Mounted the new waterproof camera to the mast last weekend and was surprised how well it worked.

Few sample movies are here: http://users.tpg.com.au/jzabka/

Some still shots are in the photos section.

Cheers

bmanners said...

gs12

Nice footage. What sort of camera did you use and how did you attached it?

Brett

Hi,

It's Pentax Optio W30 (7 mpx, waterproof up to 3 m).

I bought a cheap (ish) tripod for about $70 and pulled it apart so I ended up with the middle tube with the head still attached to it.

I slide the middle tube (about 1.5 cm diameter) into the luff pocket next to the mast - at the top. It's a bit of a tight fit. When I tension downhaul it sort of locks it in place. I also tighten a piece of rope around it and attach the camera to the top of the sail as additional safety.

The tripod head allows to point the camera pretty much anywhere you want and it stays in place.

I only did few runs in failry flat water and only small waves as I was not really sure the camera would stay intact (or attached) in a big wipe out.

great stuff....

MavericK040 said...

i was thinking of doing something similar to that , but attatching the cam to the front of my boom pointing back or something ,

Yeah, that's what I want to try next

oregon scientific make a good cam , its meant for wearing on your head tho im sure you could attach it to anything

I used to have the Oregon Scientific and wasn't too impressed. The resolution is OK (640 x 480) but the bit rate is really low resulting in poor quality image. It's cheap though and you get what you pay for. There were some discussions here in the past.

You can wear the Pentax Optio on your head (DIY setup) if you don't mind lookin' like an idiot With little bit of fine tuning you can set it up so it points exactly where you look & you know what you shooting.