockpit? |
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I bought a Flip HD camera and a window suction cup mount. It's inexpensive and works great (in good light--the Flip video in low light conditions actually sucks pretty bad), but I haven't gotten any decent video yet because the prop is distorted and strange looking in the video. Kind of like what an iPhone camera does to a moving propeller: http://www.globalnerdy.com/2009/01/13/cheap-camera-interesting-shot/ I'm going to try mounting it further back in the aircraft to see if that improves the results (my previous attempts have been with the camera mounted on the right seat side window). If you Twitter, follow @rfelty and check out his previous tweets. He videos a lot of his flights with several cameras (including at least one Flip), and posts them on YouTube. They are very good, and he has a blog where he has some advice on the subject (and I think he's in the video production biz as well, so he knows his stuff). Hope this helps. 1
Wow! That's a pretty cool effect on the distortion. Checked out one of rfelty's vids. Looks like he has a handycam on a swivel mount for the over the nose, a flip pointed out his left window and a camera mounted behind him to catch a wide angle of the cockpit and front seat. Very cool! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00x7j-z_hy4 Yeah, sorry I didn't include the youtube or twitter links; those are blocked at work. :( I also wanted say that I forgot to mention that the Flip needs lots of light. It does not work well in low light, sad to say. The problem with the Flip (and other similar) video cameras is the Lack of Image Stabilization. Even the just released new flip lacks that. Moving it back won't help. The distortion is due to the way the camera works. There are tons of references available on line for this. Just Google it. |
