In Flight Video

On Dec 29, 12:12 pm, wrote:
What are people using to get in flight video? I am thinking about
putting some sort of bullet camera on the Cherokee for this upcoming
season. I figure if im going to land out all the time I might as well
get some of it on tape so i can share with my friends Any sort of
cheap setup that i can mount to the top of my vertical stabilizer and
power with my 12 volt gel cell battery?

This won't help you with a bullet camera but I just brought a Canon
HV20 HD mini DV format camcorder. With street prices less than $700
for this camera is huge bang for the buck. You might be able to split
the cost with another glider pilot. Fairly compact for use in the
cockpit and high definition - after seeing some HD inflight video
produced by Kempton Izuno it was clear that was the way to go for me.
I believe Kemp is going to talk about video creation/use at the SSA
convention.

Unfortunately the HV20 has no aux raw video in so it can't record your
bullet cam. Avoid the hard disk based cameras (e.g. AVCHD format), the
disks are not designed to work at altitude and mini DV tape still
provides better image quality. The issue with HD is the costs of the
undoubtable computer upgrade you will go through as you add horsepower
to edit this stuff :-) But once you see it it is hard to want to look
at standard definition content again.

Kemp previously commented on HD and the HV20 on r.a.s and provided a
link to a sample (downres and compressed HD) video at http://vimeo.com/343957

Cheers


Darryl