Any experience of race-cams?

[ADEE]

Looking to buy an in-car camera kit. I race a single-seater & Goldstar's race-cam with the ChaseCam PDR100 looks like the best bet. Anyone have any experience of this set-up &/or Goldstar? Any hints / tips much appreciated.

[tristancliffe]

I'm using a PDR100 in my F3 car, and it's lovely. With decent 2700mAh NiMh batteries and a top quality 4GB card (Sandisk III) I've not had a problem.

We are using the built in microphone.

We are using a 480line dogcamsport bullet camera, and it's not bad, but ours has developed loose insides, so we get a nasty vibration. By next months race at Silverstone we should have a Dogcam HQ1 550 line camera, which will be LOVELY.

I cannot recommend Mark at Dogcam enough. Wonderful service. When our camera wire chafed through, he fixed it FOC even though it wasn't a warranty thing. He swapped our PVR500 hard drive recorder for the PDR for the difference in cost, but price-matched us to the lowest priced supplier in the UK (who were out of stock anyway).

Goldcam, in my tiny little dealings with them, seemed a little up themselves, as though our car/series wasn't good enough. You'll probably have no problems, but they wouldn't be my first choice.

Not sure if I'm allowed to give links, but I'll try anyway. http://www.reynard883.com/videos/roc...highlights.wmv 66MB Taken at the weekend just gone.

[Adam43]

Yes, we fitted some Kent cams and thought that they were excellent. While they were described as race cams I was pleasently surprised how useable the engine still was...

Oh, I see.

I've only put a cheap camera over my shoulder once on a track day. 1Gb card took 15 minutes. It was just for fun, and recorded a few expletives, but well worth doing...

[graeme]

I run a Canon video camera in the boot, with a remote camera on the rollcage. Camera was about £200 off interweb and the bullet camera was just over £100 from http://www.rfconcepts.co.uk/ - much cheaper than these "race cam" companies. (You need a video camera with AV in). I generally just transfer the footage to VHS but you can put it on the web as a friend did for me here - http://www.exhale.co.uk/portals/0/video/Charade1Web.wmv

Originally, I just mounted the video camera on the rollbar with a clamp from Demon Tweeks but a) the wet kills the camera and b) the mount is about £100

If you want a cheap try, I've had some success with this - http://www.firebox.com/product/1732?...&src_id=camera - quality's not as good as video but for the price...

[Chris Y]

Originally Posted by graeme

Originally, I just mounted the video camera on the rollbar with a clamp from Demon Tweeks but a) the wet kills the camera and b) the mount is about £100

For anyone considering buying the mount from 'Tweeks, take a look here first: http://www.b-hague.co.uk/camera%20su...%20systems.htm

[StephenRae]

I'm using a £70 Aldi camera with a 2GB card (1.5 hours) and a remote microphone, works fine wet or dry....good enough to use on TV!

[ADEE]

thanks - some very helpful replies. keep 'em coming though, especially if anyone has anything more on the PDR 100.

tristancliffe - shame about your spin, some great slides in the wet!

[The STIG]

I've used a dogcam wireless CMOS camera a couple of times now, and whilst it's great on my road car (reciver/camera in the boot, with a big 12v battery), when I put it onto something which vibrated loads (namely a Q-Pod) in a similar way, the reciver shook itself out of tune very quickly. So that didn't really work. I think there are some very very short clips of the results of using this camera on my showreel if you want an idea of quality.
(www.kevinmcmullin-tv.co.uk)

A cheap system could be the wired version of that camera (£35 ish) and a cheapish camcorder with AV in - My JVC camcorder cost around £150. This will however still suffer from jolts and whathave you, and the picture quality - whilst not bad, isn't exactly hollywood.

Mid range, keep hold of the camcorder, but change the remote camera to a CCD based system, or a bullet camera. Dogcam's smallest offering gives decent picture quality, is very tough so you can put it anywhere on the car (sensibly!) and it won't get flies over the lens [unless you're really unfortunate] and costs about £100

Money no object. Get yourself a solid state PVR and the 550 line zoom camera. No interference from bumops, jolts or vibrations and small with it. But will probably cost you the best part of £500, if not more.

Want 2 cameras, either get a passive switch (not reccomended for racing as you have to work it yourself, and you really don't want to be thinking about which camera's best when you're in the thick of it!), or a multiplexor - but be warned, the latter costs around £80, and is just one other thing to worry about.

I can heartily reccomend DogCam for service though. no problems with them at all.

oh yes, and whatever system you decide upon, let us know how you get on and show us the piccies!

[tristancliffe]

Originally Posted by ADEE

tristancliffe - shame about your spin, some great slides in the wet!

Whilst I love watching the slides, and showing them off to my friends, on the video, I'd much rather I had some grip and could keep up with the fast boys! The spin was pretty nasty - my fault for sticking my nose up the inside of that corner really. And it could have been a LOT worse - see how close the armco is to my car!

[GORDON STREETER]

I ran the onboard camera for Sky the other week at Snett and was told "Its the kiss of death" On the last lap after 40 mins the engine let go on the last lap and I spun on the oil when in the lead ! Good job they cut out the language !!

[Rikki Cann]

I did the same Gord at Snett three weeks ago and broke a hub going into Russells, and the iceing on the cake is they did not show it on TV bloody cameras